By: Brayden Fengler / March 21, 2025 There are a little over 10 games left for the Canucks before their NHL regular season journey is over, and their playoff picture is either firmed or erased.
It’s going to come down to the wire for Vancouver and while they have Quinn Hughes back, their netminder in Kevin Lankinen is doing his job exceptionally well and Elias Pettersson is trending up, the Canucks now need their depth pieces to play their roles.
There is no player more important to step up than Brock Boeser. Most of the work to be the player her needs to be of course falls on Boeser at this point in the season, but there are also some choices that Canucks leadership can make that should put Boeser in the best position to thrive.
Boeser’s Performance This Season
While Boeser is third on the Canucks in points, with 43, he is a far cry from where he ended off last year. Boeser had a career season in 2023-24 playing in 81 games and ending the year with 74 points. Currently, Boeser sits at 43 points with only 13 games left to play.
If Boeser can stay healthy he will have played 75 games this season once it’s over. Even though that number is fewer than last season, his deployment has been close enough to last year’s campaign that his lower production is concerning.
This year Boeser has seen the most deployment with the likes of Elias Pettersson and Jake Debrusk, 15% of all time spent on this ice this season for Boeser has been with both players. After that line (still at this point in the season) Boeser’s second most deployed line also features Debrusk, but J.T. Miller as well.
Just looking at the facts around his deployment alone, it paints a compelling picture for why a depth piece like Boeser has been struggling to find stable ground this season.
Just like how Pettersson is now starting to show the fruits of his labour a bit more, likely aided by the distance from the J.T Miller saga from early this year, hopefully, Boeser can keep building off of this stability as well.
Boeser as of Late
Brock Boeser may be third on the team throughout the season, but until last nights OT loss against the St. Louis Blues where Boeser earned two goal, over the bulk of the last month, he was in a four-way tie for the 6th most productive Canuck.
Boeser was behind Pius Suter, Elias Pettersson, Nills Hoglander, Filip Hronek, Conor Garland in points production and tied with Jake Debrusk, Kiefer Sherwood and Quinn Hughes (mind you Quinn Hughes had an injury within the last month that kept him out of several games.) Now Boeser is firmly the 5th most productive Canucks over the last month of action.
Boeser is a depth player but he is not a bottom-six player, he should be producing like a capable top to middle six winger. He needs to be up there in the team’s leaderboard, higher even than the likes of Garland who always seems to be playing above his pay grade, and again until last nights game, was tied with Boeser for production on the year.
Hopefully, with EP40’s bounce back finally taking shape Boeser will be able to ride that wave and produce more secondary scoring. The recent 6-2 win against the Jets where Boeser earned 3 points was a great start to that goal on top of the more recent St. Louis game.
"I liked that our line played, not just our line, but our whole team played well and connected…Overall just a great game for us and now we have a huge road trip."
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) March 19, 2025
🗣 Brock Boeser meets with the media after recording 3 points in the win over Winnipeg.#Canucks | @theprovince pic.twitter.com/hyKoN594k5
How the Canucks Should Use Boeser
The Canucks shouldn’t change up Boeser’s deployment. Keep him with Pettersson. Rick Tochett spoke in a media availability this week about playing Boeser with fewer strings attached, caring less if he is playing into every system correctly or making little mistakes here and there.
Like with Petey, there is no point in over-litigating or punishing everything he does wrong while he is trying to bust a slump. Tochett has the right approach; keep Boeser with the guy that is on the rise and don’t bench him if he blows a play here and there.
What Boeser Needs to Do
Boeser simply needs to do more of what he did against Winnipeg and St. Louis, show up in little ways every night and come out once and a while and steal the show.
The Canucks don’t need Boeser to be “the guy” all the time, that is not his role. But sometimes “the guys” need a break, and the depth needs to show up. If EP40 is still building his game back up and Quinn Hughes may not be at 100% for the rest of the year due to a lingering injury, they need games when players like Boeser can win it for them.
The road back to production is not as long for Boeser as it is for Pettersson, but Boeser still has his work cut out for him before the end of the season. If Boeser wants to stay a Canuck, how he handles himself in these remaining games will likely have a major impact on how management thinks about him heading up to July 1st.