We’ve reached the pointy end of the regular season: meaningful games in March.
The race for the second Western Conference wild-card spot has played out more like a slowly accelerating turtle derby. That’s been helpful for a Canucks team that has only managed 5-5-0 across their last 10 games, but is still narrowly holding down a playoff spot in the West.
From injuries to a brutal overtime record to a dysfunctional season that caused the club to jettison its best forward in a trade, a lot has had to go wrong for the Canucks to end up here. That’s life in the NHL, though, and with under 20 percent of the season remaining, the Canucks find themselves very much in the mix with teams like the Utah Hockey Club, St. Louis Blues and Calgary Flames for the eighth and final Western Conference playoff spot.
What does the Canucks outlasting their competition and qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs for a second consecutive year look like? Let’s chart out a roadmap and go over what they have to do (or continue to do) to punch their ticket to the postseason.
Hughes vs. the world
The Canucks need Quinn Hughes to be available and to continue to hold the world on his shoulders, despite playing through a multitude of ailments that have caused him to miss 14 games — and the 4 Nations Face-Off — over the past two months.
Hughes is, clearly, Vancouver’s best player. He’s one of the most valuable individual skaters in the league.
Returning from injury this week, Hughes hasn’t missed a beat. He’s scored two goals and been a point-per-game contributor while logging nearly 30 minutes in any game the Canucks have trailed in. He’s done this even if it’s been evident on some uncharacteristic plays and sequences — like a puck race he elected not to win in the third period against Flames forward Kevin Rooney — that he’s at a level well short of 100 percent.
The Canucks have asked too much of Hughes throughout this season, and with 15 games to go, they have no choice but to do so again. If the Canucks are going to make the playoffs, Hughes is going to have to carry them there.
Get Demko back and get Lankinen some rest
Kevin Lankinen has carried the Canucks for extended stretches of this season. The veteran goaltender, who recently signed a five-year extension, was a mid-September signing and can be said to have preserved Vancouver’s playoff chances to this point.
Lankinen, however, has already set his career high in starts in a single season, which doesn’t even include the two starts he made for Finland at 4 Nations, and of late, his form has listed just a bit. He’s mostly still been solid, but he’s been a bit less consistent, which is a common sign of an overworked goaltender.
Since the 4 Nations break ended, for example, Lankinen has started nine games in 23 days, including a back-to-back earlier this week against the Montreal Canadiens and the Flames. He’ll likely start his 10th game in 25 days on Tuesday against the Winnipeg Jets.
Under the strain of this sort of usage, Lankinen’s save percentage has dipped. Stellar all year long, Lankinen has managed a sub-.900 save percentage across his last nine starts, with a tough .887 save percentage five-on-five.
Meanwhile, Artūrs Šilovs, who won his second game of the season over the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday in a game in which he looked shaky, doesn’t seem like a realistic option for the club to turn to against top-quality competition. Šilovs is enormously talented but looks as if he may need some more time to reset in the AHL.
Which brings us to Thatcher Demko, who rejoined the Canucks for practices last week, albeit in a limited fashion. The Canucks have intimated that Demko will need to get in several practices before he returns to game action, and his contributions down the stretch — whenever he’s cleared and ready — could be crucial.
It’s not even about Demko being the dominant goaltender he’s often been throughout his career, although that would be a welcome development for Vancouver’s hopes to challenge a higher-seeded team in the postseason. It’s about giving the Canucks another trusted option they can turn to in high-leverage games so Lankinen can get some rest and be as fresh and sharp as possible.
Kevin Lankinen set a career high in starts in a single season and is showing signs of an overworked goaltender.
Find a way to generate looks at an average rate
The most significant flaw the Canucks have been working through all season is their team-level inability to generate quality looks at a sufficient rate.
Though Vancouver’s popgun offensive capabilities have been hidden, in part, by the skill level of their one-shot goal scorers and their savvy work creating and shooting through layered traffic, this team just hasn’t generate shots at a high enough volume to be a consistent threat to score enough to win consistently.
Now, part of the issue is personnel. Vancouver is probably short a top-six centreman, and a true, bona fide, game-breaking top-line winger.
Part of the issue is likely tactical, too. The Canucks consciously attempted to become a more freewheeling rush attacking team, both in terms of their player acquisition and the focus of their training camp practices and on-ice sessions. For a variety of reasons, however, mostly injuries and internal dysfunction, the club has staged something of a tactical retreat from the offensive ambitions it harboured entering the season.
The Canucks are attempting to win 2-1 games in a 4-3 league, and often enough, the quality of their defensive game has permitted that to work. It’s worked well enough, in any event, that the Canucks have hung around in the playoff race despite key injuries, an abysmal overtime record and the struggles of an opening-night starter who has won just two of nine starts.
