By: Brayden Fengler / December 31, 2023 It’s that time of year again, although the NHL season is only nearing its halfway mark, the calendar year is finally coming to a close. A well-known tradition around this time of year is the creation of New Year’s resolutions for the year ahead.
A list of resolutions usually includes such things as working out more, reading more books, not polishing off an entire sleeve of Oreos in one sitting, you know the standard stuff that we all deal with.
Resolutions can go beyond the individual as well, and there’s no reason that the Canucks organization as a whole shouldn’t have a list of things that they want to improve on over last year. Below are four things that the Canucks should look to improve in 2024 to continue on the path to success.
Kill Those Penalties
The Canucks are currently in a place which they haven’t been in for a long time. When looking at basic team comparison metrics Vancouver ranks at the very top or near the top in almost every single category.
The Canucks are currently second in the league with regards to wins and are first in their conference and division. The team’s “goals for” still remain best in the league despite their lead in this category dwindling slightly from earlier in the season. Their power play, although not league leading is still within the top 10 across the NHL.
One area, however, where Canucks fans have to scroll further down the leaderboard to find their team is with regards to their penalty kill. The Canucks currently sit 24th in this category, and if it wasn’t for the San Jose Sharks, Vancouver would be the worst team in their division with regards to killing penalties.
The team’s kill currently sits at 77.9% which is still just over six percentage points above their last-place finish in this category last year, where the team was worst in the league with a 71.6%.
It’s clear that of all the improvements this Canucks team has seen since last year, this category still needs some work.
Button-up on Inter-Divisional Matchups
With 36 out of 82 games played, the Canucks still have a lot of hockey left on the calendar. It will be even more important in the back half of the season that Vancouver ensures whatever few losses they have, don’t come at the hands of inter-divisional rivals. So far this season, the Canucks have lost to four different teams in their division.
The team lost 5-2 to Calgary in November and faced a 4-2 loss to Seattle the very next day. Towards the end of that month, Vancouver lost 4-3 to the San Jose Sharks and more understandably fell 4-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights.
The loss to San Jose, although concerning, as it should be a scheduled win for the Canucks due to the Sharks’ being last in the league, will be of less consequence to their playoff run compared to their contests against Calgary, Seattle, and especially Vegas.
Vegas is right behind the Canucks in the division standings, with Seattle not far back. The Canucks have three more contests with Vegas this year, all coming within the last two months of the season.
As Vegas is a team that the Canucks could very likely play some consequential games against come the playoffs, it’s important for Vancouver to win, or at the very least, put up a good fight during their remaining showdowns with the club during the regular season.
Boost Pettersson’s Line
One line in particular that could use a boost in the new year is Elias Pettersson’s line. Although as an individual player Elias Pettersson is 14th in the league in points, he is the second-best Canucks’ forward on that list behind JT Miller who sits at 6th. Pettersson’s line has not been a stand-out for the Canucks.
There has been a school of thought that Pettersson has been playing through an injury to this point in the season, giving an explanation to some for why he hasn’t taken the Canucks on his back as much as his other teammates have.
Right now, however, the official word is that Pettersson is healthy, and if he is, there needs to be something done about his line. Pettersson has been inseparable from linemate Ilya Mikheyev, with lines featuring these two together having earned a combined total of 21 goals for the year.
It’s the other winger on Pettersson’s line that the team can’t quite land on. Andrei Kuzmenko has filled the bulk of that role being deployed with Pettersson over 37% of the time that Pettersson has been on the ice this season. However, Kuzmenko hasn’t appeared to be the answer this year.
Despite Pettersson, Kuzmenko, and Mikheyev being the third most deployed line by the Canucks this year, and their production is respectable, the goals against that this particular line has allowed are double or triple that of other Canucks lines, as they’ve allowed 14 goals against on the year. No other single-line combination on the Canucks has even cracked double digits in this category.
This, along with Kuzmenko’s individual performance has forced him to be scratched during a number of games and has allowed other Canucks such as Lafferty, and Suter to play alongside the Mikheyev Pettersson pair.
The Lafferty line has seen the most deployment of the two new lines and has seen the most promise with shots for a percentage higher than any line Pettersson has skated with this season.
Overall Pettersson’s lines have been good… but not great, and the Canucks need both Pettersson and his linemates to be great if they want to have a shot at reaching the next resolution.
Win the Stanley Cup
Now, now, I know what you’re thinking, One minute you’re suggesting marginal line improvements, the next you’re shooting for the moon? Well, yes. Originally I had “Make Impact in the Playoffs” as its own resolution, with winning the cup as almost a bonus resolution.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized from the team’s perspective these should be one and the same. “Shoot for the moon and you’ll land among the stars”, type thinking.
The Canucks should be good enough to make an impact in the playoffs, this should almost be a given, but what they should be working towards every second of the new year is being good enough to win it all.
MoneyPuck.com’s final playoff odds of the year have the Canucks near 100% just to make the playoffs, and over 50% odds to make it to the second round. Odds can always change, but even if they can live up to those numbers, they will have made a substantial impact in the playoffs compared to their recent season.
Vancouver currently sits with the third-best odds, behind the Colorado Avalanche to win the Stanley Cup. With those odds, at this point in the year, it would be unacceptable for the Canucks to work towards anything less.