The Vancouver Canucks bounced back impressively against the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night and will look to continue that momentum on Thursday against former captain Bo Horvat and the New York Islanders at Rogers Arena.
To set up that contest, let’s open the notebook and get into some observations around Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s NHL debut, Nils Höglander’s declining usage, Vancouver’s predictability on the breakout and how the latest NHL trade winds could impact the Canucks’ search for a top-four defenceman.
Lekkerimäki and the homegrown talent gap
When Lekkerimäki made his NHL debut Tuesday night, he became the first Canucks draft pick to record a game played for the franchise since 2020.
It’s a statistic so mind-boggling I could scarcely believe it when I noticed it.
Since mining Vasily Podkolzin, Höglander, Artūrs Šilovs and Aidan McDonough from the 2019 NHL Draft, the Canucks had failed to produce even a cameo appearance from a single drafted player in the intervening five years until Tuesday night. Essentially since they significantly altered their amateur scouting staff with the departure of Judd Brackett during the early summer of 2020, the Canucks haven’t been able to rely on a single drafted and developed, cost-controlled contributor in their lineup.
There’s a lot that goes into creating this homegrown talent gap. Arguably it’s a gap that’s less about the evaluation of amateur talent — although there have certainly been some high-profile misses — and more about the management of draft capital.
The Canucks’ first-round pick in 2020, for example, was dealt away to procure J.T. Miller from the Tampa Bay Lightning. That’s a worthwhile exchange that every team in the NHL would repeat 10 times over. Their second-round selection that year was traded to acquire Tyler Toffoli, which also was a solid investment, even if it was spoiled when the Canucks failed to extend the talented goal-scoring forward during a period of pandemic-induced penny-pinching. In 2021, the Canucks dealt their first-round pick, a top-10 selection, to the Arizona Coyotes for Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Conor Garland. We don’t need to relitigate that sordid transaction, although at least Garland has been a big-time player.
Now that Lekkerimäki has broken through and performed well at the NHL level in his debut performance, the faucet has turned on again. It’s certainly too early to judge the talent the Canucks drafted in 2022, 2023 or 2024 at this early juncture, but Lekkerimäki is trending very well and Tom Willander is enjoying a much improved sophomore campaign at Boston University at the moment. The pipeline isn’t entirely blocked.
Jonathan Lekkerimäki made his NHL debut for the Canucks on Tuesday in a 3-1 win over the Flames. (Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
There’s an impact, however, to this sort of gap in amateur talent acquisition, even if Patrik Allvin, Jim Rutherford and company have managed to manoeuvre around it successfully by being extraordinarily efficient (and budget conscience) in free agency, hitting a variety of key singles (Teddy Blueger, Pius Suter and Ian Cole, for example) on the open markets while adding a couple of multi-base hits as well (Dakota Joshua).
One of those impacts is that it raises the stakes on those draft selections the Canucks have made. Among the top five teams in the Western Conference at the moment, for example, the Dallas Stars have three contributors (Wyatt Johnston, Mavrik Bourque and Logan Stankoven) on their roster drafted since 2020, the Winnipeg Jets have one (Cole Perfetti) and the Minnesota Wild have two (Marat Khusnutdinov and Marco Rossi). The Canucks and the Vegas Golden Knights, who operate like no other club in hockey, are the exceptions.
As a result, if Lekkerimäki, and perhaps even Willander later on in the year, can contribute at the NHL level this season and help close this homegrown talent gap the Canucks are working through, it could be a significant, ceiling-raising development for the club.
Is Höglander back in Tocchet’s doghouse?
We’re only 14 games into the 2024-25 campaign, but it’s already been a tale of two seasons for Höglander.
The feisty, undersized Swedish winger was averaging nearly 15 minutes per game through the Canucks’ first seven games. He was trusted with a top-six role and he rewarded the coaching staff for the increased responsibility, scoring two goals and an assist in seven games while excelling as a play-driver.
Höglander was helping the Canucks control a whopping 68 percent of five-on-five scoring chances during his ice time through those first seven games, which was the best mark among all of their forwards. He wasn’t just holding his own, he was legitimately thriving with his speed, forechecking and battle-winning chops.
In the club’s eighth game, he was lackadaisical on the backcheck during Carolina’s second goal and quickly relegated to the fourth line as punishment. Since then, things have been spiralling in the wrong direction for Höglander.
The 23-year-old has produced zero goals and just two assists over his last seven games. He’s averaged less than 12 minutes per game in that span, including a season-low 9:23 against the Flames on Tuesday night. He’s been taken off the second power-play unit. He’s averaged less than a shot per game. And his stellar two-way numbers from the early going have cratered — the Canucks have been decisively outshot and outchanced with Höglander on the ice over the last seven games. He’s also been on the ice for six goals against at five-on-five in that span, which is the worst mark among Canucks forwards.
This is a nuanced, complex situation to unpack.
On one hand, you can claim Höglander was succeeding in a top-six role early on and that the coaching staff was perhaps too quick to pull the plug and demote him to the fourth line after the Carolina game. You could argue that his recent struggles are tied to him not being put in a position to succeed given he’s playing with a rotating cast of fourth-liners, several of whom have marginal track records of accomplishment at the NHL level. You can also argue it’s hard for a young player to build confidence and play to their potential when they know the coaching staff has them on a short leash.