Since the J.T. Miller trade, for example, the Canucks rank 30th among 32 NHL teams in goal-scoring rate at five-on-five. They rank 24th in shot rate. Those figures, the shot rate especially, are consistent with what they have done all season (in fact, they’re somewhat improved over what we saw from Vancouver during the holiday season).
Their overall defensive solidity has carried them to this point, but to get over the hump and into the postseason, they need to generate just a little bit more offensively. They’re not going to be a top-10 offensive team all of a sudden, and they don’t really have to be.
They just have to be a bit better, just a bit closer to league average in terms of generating shot volume and scoring chances, if they’re going to beat out their competitors for that second wild-card spot.
Stay elite on the penalty kill, find more on the power play
Yes, the power play has been frustrating to watch on occasion — especially on Sunday evening, during a feckless four-minute opportunity in the third period against Utah — but make no mistake, special teams have carried the Canucks of late.
That starts on the penalty kill, which had been solid all season, exceptional since Christmas and on another level entirely since the Miller trade. In 16 games since Feb. 1, after which the Canucks added Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor into their penalty-killing rotation, Vancouver has managed a kill rate of 92.1 percent — permitting just three goals against in 38 short-handed opportunities during that stretch.
That 92.1 percent-kill rate might actually undersell just how dominant Vancouver’s penalty kill has become. Because, in truth, while the Canucks have surrendered just three power-play goals against in their last 16 games, they’ve also managed a short-handed goal, bringing their actual goal differential up to minus-2. They’re also leading the league across this stretch in short-handed goals-against rate by a massive margin (Vancouver is permitting 2.5 goals per hour, and the next closest team is nearly double that amount), while dramatically limiting easy entry into the zone, which has resulted in the Canucks permitting shot attempts at an incredible clip over the past six weeks.
The lion’s share of credit for this has to be awarded to the trio of Derek Forbort, Teddy Blueger and Pius Suter, who log the most short-handed ice time for the team. In over 35 minutes of work across the board since the Miller trade, the ace penalty-killing trio hasn’t been on the ice for a power-play goal against.
While the penalty kill is tuning opposition power plays, Vancouver’s power play has slogged along rather less impressively. The bar, however, for the Canucks to win the special teams battle more often than not is pretty low given how effectively they have killed off penalties. And with 10 goals in their last 16 games — and a short-handed goal against — Vancouver’s power play has managed to step over it.
Since trading Miller, an incredibly versatile power-play weapon and one of the smartest five-on-four operators in the league, the Canucks power play has managed to tick at an above-20-percent conversion rate. That the Canucks have weathered the loss of Miller with the man advantage and sustained a reasonable conversion rate through multiple extended Hughes absences is pretty incredible, even if their effectiveness on the power play has been buoyed by shooting efficiency more than anything else.
Yes, the power play hasn’t always inspired confidence. It’s rarely been pretty. With the man advantage, however, the Canucks are doing enough to give themselves a significant special teams edge.
That edge has been decisive. It’s kept the Canucks afloat even as they’ve been outscored at five-on-five since the Miller trade. The Canucks will need that special teams advantage to persist down the stretch here, especially with how difficult the remaining schedule is about to get.
Pick up points against top teams
Vancouver has a difficult slate of remaining games compared to that of the other striver-class Western Conference playoff hopefuls.
| Team | Games Remaining | Strength of Schedule by pt% |
|---|---|---|
|
15 |
0.571 |
|
|
15 |
0.549 |
|
|
16 |
0.539 |
|
|
14 |
0.525 |
(Data courtesy Tankathon)
Not only do the Canucks face a more difficult group of opponents over their remaining 15 games than St. Louis, Utah and Calgary, but they also face the third most difficult schedule in the NHL and the toughest of any Western Conference team.
If the Canucks are going to qualify for the postseason for a second consecutive year, it won’t be enough to win the games they should win and are favoured to win by the betting markets. Vancouver is also going to have to find a way to win games against division-leading teams like the Jets and Vegas Golden Knights, who have soundly beaten the Canucks in their previous meetings this season and whom they’ll play against two more times each, beginning Tuesday when Vancouver hosts Winnipeg.
Since the Miller trade, the Canucks appear to have found a new mentality and identity built on counterpunching off the rush, an elite penalty kill and sound defensive coverage. Against teams like Anaheim, Calgary and Chicago, that recipe has worked. It’s also worked against mid-table teams that lack offensive pop like Los Angeles and Minnesota.
When tested by higher-calibre teams like Vegas and Dallas, however, the Canucks have looked more limited. Too often they’ve looked like a team with the floor required of most non-playoff teams and prone to getting picked apart by the class of the NHL.
Down the stretch here, however, aside from one final meeting against the San Jose Sharks, the Canucks are going to be working through a gauntlet of mostly challenging opponents. It’s a far more challenging slate than any of their rivals for the second wild-card spot in the Pacific Division will have to navigate.
Vancouver is going to have to pull off a few upsets between now and Game 82 in order to accumulate enough points to punch their ticket to the playoffs.
(Photos: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
