All season long, the Canucks had a pretty good thing going.
Prior to the start of the season, coach Willie Desjardins and the Canucks executives had said they wanted their club to be a four-line team. Desjardins took it to heart, rolling four lines all season long with aplomb. Matchups? Who cares. No Canucks forward played more than 19 minutes a night (Henrik Sedin was the clubhouse leader at 18:36), while on the flip side no Canucks forward played less than Derek Dorsett’s 12:02 (among regulars).
While a very small minority complained that the top line should be seeing a bit more ice, most agreed it was a wise strategy intended to keep Vancouver’s best players fresh for the post-season.
For their part, the roster responded. As the ice time spread around, so did the scoring. In total, 12 different Canucks players hit double-digits in goals (and Alex Edler and Brad Richardson likely would have increased that number to 14, had they not been injured).
They were lead of course by Henrik and Daniel Sedin, who finished 13th and 9th in NHL scoring, respectively. However, on nights when the Sedins were shut down by the opposition (though they still posted elite possession numbers on those occasions), the bottom-nine was able to chip in and win games – something that hasn’t always been true of the Canucks in the past, as they have been a top-heavy team in recent years.
So there was reason for optimism heading into their first round series against the Calgary Flames. That’s when the Canucks depth disappeared.
The Sedins and Jannik Hansen (who played much of the series on their line), regular season goal scoring leader Radim Vrbata and rookie Bo Horvat, who developed dramatically into an offensive threat in addition to a two-way leader over the course of the season, all had solid (if unspectacular) performances against the Flames, each registering four points. Beyond them, however, pickings were slim.
Alex Burrows disappeared from the top line, both figuratively and literally, as he was held goalless before exiting the series with an injury. The second line anchored by Nick Bonino and Chris Higgins didn’t make much of a dent. Even with Vrbata on their right side, Bonino and Higgins combined for just two goals.
Then there’s the bottom six which, outside of Horvat, was a complete non-factor, combining for just three goals. That’s it. Aside from a goal off the stick of Luca Sbisa (the team’s only d-man to find the back of the net), that was all the offense the Canucks could muster. Vancouver went from a team who scored 2.88 goals per game (8th in the NHL) in the regular season to one that managed just 2.33 goals per game in the playoffs.
However, the problem went deeper than what the raw numbers would suggest.
That’s pretty damning. SAT Rel% is basically the number of shot attempts at five-on-five for a player relative to the number of shot attempts for his entire team when the player is not on the ice. The top line dominated, while Dan Hamhuis and Yannick Weber formed a strong defensive pairing at even strength, but where is everybody else? Aside from Linden Vey, who played a grand total of 9:59 against the Flames, every other Canuck finished with a negative SAT Rel%. Clearly the Sedins carried this team.
Despite all this, Desjardins continued to roll his lines. The ice time for most Canucks forwards for the first few games of the series was in line with their regular season average. Remember that minority that objected to Desjardins’ methods earlier in the season? They exploded in a cacophony of criticisms and outrage that grew to envelop the entire fanbase, particularly targeting his deployment of the Sedins. “What’s the point of keeping them fresh for the playoffs if you’re not going to increase their ice time in the playoffs?!” they screamed. By the time Desjardins got the message and began to use his superstars as he should have been, it was too late.
So what happened? Was the club’s offensive depth in the regular season just a mirage? Is this team as desperately top heavy as many people had thought it would be prior to the season?
Those are questions for management to consider as the team evaluates what was and prepares for what’s coming. General Manager Jim Benning is likely to make some more moves this off-season, perhaps again dramatically altering the makeup of this club – particularly in the middle-six and perhaps on the backend and in the crease as well – and reshaping this roster to make the forward group behind the Sedins more potent has to be a priority. Middle-six players like Higgins, Burrows, Hansen, and Shawn Matthias may all be on the block, which would radically change the forward makeup. The addition of youngsters Hunter Shinkaruk and Jake Virtanen, two offensive minded players who, like Horvat this season, will get every opportunity to crack the lineup, could also make a big impact.
Vancouver is still a team in the midst of major changes, as management attempts to turn this aging core over to the incoming one, so it is perhaps no surprise the Canucks got the results they did. Still, with the team looking to remain competitive in the interim, as Benning has repeatedly stated since taking the helm, something must be done to improve the roster’s depth if they hope to make any headway moving forward in a tough, tough Western Conference.
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