NHL
What a relief it was this week to read a quote from a Vancouver Canucks player willing to embrace what it means to play in this madcap, obsessive hockey market.
“One thing I’m really good at — or have gotten good at — is I’m very present,” Canucks captain Quinn Hughes told Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre this week, when asked about handling the non-stop speculation about his Canucks future. “I can’t even sign for another year, so there’s nothing I can do. As far as the noise (about his future), I can handle the noise. That’s why I’m the captain of the team, because I can handle these things and I can play at an elite level and it doesn’t matter what’s going on around me.
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“And as far as the noise around my teammates, I’m going to try to help everyone else, too, and be as good a leader as I can be. Noise doesn’t bother me. It’s a long year, and I’m just going to be day-to-day and focus on the short term. That’s the truth, honestly.”
The term “the noise” is thrown around in hockey to the point where it’s lost all meaning. It’s come to refer to just about anything off the ice that could be a distraction. It could be media speculation, trade rumours, rumours of locker room discord, reports about a head coach on the hot seat, off-ice controversy, legal issues, whatever. “The noise” is all-encompassing, and it’s to be avoided.
Except it can’t be avoided. Not in a city in which hockey is everything, and in which the Canucks are always the hottest and most discussed show in town. In this city, the noise isn’t something to fear or duck. It’s something that a winning team has to learn to embrace.
As this next Canucks season is about to get underway, the noise around Hughes’ future promises to be deafening. That the Canucks captain has already stickhandled through it with the ease we’ve become accustomed to seeing when he’s dancing checkers at the offensive blue line is an indication, hopefully, that this upcoming season won’t be a constant referendum on the Hughes question.
Or, at the very least, the topic may be kept at bay provided that this team is competitive and in the mix throughout this upcoming season. If things go sideways, then it’ll be unavoidable; Hughes’ future will be the only topic that this market discusses throughout the rainy season.
After working through some pressing summer topics concerning Canucks forwards yesterday, let’s get into some offseason thoughts on Vancouver’s defence and goaltenders.
It’s no secret what Vancouver’s biggest issue has been over the past handful of years.
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When Hughes is on the ice, the Canucks have typically throttled their opponents in five-on-five situations. Since the 2022-23 campaign, for example, Vancouver has outscored opponents by 65 goals in Hughes’ five-on-five minutes. No team in the sport has managed to outscore their opponents by a greater ratio five-on-five than the Canucks have over the past three years with Hughes logging shifts.
The non-Hughes minutes, however, have been a very different story for the Canucks. Since the 2022-23 campaign, a span of 246 regular-season games, the Canucks have been outscored by 48 goals in those five-on-five minutes in which Hughes takes a breather. Isolated solely to Vancouver’s non-Hughes minutes, the Canucks have been outscored five-on-five without Hughes on the ice at a clip that is better than only three NHL teams over the past three years: Chicago, San Jose and Anaheim.
This is the eternal puzzle that Canucks management has yet to solve consistently. How do the Canucks upgrade their lineup to the point where they don’t perform on the scoreboard like one of the NHL’s doormats whenever Hughes takes a minute to catch his breath?
Enter, Marcus Pettersson.
It goes without saying that Pettersson isn’t a flashy player. He’s a tough-as-nails defensive defender, but he isn’t often seen doling out big Tyler Myers-style hits. He’s an exceptional skater, but rarely carries the puck through the neutral zone. He’s an excellent passer in the offensive zone, but doesn’t generate points in bunches, or play on the power play, or score from the point in a manner that fans and infrequent observers find memorable.
Pettersson, however, is a rock steady two-way defender. He gets play moving in the right direction, and consistently and subtly helps create an environment where his team is more likely to score the next goal than its opponents are, even when he’s matched up against top competition. He is, genuinely, a top-pair calibre blueliner.
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When Pettersson arrived in Vancouver last season, the Canucks were in turmoil. Not only had the club just subtracted its top forward from the lineup via trade, but Hughes sustained an oblique injury the night that Vancouver acquired him from the Pittsburgh Penguins. Pettersson didn’t get to play even a single game with the dominant version of Hughes that we saw through the first 50 games last season.
Even as injuries mounted — to Filip Chytil and Elias Pettersson, the forward — down the stretch, however, Pettersson unremarkably went about helping the Canucks win his minutes. In just over 550 five-on-five minutes across Pettersson’s first 31 Canucks games, Vancouver managed to outscore its opponents by a 28-22 margin.
