The Vancouver Canucks are in the middle of an offensive crisis.
Vancouver ranks 25th in goals scored per game this season and 31st in shots on goal per game. The Canucks have scored at least four goals in a game just once in their last 21 games and zero times since the J.T. Miller trade. Since Jan. 1, Vancouver has mustered just 2.17 goals scored per game, which ranks dead last in the NHL. Amid these challenges, the club has failed to seize a wild-card spot and build a cushion, with the risk of them missing the postseason slowly increasing by the day.
This extended offensive drought is beginning to gnaw away at the players.
“The stats don’t lie,” Jake DeBrusk told The Athletic. “I just heard 32 and 31 (ranked), so obviously, that’s not good enough. I think for myself, I feel it. I’m not shocked by those numbers, which is saying something.”
Quinn Hughes’ health — he’s missed eight of the team’s last 24 games and looked restricted even when he has returned — has poured gasoline on the fire of the Canucks’ abysmal offensive play these last several weeks, but the team’s offensive attack has largely been issue for the whole season.
There isn’t one simple explanation or one person to blame for the offensive woes, regardless of the criticism Elias Pettersson and, to a lesser extent, Rick Tocchet have faced in this market. Instead, it’s likely a combination of factors.
Let’s dive into some of the reasons behind the Canucks’ goal-scoring issues, presented in no particular order.
Forward lineup lacks high-end offensive game breakers
With Miller gone, Vancouver’s roster only has two forwards — Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser — who have scored 60 points in an NHL season since the 2021-22 campaign. The Philadelphia Flyers are the only NHL team with fewer forwards on their roster who’ve hit the 60-point mark or higher in recent years than the Canucks (I’ve also included forwards who are on track to hit 60-plus points this season to each team’s count):
This roster has a deficit of high-end forwards, and that would be true even if Pettersson and Boeser were operating at their best.
Of course, everything has been made worse by Pettersson’s bizarrely disappointing season. He may not even hit 50 points this season — he needs 15 in the next 22 games to reach the half-century mark. Boeser, meanwhile, has just three points in 10 games since losing Miller, the centreman he had the most success and chemistry with.
Some of the fan base claim Tocchet is severely limiting the forwards’ creativity and production. I’m not here to argue that Tocchet is blameless (more on him later), but there isn’t strong evidence to support the theory that he’s had a deflationary impact on this forward group’s ability to score points.
There are nine forwards on the Canucks’ current roster who’ve appeared in at least 35 games this season. Seven of those nine Vancouver forwards have scored more points per game when they’ve been coached by Tocchet in Vancouver (which is now a 178-game sample for the core players) compared to their NHL career points-per-game average.
Who on this forward group would you argue has been significantly held back by Tocchet this season, outside of perhaps Nils Höglander? Yes, Pettersson’s having a miserable campaign, but those are likely individual struggles and not coaching-related for a couple of reasons:
• Pettersson scored 112 points in 85 games, from Tocchet’s first day as Canucks head coach up until last year’s All-Star break. If Tocchet was the main problem, you wouldn’t have this large a sample size of Pettersson dominating under him.
• Pettersson was wildly disappointing for Sweden at the 4 Nations Face-Off, where he was reunited with his old Växjö head coach Sam Hallam. If Tocchet was the problem, Pettersson should have flourished at this tournament away from him.
Lack of rush offence
The Canucks have been a poor attacking team off the rush for several years with this core. They didn’t create much off the rush under Travis Green, were slightly better under Bruce Boudreau and have fallen to rock bottom under Tocchet.
Mike Kelly shared Sportlogiq data in January that had the Canucks ranked 32nd in the NHL at generating rush chances. What are the hallmarks of a prolific rush offensive team?
“Speed through the middle is probably the No. 1 thing I think for every rush team,” DeBrusk said. “You can have wingers that are fast, but you need it going through the middle to distribute.”
Filip Chytil’s ability to drive zone entries and create transition offence has been a very welcome addition, but the Canucks otherwise lack this skill set at centre ice right now, especially with Pettersson’s poor play. Nearly every game this season, you can count on the opposition having faster and more dynamic players down the middle than the Canucks. It’s no wonder opponents are more lethal in transition.
The second point DeBrusk brought up was that defencemen need to join the rush so that puck carriers have a trailer option in the high slot.
