The Canucks are home after another strong road trip. The results away from home do provide a path toward what can be at home.
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That’s an impressive run.
But was it all just lucky?
NEXT GAME
Tuesday
7 p.m., Rogers Arena, TV: ESPN Pacific, Radio: Sportsnet 650
If you look at some basic shot metrics, there’s a case for, yes, definitely.
For instance, MoneyPuck.com has the Canucks being not just outshot over a 10-game average, but the quality of those shots tilt heavily toward their opposition. If you look purely at the public numbers, the Canucks have been, at best, playing coin-flip hockey.
Sometimes you just get lucky — and you wouldn’t be wrong to claim that is all the Canucks have been of late.
But there are caveats. The picture is not as clear as you might think.
Let’s take a look at all the numbers and try to understand where the Canucks stand 24 games into the season.
39.8
According to Natural Stat Trick, the Canucks’ defence has been the league’s stingiest so far, if you believe their expected goals model — they’ve yielded just 39.8 total this season.
The Canucks are just incredibly tough to break down defensively because they command the slot very well.
45.0
And that offensive production isn’t empty, either — it’s leading to utter two-way dominance.
When Hughes in on the ice at five-on-five, the Canucks are giving up just 0.75 shot attempts per minute. That’s one of the best rates in the league.
He’s 19:30 playing time at five-on-five per game. In other words, for a full third of the game every night, the ice tilted heavily toward the offensive end of the ice for the Canucks. That is a big factor in why they still look to be playing well overall, because they’re so rarely defending.
5
As is well-documented by now, the Canucks have given up the first goal of the game a disturbing number of times. Out of the 24 games played so far by the Canucks, 14 times they have fallen behind first.
They’ve ended the first period trailing 10 times.
Five of those games they went on to win.
That they have won half of the games where they were trailing after 20 stands out. Most teams lose most of their games if they are trailing after just one period. It’s just very difficult to do night after night.
The Canucks need to start scoring first. What they’ve been doing so far is just not sustainable.
63.6
The Canucks newly assembled first line is producing, and they are dominating play.
When your first line is dominating like this, that’s a winning formula.
And playing at home, where you can control the matchups, means the Pettersson line stands an even better chance of dominating.
Pettersson said Thursday it’s still a bit of a mystery to him why his team has struggled to play better at home — but it is difficult to fathom his line as they are playing right now, suddenly struggling because they’re now playing at home.
If the Canucks’ performance at home is going to match the play on the road, it’s really going to come down to how he and Hughes play, above all else.