Led by top players, Canucks continue to prove themselves with red-hot stretch
Posted November 3, 2023 6:41 am.
The Vancouver Canucks are on their way to being somebody.
The National Hockey League team humiliated the San Jose Sharks 10-1 on Thursday to reach the 10-game mark at 7-2-1. They are 5-1-1 since a dismal 2-0 loss Oct. 17 in Philadelphia caused coach Rick Tocchet to wonder: “Who are we to think we’re anybody?”
Besides making it to 10 goals before the Sharks made it to 10 regulation losses (0-9-1)– “Hurray, teardown rebuild!” – the Canucks have also beaten the St. Louis Blues 5-0 and Edmonton Oilers 8-1 in the first three weeks of the season.
The Canucks have the sixth-best winning percentage (.750) and No. 1 goals-differential (+24). They lead the NHL in scoring and are fifth in goals allowed.
All of this, of course, is very likely unsustainable for another 72 games. But there has been very little luck involved in their torrid start, besides avoiding major injuries, and Tocchet’s aggressive, structured team is unlikely to be an easy out for anyone.
Whether the coach wants to admit it or not, they look like somebody.
Brock Boeser and Anthony Beauvillier scored two goals each as eight Canucks put pucks past defence-less Shark goalies Kaapo Kahkonen and Mackenzie Blackwood. Quinn Hughes had a goal and four assists to tie a franchise record for points in a game by a Canuck defenceman, while J.T. Miller had a goal and two assists and Elias Pettersson three assists. Defenceman Tyler Myers finished plus-four.
The Canucks will not only face an actual NHL team Saturday when they play the Dallas Stars at Rogers Arena, but will test their new identity against one of the league’s best. The 7-1-1 Stars beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 on Thursday.
In the Pacific Division standings, the Canucks trail only the Vegas Golden Knights and are already 10 points ahead of both the Oilers and Calgary Flames. The Sharks are 14 points adrift.
MIGHTY QUINN
For a player deemed the 15th best defenceman in the NHL by ESPN and 12th best (four-way tie) by The Athletic, Hughes continues to play like a Norris Trophy contender on a level above all but a handful of players.
His five points moved him alone into first place in blue-line scoring with four goals and 12 assists – just four points behind younger brother Jack Hughes, the New Jersey Devils centre who leads the NHL scoring race. Pettersson is second in the league with 19 points.
The elder Hughes padded his NHL plus/minus lead to plus-13 in 10 games.
Night after night, regardless of opponent, Quinn Hughes is one of the best three players on the ice in the best hockey league on Earth. But his start nearly isn’t as surprising as the Canucks’ – at least not to anyone who stays up late enough in the East to watch him and has paid attention to his evolution.
GOALIE GLOW
Given the transformation of the Canucks under Tocchet and all the world-class talent of Hughes, Pettersson and Miller as they drive the team, it’s easy to overlook just how good Thatcher Demko has been in net.
At this stage last season, struggling to find form after off-season surgery, Demko was 1-6-1 with an .876 save percentage and was about to lose some starts to journeyman backup Spencer Martin. After making 29 saves on Thursday, Demko is 5-2 with a save rate of .940. His even-strength save percentage of .954 leads the NHL among goalies who have played at least four games, and his 6.64 goals-saved-above-average in all situations is second in the league, according to naturalstattrick.com.
Demko should have had his second shutout in a week because he was contacted and torqued by Sharks forward Filip Zadina when Fabian Zetterlund scored San Jose’s goal on a power play with 3:48 remaining. But old-school Tocchet wasn’t about to make a coach’s challenge in a game when the home team was down by 10.
Demko’s recovery of elite form, after a difficult 2022-23 season that saw him miss three months with a groin tear, is arguably the most important individual development for the Canucks through 10 games – for what it could represent over the final 72.
GOOD SIGNS
It’s not like the final eight Canuck goals were wasted. Beauvillier, with two, and Pius Suter scored their first goals of the season. Playing in the bottom six, the two forwards are being counted on to provide secondary scoring and were finally rewarded Thursday for what has generally been solid play the last handful of games.
It was also Beauvillier’s 500th NHL game. He started the season poorly before getting his feet moving around Game 4. But he has also faced a significant transition this season as Tocchet deploys the 26-year-old winger in the bottom half of the lineup.
After his January trade from the New York Islanders last season, Beauvillier was used on both Pettersson’s wing and the top power-play unit. He spent more ice time with Pettersson than any other Canuck. His most frequent linemate this season: Suter.
MORE TALK ABOUT TOC
The teams the Canucks have played understand how good they’ve been under Tocchet. In a column for The Athletic, Pierre LeBrun reached out to several coaches for thumbnail assessments of the Canucks, and the fairly glowing responses included themes about the level of buy-in Tocchet has achieved and how well Vancouver’s best players are playing.
“They have gotten complete buy-in from their group, and especially their higher-skilled players,” Nashville Predators coach Andrew Brunette, whose team has been beaten twice by the Canucks, told LeBrun. “They have been the best team we have seen this year in pressuring both sides of the puck, taking time and space away.”
St. Louis Blues coach Craig Berube, whose team lost 5-0 in Vancouver last Friday, said: “Their three best players are driving the bus right now. Strong goaltending. But Toc has the team playing with urgency and pace and they are competitive.”
“They were good — very, very structured,” Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “They look like they’re all on the same page.”
Asked before the San Jose game about the positive reviews from peers, Tocchet said: “I just take pride in the fact that these guys (on the team), it’s a partnership. These guys have taken on a lot of the load. They want to create an identity; we’ve talked about it all summer how we want to play.”
