Immediately prior to the Vancouver Canucks’ 5-3 loss in Dallas on Friday night, the club dealt J.T. Miller to the New York Rangers.
The club played short-handed Friday, and honestly, you could feel that in watching the game unfold, even if Vancouver managed a spirited showing against the Dallas Stars.
It wasn’t so much that Miller’s absence was sorely felt, although, of course, it was, especially in the faceoff circle. It’s more that the Canucks have too many unproductive contributors in the lineup at the moment.
Their forward depth has been hollowed out, and even with Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek playing a bulk of their minutes on separate pairs to fatten up Vancouver’s lineup, the blue line is lacking in pace, depth and quality.
For stretches in the opening five minutes and throughout the second frame, the Canucks outplayed the Stars. Dallas, however, found the opening goal, then a power-play goal and an against-the-grain tally to secure their home victory and end the Canucks’ three-game win streak.
Here are three takeaways from the first game of the post-Miller era in Vancouver.
Quinn Hughes’ apparent injury
Hughes left the game Friday evening in the third period for a stretch, and while he returned and managed to gut it out, it was apparent that he was in discomfort and limited.
Quinn Hughes looked to be labouring after returning from the dressing room. pic.twitter.com/1eXCRan44m
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 1, 2025
Hughes has been this team’s primary engine throughout this season. He’s the Canucks’ most valuable player, and arguably, the single most valuable individual skater in the NHL. While Vancouver put up a solid fight in trying circumstances, its ability to execute the comeback was fundamentally compromised once Hughes started missing shifts.
It goes without saying that if the ailment lingers, this team as it’s assembled will struggle mightily to maintain the sort of form it’s going to require if it hopes to hang around in the race for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
First look at power play without Miller
Miller has been a four-on-five maestro throughout his Canucks tenure, the quarterback and primary orchestrator of a Canucks power play that has regularly finished in the top 10 in conversion rate.
On Friday, in our first glimpse at how the Canucks will approach the man advantage in Miller’s absence, the Canucks lined up their first power-play unit with Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson at the circles, Hughes up top, Jake DeBrusk in the bumper and Conor Garland at the net front.
While the power play only scored once, a DeBrusk tally late in the game when the result was already in hand for Dallas, Vancouver generated a fair bit with the man advantage overall. In just over nine minutes of work, the club generated 11 shots in five-on-four situations and was efficient in getting set up and manufacturing quality looks throughout the evening.
Removing Miller from this lineup will take some venom from the club’s overall attack, with the impact being sorely felt on the power play in particular. On Friday night, however, the Canucks power play looked as sharp as it’s looked all season.
Offensive outage
The Canucks managed to score three goals, with two of them coming after the game was in hand, but in truth, this was another night in which the club struggled mightily to generate quality scoring chances at five-on-five.
Pete DeBoer’s Stars are one of the best lockdown teams in hockey. If there was one defensive outfit that might exacerbate Vancouver’s well-established offensive issues, it was Dallas. And that’s what happened.
At the time that Dallas scored its third goal to effectively ice Friday’s game, Vancouver had generated fewer than one expected goal at five-on-five according to Natural Stat Trick. The club was also out-chanced by a better than two-to-one margin in the game.
This is an issue that’s permeated the team throughout the campaign, not an outcome that was caused by the Miller trade and his absence. Against the Stars on Friday evening, however, and especially in those minutes when at least one of Pettersson and Hughes wasn’t on the ice, that problem looked especially severe.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