On the other hand, you can also understand the coaching staff’s perspective. He’s still making defensive mistakes, especially with rotations and back pressure through the neutral zone. He’s still occasionally turning pucks over. And while the fourth line isn’t an ideal spot to play, he proved he could drive play and contribute secondary offence from there last season, which he isn’t doing right now. Plus, with Suter performing well in a top-six role and Danton Heinen building chemistry on the third line, there isn’t an obvious opportunity to move Höglander up the lineup right now anyway.
The fourth line’s performance against the Flames didn’t do him any favours. They were by far Vancouver’s worst line, with Calgary carrying a 3-0 edge for high-danger chances (Calgary only generated one other high-danger chance for the entire game at five-on-five). They were also on the ice for the Flames’ lone goal in the first period. All night, it seemed the trio had trouble recovering pucks on the forecheck and wasn’t sharp backtracking through the neutral zone.
Höglander’s path to carving out a meaningful top-nine role is only going to become harder once Joshua returns to the lineup. This is becoming a situation to monitor because if Höglander can’t earn Rick Tocchet’s trust, he could be leveraged as a trade chip to acquire help on the back end. The three-year, $9 million extension he signed in October was a vote of confidence from management, but the cost certainty of his contract could also be valuable for potential trade suitors.
We believe in Höglander’s potential as a key middle-six cog because of his pace, motor and skill, but he can’t let this bumpy stretch get out of hand.
Are the Canucks’ breakouts too predictable for opponents?
It’s no secret that Vancouver’s breakouts have been an issue at times through the opening 14 games. Most of it comes down to a lack of mobility and puck skills on defence outside of the top pair, but is there anything the Canucks can improve tactically?
One trend that stood out during the blowout loss to the Oilers on Saturday night is that Edmonton dominated the boards on Vancouver’s breakout attempts. The Canucks don’t make many breakout attempts through the middle of the ice, instead preferring to rim pucks around the walls or make stretch passes/bank plays up the wings. This is normal because exits through the middle can be riskier, but the Canucks seemed overreliant on the flanks to the point Edmonton always had sticks and bodies aggressively pressuring and winning battles in those lanes along the walls. It was especially evident in the first period, which contributed to the Canucks’ woeful offensive start.
The beginning of Tuesday’s game against Calgary followed a similar script. Vancouver kept spamming the boards as a zone exit strategy and the Flames were ready to pick those attempts off. Watch the sequence below as an example — the Canucks tried to go up the same wall three times in a row and got repeatedly denied.
Vancouver started controlling the flow of play when it changed things up and began occasionally using the middle of the ice for breakouts to keep Calgary’s forecheck honest. Here’s an example of that in the clip below.
Video courtesy Sportsnet
You can’t always break out through the centre, but it has to be an occasional change-up option so that exits up the wall aren’t too predictable for opponents and easy to thwart. To do it more consistently, it’s not just on the defencemen, but on the forwards to come deeper in the defensive zone to present themselves as a viable passing option.
Would Pettersson fit in Vancouver?
The Pittsburgh Penguins have already sold Lars Eller, and that’s just the start of what’s expected to be a busy stretch for Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas between now and the NHL trade deadline. Pending unrestricted free agents like Rickard Rakell and, most notably, defenceman Marcus Pettersson, are likely to shake loose and become available on the trade market in the months ahead.
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported on Thursday that the Penguins are likely to prioritize established, young NHL players in return for their bigger-ticket trade pieces, which tracks with the unusual shape of the Jake Guentzel return at last year’s trade deadline.
And of course, Rutherford and Allvin have some history with Pettersson. He was acquired by their regime in Pittsburgh in a reclamation project trade with the Anaheim Ducks back in 2018. It was a deal that proved to be a home run when Pettersson established himself as a top-four mainstay.
As we’ve been reporting for weeks now, if there was a straightforward, affordable way for Vancouver to add a bona fide top-four defender on the trade market, the club likely would have already made that deal. Pettersson stands out as a familiar face for Canucks management who could help address their most pressing need.
Would a trade really make sense between the two teams? And is Pettersson a fit for what Vancouver needs most on the back end, namely a top-four upgrade capable of helping the club move the puck cleanly?
It’s worth noting Dubas and Rutherford have a long history of trading with one another, dating back to the Phil Kessel trade nearly a decade ago. The Canucks would probably prefer to part with raw, uncut futures as opposed to dealing young NHL contributors in searching for blue-line help, but while that would complicate a potential trade, it wouldn’t necessarily make a deal unworkable.
As for the fit, Pettersson has been a mainstay on the left side while playing with more dynamic offensive defenders; Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson have by far been his most common defence partners over the past several seasons. A left-handed shooter and a surprisingly creative passer, Pettersson isn’t a dynamic puck-carrier in his own right but has solid offensive instincts and a sharp first pass. While he’s 6-foot-3 and capable of holding up in a matchup role, he’s quietly the sort of top-four defender whose impact tends to be more offensive than defensive overall.
That makes the fit somewhat complicated. Pettersson doesn’t profile as a defender you’d task with filling Carson Soucy’s more matchup-oriented role, and it’s difficult to imagine that Canucks coaches would want to throw a pair of Pettersson and Tyler Myers to the wolves defensively in the same manner they regularly do with Soucy and Myers. He’d probably be better suited to logging minutes with another puck-mover, like Erik Brännström.
The problem then, however, is the question of whether the Canucks would be (and should be) willing to pay a premium for a defender best suited to taking line rushes on the third pair.
(Photo of Marcus Pettersson watching as Teddy Blueger redirects the puck: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
