The early part of the season is a time for freaking out over the smallest of sample sizes.
After the first period of the Vancouver Canucks’ first game, fans were ready to crown the Canucks Stanley Cup champions after they took a 4-1 lead over the Calgary Flames with exciting, fast-paced hockey. Then, when they coughed up that lead and lost in overtime, fans were ready to concede the season and advocate for tanking for the first-overall pick.
Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but it reflects how these early games feel so much more important than ones in the middle of a long 82-game season. A three-game losing streak in February feels a lot less dire than a three-game losing streak in the team’s first three games.
How a team starts the season does not necessarily define how they’ll play for the rest of the season but it sure feels like it does. After so many months without seeing a team play, it’s natural to latch on to those first few games and decide that’s who the team is, for better or worse. After all, it’s the only evidence we’ve got.
But overreacting to these first few games can also be a lot of fun. So, let’s break out our jump to conclusions mat and overreact to some small sample sizes and what they say about the 2024-25 Canucks.
1 | Brock Boeser is going to crush his career highs
Brock Boeser set new career highs in goals and points last season as he cracked the 30-goal barrier for the first time in his career, then kept on going to 40 goals and 73 points in 81 games.
He was helped along by a career high shooting percentage, as he scored on 19.6% of his shots. It was fair, then, to expect Boeser to regress this season, particularly when you consider he had to be on blood thinners for much of the offseason, which complicated his training regimen.
“You've just got to be careful of cutting yourself or hitting your head,” said Boeser, “So that's why I had to kind of take it easy for a bit in the summer.”
Instead of regressing, Boeser has started the season with 3 goals and 5 points in his first 5 games to lead the Canucks in scoring. He’s on pace to surpass last season, en route to 49 goals and 82 points.
Can this be the season Boeser gets to 50 goals, something that seemed within his reach after his fantastic rookie season? His general manager thinks so.
“For now, his main focus is to come back here and play to the level that he showed last year, and even be more consistent,” said Patrik Allvin when The Athletic’s Thomas Drance asked him about Boeser being in a contract year. “I told him he could’ve scored 50 goals, but I felt he took his foot off the gas when he scored 30.”
Boeser agreed.
“I think I could have had 50, too,” said Boeser. “I had four disallowed and I got cold there for a little bit. That's the thing, it's hard to be consistent in this league. That's why there's not many 50-goal scorers or 100-point guys. It gets hard to stay consistent all year. That's one thing I think I'm focused on this year: making sure I'm bringing it every single night.”
So far, he’s done exactly that.
2 | Elias Pettersson will never score again
Five games into the season, Elias Pettersson has yet to score a goal. He is on pace for no goals and may god have mercy on his soul.
Pettersson’s production is an ongoing concern, as he hasn’t scored a 5-on-5 goal since March 5, 2024 — including the playoffs, that’s 36 games without a 5-on-5 goal — and he has just five all-situations goals in that time.
There are plenty of reasons not to panic and to be patient with Pettersson as he gets his game sorted out but that’s not what we’re doing here. What we’re doing here is overreacting to small sample sizes.
With that in mind, Pettersson will never score again, the sky is falling, flip the pool.
Honestly, the real concern with Pettersson — one worth a longer look — is the lack of shots. Pettersson has just 8 shots on goal through 5 games and is averaging just 3.92 shots per 60 minutes at even-strength. That’s the lowest shot rate of his career by nearly two shots per 60 minutes.
I fully believe that Pettersson will be fine but I’d feel a lot more comfortable about that belief if he’d start firing the puck on net a little more often.
3 | Kevin Lankinen is better than Connor Hellebuyck
Signed to split starts with Arturs Silovs, Kevin Lankinen has instead staked a claim to be the Canucks’ number one goaltender — at least, until Thatcher Demko returns.
Lankinen has been fantastic in his three starts, recording a 2-0-1 record with a .953 save percentage and one shutout. It seems likely that the net is his for the foreseeable future, with Silovs now the backup.
“He’s playing great. I’ve got to play the guy, he’s been unreal,” said Tocchet, adding, “It’s a huge acquisition by Patrik…To grab him out of nowhere is huge.”
How unreal has Lankinen been? Well, he’s outperformed the reigning Vezina winner, Connor Hellebuyck.
Okay, we’re splitting hairs here. Lankinen has a .953 save percentage and Hellebucyk has a .952 save percentage. But among all goaltenders with at least three starts, Lankinen’s .953 save percentage leads the league.
Okay, so it’s tied with Jake Oettinger. But still.
All that is to say, Lankinen has been lights out and exactly what the Canucks needed with Demko’s timeline for a return to the lineup still uncertain.
4 | The Canucks’ power play is a mess
Technically speaking, the Canucks’ 3-for-16 power play is right around league average. At 18.8%, the Canucks are tied for 17th in the league, which is about as average as you can get.
But when digging a little deeper into the numbers, things get concerning. The Canucks have just 17 shots on their 16 power play opportunities. That’s barely a shot per power play, which is, to be blunt, atrocious.