“Once the defencemen are joining — and it obviously has to be the right scenario, you have to pick your spots, you have to be smart — you look at the (rush) offensive teams, they have four guys in the picture or three guys in the picture,” said DeBrusk. “It’s usually four.
“That’s what you scout when you go ‘Oh s—, this team is top five in the league in rush chances, you gotta mark your defenceman on the forecheck because if you miss and slip, that (defenceman) is the late guy that they end up hitting (with a pass off the rush).’”
This point about defenders joining the rush raises some questions. Do Canucks defencemen have enough of a green light from the coaching staff to join the rush? Is it a moot point because the forwards don’t create enough controlled entries? Did they even have the right defencemen to employ this philosophy given how slow and ineffective their bottom-four defence was before some of their trades, especially with Noah Juulsen and Vincent Desharnais logging regular minutes at times because of Filip Hronek’s first-half injury?
The Canucks defencemen’s inability to break the puck out with clean passes in the first half also made it near impossible for the forwards to build speed through the neutral zone.
Part of the issue is personnel-related and part of the rush attacking limitations is possibly tied to Tocchet’s system, which emphasizes conservative puck management through the neutral zone in an attempt to prevent turnovers and boost defensive results.
More often than not, Canucks forwards dump the puck in rather than making ambitious, potentially risky plays to carry it into the attacking zone. This results in a trade-off: The Canucks surrender far fewer chances defensively under Tocchet than under Boudreau because they don’t turn pucks over making risky plays, but it also hampers how much they create off the rush offensively.
This heavy emphasis on dump-and-chase isn’t necessarily a good or bad philosophy.
The Florida Panthers were initially a rush-based team under Andrew Brunette, realized that this playing style didn’t translate well to the playoffs and evolved into a dump-and-chase team under Paul Maurice. The New Jersey Devils are going through a similar transition under Sheldon Keefe to improve their defensive results. Kelly shared data showing that NHL teams are increasingly adopting dump-and-chase hockey.
Trend 🧵as most teams approach the 20 game mark…
Teams are dumping pucks in at a higher rate than the past couple of seasons. Copycat league and the defending champs are a test case for overhauling a rush based offensive approach to one more focused on puck management, from…— Mike Kelly (@MikeKellyNHL) November 18, 2024
Last year, the low-event trade-off was worth it for the Canucks: Sportlogiq’s data had the Canucks as the best team in the NHL at defending rush chances.
The problem this season is that the Canucks are far more permissive off the rush defensively. They’re paying the price of a limited rush attack without reaping enough of the defensive rewards. You can debate whether that’s primarily Tocchet’s or the players’ fault, but regardless, it’s a major issue.
Static in-zone offensive attack that relies too heavily on point shots
How often have we seen a sequence like the following this season?
1. Canucks forward wins the puck down low in the offensive zone.
2. Forward makes a low-to-high pass to the point.
3. Defenceman with the puck has limited passing options because all three forwards are usually down low, in traffic, preparing to crash the net.
4. Defenceman settles for a long-distance, prayer-of-a-point shot.
There have been too many of these basic, unimaginative low-to-high plays that are predictable and easy to defend.
It’s easy to blame the defencemen for taking these low-percentage shots, but you’ll also notice there’s rarely a forward coming high to provide a promising passing option:
I’m not a systems expert by any means, but there should probably be more offensive movement high in the zone and some east-west passing sprinkled in instead of the overreliance on point shots.
For example, here’s a chance from the last game in which Tyler Myers uses a forward up high as a passing option to execute a little give-and-go instead of firing a bad point shot:
Here’s another example from a recent game against the Toronto Maple Leafs: Pettersson has the puck up high in the zone, Hronek moves down low off the puck, and they connect on a creative passing play.
It’s not easy to create these types of chances at a high volume and I’m not claiming this is a silver bullet solution at all. But should the Canucks encourage a forward to come higher in the attacking zone more often to support the puck and/or make plays, with the defencemen encouraged to move off the puck to occasionally spice things up?
That type of movement on and off the puck can create confusion and make it easier to open up different passing and shooting lanes.
Hesitating to shoot in prime scoring locations
It’s been difficult for the Canucks to create offensive puck touches in dangerous scoring locations. During the precious few opportunities they do get in those positions, they’ve been hesitating and double-clutching at times. This has most prominently been an issue for Pettersson, who only has five shots in his last nine games, but it’s plagued the rest of the team at times, too.
