When they were winning, the Canucks were in no rush to find a defenceman. Now they’re losing. Time is running out.
The Vancouver Canucks have a defensive nightmare on their hands, and standing pat isn’t going to fix the problem.
There’s just no beating around the bush anymore — 18 games into the 2024-25 season, the Canucks’ second pair just isn’t working.
Last season, Carson Soucy and Tyler Myers were an occasionally creaky but generally solid duo.
They battled teams to a standstill when they were partnered up. And they were pretty solid when they weren’t playing with each other as well, again, playing pretty much 50/50 hockey.
This year has been a massively different story. They’ve struggled to manage the puck. They have made bad defensive reads.
Add it all up and you get a pairing that is minus-8 in goals at five-on-five — the opposition has scored 13 goals when they’ve been on the ice at five-on-five, against just five goals for the Canucks.
And the rest of their fancy-stat line backs up these brutal results: the Canucks are getting out-shot badly, by a 2-to-1 margin, when Soucy and Myers are on the ice.
Rick Tocchet’s prescription: get a little harder on the opposition and take away their sticks.
Soucy, for instance, needs to build a pattern of success. His confidence is very low right now.
“Got to get his confidence up,” Tocchet said flatly. “Like everything is magnified. Everything he does. It’s in our net.”
Just from watching Soucy play, you see little of the player who was so successful at both ends of the ice for the Canucks last season.
“I think we can just get more decisive,” Myers said of the struggles he and his partner have faced. “Mentally, we’re overthinking too many things. If we get more decisive and we just go into games focused on closing and moving our feet, we’ll be fine.”
In the big picture, though, it’s been clear since the summer that the Canucks’ plan was to add another defenceman in-season. They did last year.
The signings of Vincent Desharnais and Derek Forbort added depth, but realistically they’re of the same mould as Myers and Soucy — ideally third-pairing blueliners, who can be relied on to play safe, smart hockey.
Erik Brannstrom has proven to be a nice surprise, but he alone hasn’t fixed the Canucks’ puck-moving problems when the top pairing of Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek aren’t on the ice.
Adding another blueliner who can move the puck is essential. When the Canucks were winning, as they were before the recent homestand, they could slow-play their situation. But now that they’re in a slump, the crisis can’t be ignored.
Obviously, the Canucks don’t want to rush into adding a new defenceman. They would rather see how the market develops, see what other defencemen might become available as teams’ playoff dreams start to slip away.
Marcus Pettersson is the main name everyone is talking about and he would help the Canucks, but there will be other players who may become available who might be an even better fit.
But how long can Canucks GM Patrik Allvin wait for that to develop? We’re at American Thanksgiving. Most teams in a playoff position at this point in the season make the playoffs at the end of the season.
As it stands, the Canucks are in a playoff spot, but only by the skin of their teeth.
Upgrading the defence is essential if they’re going to move back toward the top of the Pacific Division, where they believe they should be.
-2
No number sums the overall unevenness of the Canucks’ play than their current minus-2 goal differential.
The opposition has outscored Vancouver by two goals this season.
That’s .500 hockey. The Canucks are surely much better than this.
But to push their goals for/against split in a positive direction means a few things: chiefly, they need better goaltending. Kevin Lankinen’s recent slump, coupled by the struggles of Arturs Silovs, have the Canucks’ five-on-five save percentage at just 89.8 per cent, eighth-worst in the NHL.
Yes, there have been some defensive duds of late in front of the goalies, but overall it has a been a pretty safe defensive environment for the goalies. They need to be better.
The Canucks’ power play also needs to find away to score more, with or without J.T. Miller. Great teams score goals. Simple as that.
6.12
There are a few metrics that show how Jake DeBrusk hasn’t quite hit his stride yet with the Canucks, but the easiest to highlight is his five-on-five shots-on-goal rate. So far this season he’s getting off roughly two fewer shots on goal per hour than he did last year with the Boston Bruins: just 6.12 shots per 60 minutes.
The simple lesson is he needs to shoot more. But more broadly, this is a sign of how he needs to engage more in general. Overall, good things are happening for the Canucks when he is on the ice, but individually you can see there’s still more for him to give.
The Canucks’ offence could use a boost from their high-profile free agent signing this summer.