Now, it should be noted that the gaudy goal differential number was inflated by some good shooting fortune in the offensive end of the rink (the Canucks scored on over 12 percent of their shots with Pettersson on the ice last season), which we shouldn’t assume will stick. Nonetheless, Pettersson is the sort of secondary stabilizing force that Vancouver hasn’t had on their second pair since Dan Hamhuis was still in his prime.
If Pettersson can legitimately help Vancouver stem the bleeding in the non-Hughes minutes at five-on-five, then that’ll help make the edge that Hughes generates stand up in a way that it too often hasn’t during Hughes’ Canucks career to this point.
On paper, the fact that the Canucks are poised to enter this season with a dominant top pair and an additional top-pair calibre left-side defender on the second pair is enough to make this the most talented Canucks blue-line group this city has seen since the golden era seasons of Mike Gillis’ managerial tenure.
There’s another level, however, that Vancouver’s blue-line group has the potential to reach this upcoming season.
There’s an upside case that could place this Canucks defence among the very best in the NHL. It will require some luck in the health department, of course, and it will require that some of Vancouver’s younger, incoming defenders hit and be ready to make a significant impact this season.
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The most established of this group of young players is Elias Pettersson, the defender, who is referred to as “Petey Junior” to avoid confusion internally. Pettersson appeared in 28 NHL games last season and was nothing short of sensational.
A big, physical, authoritative defender, Pettersson has already earned rave reviews internally for both his hockey intelligence, capacity for retaining coaching information (and implementing in-game) and high character. In nearly 400 five-on-five minutes last season, the Canucks only surrendered eight goals against with Pettersson on the ice, a testament to his reliability at a precocious stage of his career.
While Pettersson’s defensive play was sturdy, it was actually his offensive impact that stood out most — even if he wasn’t rewarded for the chances Vancouver generated in his minutes, as the club converted on just 3 percent of its shots on goal in his five-on-five minutes. In particular, Pettersson had a veteran’s understanding of when to pinch at the offensive blue line. Not only was he never caught on his sorties down the wall, and not only did Pettersson regularly help Vancouver maintain possession in the offensive end, but the punishment that Pettersson regularly proved capable of exacting on opposing wingers trying to dig the puck off of the wall was almost evocative of former Detroit Red Wings great Niklas Kronwall.
The Canucks believe that, provided he’s put in the work this offseason, Pettersson can be a mainstay in their NHL lineup this upcoming season. Based on his rapid ascension and rare profile, Pettersson looks like he could also have some untapped upside to be more than just a sturdy, reliable defensive presence down the lineup for Vancouver going forward.
Outside of Pettersson, the most intriguing profile among Vancouver’s young blueliners belongs to Tom Willander, the club’s first-round pick in 2023. Although a lengthy standoff on bonus structure this spring caused Willander to miss out on the opportunity to participate in Abbotsford’s Calder Cup run, the 20-year-old defender is expected to push to make this team out of training camp.
Willander’s tools — he’s big, he’s a bona fide elite skater and he’s right-handed — jump off the ice. His offensive instincts, feel for navigating pressure on retrievals and overall puck handling, however, are currently limiting factors in his game. He’s got enough developmental runway and the raw tools to overcome those relative weaknesses in his game, but I would expect Willander to go through an adjustment process as he enters his first professional season this fall.
Even beyond that key wave of incoming Swedish-born defenders, the Canucks have some additional promising depth lottery tickets on defence, who project to provide the club with useful NHL minutes this season when injuries hit. Victor Mancini, acquired by Vancouver in the J.T. Miller trade with the New York Rangers, is a big-bodied right-handed defender with plus wheels and a standout willingness to carry the puck aggressively through the neutral zone. The 23-year-old’s puck-handling details are a work in progress, and he can be a bit of a high-risk, high-reward decision maker at this stage of his career. If he can mature, however, there’s a lot to like about how his game projects.
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Finally, the organization is very excited about Kirill Kudryavtsev, who was one of Abbotsford’s standout performers in the Calder Cup playoffs as a 21-year-old. Kudryavtsev isn’t small necessarily, he’s got a wide, fire hydrant-like build, but he’s left-handed, under 6-foot tall and isn’t likely to project as a power-play quarterback at the NHL level. The undersized, left-handed defensive defenceman is a relatively rare player type, outside of Colorado Avalanche blueliner Sam Girard, so if Kudryavtsev is going to make it, he’s going to have to prove himself as a genuinely special two-way piece.