When Vancouver does attack off the rush, the forwards often search for the extra, perfect pass rather than shooting it. Sportsnet’s Ray Ferraro has pointed out several examples in recent games where a player should shoot, even if it’s just at the goalie’s pads to try and create a rebound, rather than forcing a pass that isn’t there.
“When you’re not seeing pucks go in, or when things aren’t going well offensively like you said for the last who knows how long, it gets in your head where sometimes you double clutch, sometimes you double think where the simple plays you’ve done (in the past) you don’t necessarily do,” DeBrusk said.
The hesitation to shoot in prime locations isn’t nearly as big of an issue as the prior points we’ve discussed, but it’s still notable.
How much responsibility does Tocchet bear?
Both things are likely true: The Canucks’ offensive personnel is lacklustre and Tocchet’s defence-first, low-event playing style exacerbates those shortcomings.
Could a different coach unlock better offensive results from this group? Quite possibly.
A different coach may give more freedom and creativity to let players carry the puck through the neutral zone and attack off the rush. Top offensive teams create east-west passes. A different coach might give more leeway to attempting east-west passing plays through the slot, whereas Tocchet has never sounded like a big believer in east-west movement because of the turnover risks it poses.
Tocchet has insisted that he’s not a fan of the club’s overreliance on point shots, so perhaps it’s a skill issue rather than an offensive style he’s encouraging, but the club’s static, point-shot-reliant in-zone offensive attack still isn’t a great look on him.
If you did open the system up with a different coach, the Canucks might score more, but would they actually win more long-term? The key word there is long-term because we’ve seen this team get a temporary new coach bump under both Boudreau and Tocchet.
Before Tocchet’s arrival, the Canucks embraced more of a freewheeling offensive style under Boudreau and paid an enormous price for it defensively. They were flat-out one of the worst defensive teams in the NHL. Forwards egregiously turned pucks over, the defensive coverage in all three zones was a train wreck and the team’s off-puck work rate and habits were appalling.
Tocchet turned the Canucks into an elite defensive team in 2023-24 and while they’ve slipped this season, they’re still a top-10 team at preventing five-on-five shots and high-danger chances according to Natural Stat Trick. If a new coach came in and embraced a more offensive playing style, how much of that defensive progress would you lose? Would you just start losing games 4-3 instead of 3-2?
This core group has failed to consistently become a top team under three different head coaches and systems. At what point are the players primarily at fault?
People have pointed to Arizona’s lacklustre offensive results under Tocchet to vindicate their view that coaching is a massive issue. They’ve specifically pointed to Clayton Keller’s offensive improvement once Tocchet left. However, there’s crucial context that needs to be recognized.
Firstly, while Keller’s point production increased following Tocchet’s departure, the team’s overall offensive results have not improved. Arizona/Utah ranks 29th in the NHL in goals scored per game in the four seasons that Andre Tourigny has been head coach since Tocchet left.
Furthermore, the rosters Tocchet was dealt were desperately short on impact forwards. For example, here are some of the Coyotes’ top forwards from 2018-19, which was Tocchet’s second season at the helm. He has a 20-year-old Clayton Keller … after that, it’s an extremely underwhelming group.
Image courtesy NHL.com
What coach could possibly get quality offensive results out of that forward core?
I’m not claiming Tocchet is necessarily an elite coach or that he’s without blame. The Canucks, even when you consider the lack of impact forwards on the roster, probably shouldn’t be this lifeless offensively.
Tocchet’s attempt to grind out low-event games is likely hindering the offence to some extent, but what reason has this core group given to make you believe that increased offensive freedom wouldn’t come with the trade-off of worse defensive numbers, which would end up with similar overall win/loss results?
In the short term, it’s difficult to feel optimistic about the team’s offence significantly improving.
Hughes is banged up, and even if he does return down the stretch, his impact will likely be reduced because of what he’s playing through. Pettersson seems unlikely to bounce back this season. Boeser hasn’t found an optimal lineup fit since Miller’s departure. Vancouver lacks alternative offensive drivers. The Western Conference wild-card race is so mediocre, however, that the Canucks still have a shot at punching their ticket into the playoffs despite all those concerns.
(Photo of Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