The Canucks are 30th in the NHL in shot rate on the man advantage, ahead of only the St. Louis Blues and the Anaheim Ducks. The Ducks have notably not yet scored a goal on the power play this season.
Two of the Canucks’ three power play goals have come from players on the second power play unit: Conor Garland and Daniel Sprong, though Garland’s goal did come in the midst of a partial line change when most of the first unit was still on the ice.
There are no excuses for the Canucks’ first power play unit to be struggling this much given the talent they have at their disposal. They can't seem to gain the zone and get set up and, when they do, the shots are not coming. In theory, the addition of Jake DeBrusk was supposed to be a big boon to the power play. It hasn’t worked out that way so far.
At practice on Monday, the Canucks experimented with a couple of different power play units in the absence of J.T. Miller, who took the practice off for “maintenance” of the injury he suffered at the beginning of Saturday’s game.
DeBrusk was bumped to the second unit, while Garland and Arshdeep Bains practiced with the first unit. It will be interesting to see what the power play units look like with Miller in the mix, assuming he’ll be in the lineup for Tuesday’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks.
5 | Kiefer Sherwood is going to hit everyone
Kiefer Sherwood leads the NHL with 32 hits in just 5 games. Every time he comes over the boards, he’s on a mission to finish every single check.
That puts Sherwood on pace for 525 hits this season, which would obliterate the NHL record of 383 hits, which was set just last season by Jeremy Lauzon of the Nashville Predators. To be fair, the NHL only started recording hits as a statistic in the 2007-08 season, so it’s possible that someone from a previous era would have the record if the statistic was recorded back then.
While it’s unlikely that Sheroowd will actually record 525 hits this season, overreacting to small sample sizes is the entire point of this article. So yeah, he's definitely going to record 525 hits and smash the record.
Even if he doesn’t, Sherwood has a shot at the franchise record, currently held by Luke Schenn with 273 hits in the 2021-22 season. Impressively, Schenn’s 273 hits came in just 66 games.
6 | Quinn Hughes is coming for another franchise record
Quinn Hughes already owns several franchise records for the Canucks. His 75 assists and 92 points last season broke his own records from the previous year for most by a Canucks defenceman. His 12 even-strength goals were also a new record for Canucks defencemen as was his plus-38 plus/minus.
This season, he’s likely going to break a couple of all-time records in only his sixth season. He’s just 17 assists and 72 points behind Alex Edler for the most ever by a Canucks defenceman in both categories. He could set the assists record by December and should break the points record before the end of the season.
But Hughes could also break one other franchise record owned by Mattias Öhlund.
Öhlund was a workhorse for the Canucks right from his rookie season, when he averaged 22:30 per game as a 21-year-old to finish second in Calder Trophy voting and earn a berth on the All-Rookie Team. His highest average ice time in his career was 26:54 per game in the 1999-2000 season but he was limited to just 42 games by a brutal eye injury he suffered when he was struck by a puck in the preseason.
His highest total minutes came in the 2003-04 season, when he played a whopping 2,114 minutes and 41 seconds across 82 games — an average of 25:47 per game. That’s a Canucks franchise record for most minutes in a season.
Hughes is on pace to break that record.
Through the first five games of the season, Hughes is averaging 26:04 per game in ice time, just a little shy of Öhlund’s 1999-2000 season but ahead of his 2003-04 season. That means Hughes is on pace for 2,137 minutes and 28 seconds in ice time this season, breaking Öhlund’s record by around 23 minutes.
Sure, Hughes’ ice time has spiked because of three games that went to overtime and a game where Tyler Myers was injured in his first shift, forcing Hughes to play 31:29 against the Philadelphia Flyers. That’s all true.
But we’re jumping to conclusions based on small sample sizes here. We don’t have time for all that context and nuance. It just gets in the way.
7 | The Canucks are going to miss the playoffs
With a 2-1-2 record, the Canucks have earned points in all but one of their five games so far. That’s not too shabby, all things considered, but it also puts them just outside of the playoff picture in the Western Conference.
Yes, of course it’s far, far too early to be looking at the standings. That’s not the point. The point is to overreact.
The Canucks are on pace for 98 points this season. Never mind that 98 points is exactly how many points they were on pace for after five games last season — that’s simply not good enough.
Also, ignore that 98 points was enough to make the playoffs last season. We’re overreacting right now, stop with the nuance.
The St. Louis Blues, Seattle Kraken, and Los Angeles Kings are all two points ahead of the Canucks in the standings and are on pace for 109 points, which means the Canucks will miss the playoffs by a whopping 11 points. Unacceptable!
Truly, being two points out of a playoff spot five games into the season is an indictment of the entire management team, coaching staff, scouting staff, medical staff, ownership, players and, most of all, the fans.
Of course, if the Canucks win on Tuesday against the Chicago Blackhawks, they’ll have 8 points in 6 games, putting them on pace for 109 points, just like last season when they won the Pacific Division, which would be a testament to the incredible work by the entire management team, coaching staff, scouting staff, medical staff, ownership, players and, most of all, the fans.