The thing is, based on his progression and the sterling underlying form that he managed across two NHL games and throughout the Calder Cup playoffs, there’s a chance that Kudryavtsev is just smart enough and good enough to become a special two-way piece in time.
If one defender from this group of young blueliners proves to be an average (or better) contributor this season, then Canucks will project to have a top-five defensive group in the NHL. That’s probably the base case for this back end, which is an exciting thought.
If the upside case hits and two defenders from this group of young Canucks blueliners prove to be an average (or better) contributor this season, however, on top of what Vancouver already boasts on the back end, then the Canucks could project to have the deepest and most dynamic defence corps in the league.
Vancouver’s new bench boss, Adam Foote, was one of the best defensive defenders of his era as a player, and has enjoyed an enormous level of success running the defence in Vancouver over the past two and a half seasons.
It was under Foote’s watch, after all, that Vancouver loaded up its top pair with both Hughes and Filip Hronek. It was a decision that created one of the league’s most dominant defensive pairs and successfully helped maximize Hughes’ touches. Under Foote, we’ve likewise seen Myers put together his strongest and most consistent sustained 150-game stretch of hockey in Canucks colours. Players like Noah Juulsen, Nikita Zadorov and Carson Soucy (in 2023-24, at least) punched well above their weight for extended stretches in Vancouver, under Foote, as well.
Foote won’t be running the blue line directly anymore; that responsibility will fall to new assistant coach Kevin Dean. In the top job, however, Foote’s impact on Vancouver’s blue line will be significant.
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This week, the first-year Canucks head coach was in town for meetings with both senior levels of Canucks management and his coaching staff. And it seems as if some plans to overhaul the Canucks’ systems play, and to put an emphasis on utilizing Vancouver’s stronger, faster and more dynamic blue-line group as this team’s engine, are beginning to take shape.
In particular, now that Vancouver will have more overall mobility on the back end, I expect Foote to lean on more aggressive neutral zone forechecking systems, with the goal of exerting more down-ice pressure than the club typically attempted to generate under Rick Tocchet. I’m also hearing that the club could similarly increase the pressure and aggression of its defensive zone systems.
We’ll see what this all looks like at training camp, but given Vancouver’s defensive results over the past few seasons, this would represent a confident, self-assured decision from the rookie head coach. It would also be a sign that Foote intends to lean into the value that could, hypothetically, be provided by the increased team speed that, on paper, the Canucks possess on the back end going into this season.
Star goaltender Thatcher Demko put in a fully healthy offseason of work, and the Canucks are excited about his ability to return to his usual dominant form this season and carry this team.
It’s pretty obvious that the club is optimistic about Demko going into this season. With the lucrative extension that the Canucks signed Demko to on the very first day that the 2024 Vezina finalist was eligible to extend his contract, they have already placed a significant bet on Demko.
The club is confident that Demko will put last season’s injury nightmare behind him and once again perform like one of the NHL’s premier puck stoppers. And the Canucks have already put their money where their mouth is.
Vancouver enters this season with a significant investment in net, one that sets Demko up to be as rested as possible for the pointy end of the campaign when the games matter most. With Kevin Lankinen in tow on an expensive contract for a 1B netminder, the Canucks are hoping to manage Demko’s minutes and keep him in and around the 50-start mark this upcoming season.
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From there, it’ll be on Demko to stay healthy and dominate when he’s in the net.
Coming off a run of injuries last season — the significant knee tear that cost him the first two months of the campaign, then a subsequent back injury and then another lower-body injury — Demko struggled to remain in the blue paint. He also struggled, relative to his usual high standard, to stop pucks at an above-average rate when he was healthy and active.
There were flashes of the athletic, impenetrable puck stopper that Demko is when he’s at his best. Given how this team is built, however, the Canucks will need more than flashes from Demko this upcoming season.
They need him to perform like the sort of goaltender capable of carrying a team that may struggle to score on occasion to the Stanley Cup playoffs. And be a threat to steal a series (or two) when they get there.
(Photo: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
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Thomas Drance covers the Vancouver Canucks as a senior writer for The Athletic. He is also the co-host of the Canucks Hour on Sportsnet 650. His career in hockey media — as a journalist, editor and author — has included stops at Canucks Army, The Score, Triumph Publishing, the Nation Network and Sportsnet. Previously, he was vice president, public relations and communications, for the Florida Panthers for three seasons. Follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasDrance
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