The Vancouver Canucks’ offence is anemic.
The Canucks had a stretch from December 21, 2024 to January 6, 2025 where they managed to score four goals in five out of seven games. In the 24 games since January 6, the Canucks have scored more than three goals in a game just once, when they scored five goals on the St. Louis Blues on January 27.
Even that game against the Blues involved an empty-net goal. They haven’t scored five goals on a goaltender since December 1 against the Detroit Red Wings, where they needed overtime to get to five.
Since January 6, the Canucks are the lowest scoring team in the NHL, averaging 2.22 goals per game. There’s a legitimately large margin between them and the next lowest-scoring teams, the Los Angeles Kings and Minnesota Wild, who averaged 2.42 goals per game in that time.
The Canucks’ feeble offence was on full display against the Dallas Stars on Sunday night, as they managed just one goal on Casey DeSmith en route to a 4-1 loss.
“You’ve got to feel comfortable in tight games,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “But, to give you a cushion, you need some goals. We’ve got to score some goals. We had some opportunities but maybe not enough.”
One might wonder where some of the team’s top offensive talents were in this game, such as Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and Jake DeBrusk. Mostly, they were on the bench.
Pettersson played 16:05, Boeser played 15:49, and DeBrusk played 12:45. Even that is skewed upwards by one long shift late in the game with an empty net behind them — after two periods, DeBrusk had the lowest ice time on the team at just 7:45.
That’s among the lowest ice time of the season for all three players. For the most part, when they’ve had ice time that low this season it was in a win where they were getting rested in the third period not a game where they were trailing going into the third and needed a goal.
It seems counter-intuitive to say, “We’ve got to score some goals,” and then limit the ice time of the players in your lineup who are the most likely to actually score some goals.
When asked about the ice time for those players, Tocchet was firm in his response. He came just short of hammering his fist on the podium .
“You’ve got to earn your ice time,” said Tocchet. “You’ve got to earn your ice time around here. That’s how you win. You guys can stir it up all you want; you have to earn your ice time. I don’t care how long you’ve been here, you’ve got to earn your ice time. That’s the way it works. That’s how you win Stanley Cups.”
Tocchet does have three Stanley Cups to his name — one as a player, two as an assistant coach — but it should be notedthat in eight seasons as a head coach, he’s made the playoffs just twice.
Now, I’m just a and not a big city hockey head coach but it seems to me that the responsibility for getting more offence out of your players does not solely fall on the players themselves; that perhaps they need to be put into better positions and situations to create offence; that if they’re struggling in a particular game, then something might need to be changed about their deployment to draw offence out of them.
It just seems so strange that so many talented hockey players appear to have completely forgotten how to score all at once.
Those are a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind after I watched this game.
- In the Canucks’ defence, their defence did some solid defending. They limited the Stars to just 19 shots on goal, which is their second-lowest total of the season behind only the 16 shots on goal that they had on January 31 against, well, the Canucks. The Stars won that game too, incidentally, scoring five goals on those 16 shots.
- Maybe it was just bad luck. Pettersson came millimeters from opening the scoring about a minute into the game. Dakota Joshua forced the puck out of the defensive zone with a strong play along the boards and Pettersson raced out for a 2-on-1 with Conor Garland. With Thomas Harley and the backchecking Ilya Lyubushkin taking away the pass, Pettersson fired the puck past Casey DeSmith only to ring the inside of the post, giving me flashbacks to the 2020-21 season when Pettersson .
- My favourite moment of the first period was completely inconsequential but I still thought it was neat. Victor Mancini hoisted a puck high into the air and Brock Boeser neatly deflected it into the Stars’ zone to Pius Suter with a soccer-style backheel. Unfortunately, Suter immediately passed it back out of the zone to Derek Forbort, so nothing came of it. I liked it anyway; you’ve got to enjoy the little things while watching Canucks hockey because they don’t give you many big things to enjoy.
- After getting an elbow from Jason Robertson in one shift, Nils Höglander exacted some revenge near the benches as the two players were going off on a change, giving Robertson a couple of stiff crosschecks. Mikko Rantanen came flying in to defend his new teammate, giving Höglander a couple of significantly stiffer crosschecks, leading to a brouhaha where everyone was giving each other what for. It’s the type of scrum that typically results in coincidental minors; instead the Stars ended up with a power play.
- Tocchet was not pleased about the decision, to say the least. According to my amateur lip-reading skills, Tocchet said something along the lines of, “Stay out of it! Stay the **** out of it!” and “That's why you don’t work the ****ing playoffs! Yeah, that's true! That's a stupid ****ing call! That's ****ing stupid!”
- You don’t usually see Tocchet that fired up after a penalty call but you have to give him credit for pushing the buttons that hurt. Chirping a referee for not being good enough to work the playoffs is next level.
- “The ref came after and I apologized,” said Tocchet after the game. “I don’t like screaming at the ref. He came over to kind of apologize too, so it was fine. We communicated after the first period; we were fine after that.”
- The Stars got a little luck to open the scoring five minutes into the second period. Thomas Harley’s point shot hit Marcus Pettersson in front of the net and fell into the crease. Kevin Lankinen, who overplayed the initial shot, tried to kick his leg out to stop the deflected puck and instead kicked it into his own goal. My protests that it was a distinct kicking motion were ignored, probably because there’s no rule against kicking the puck into your own net.
- “You can always go back and see if it was bad luck or not but I think, at the end of the day, you’ve got to earn your luck,” said a philosophical Lankinen after the game.
- After the mini minor hockey game in the first intermission, the kid who scored two goals in the game was interviewed on the jumbotron. When asked to name his favourite Canuck, he gave an answer out of left field: Derek Forbort, the big, stay-at-home defenceman who hadn’t scored a goal in over two years.
- Perhaps Forbort felt that support via quantum mechanics because midway through the second period, the stay-at-home defenceman didn’t stay at home. Instead, he activated off the point and played a slick give-and-go with Conor Garland that left him wide open at the right side of the ice. He made no mistake, beating Casey DeSmith for his first goal as a Canuck and first goal in the NHL in over two years.
- I asked Forbort if he had heard that the kid had named him as his favourite player. “This is the first time I'm hearing about it, but he's got to find a more offensive player.”
- Unfortunately, Forbort had a defensive breakdown on the Stars’ game-winning goal. With 31.8 seconds left in the second period, Pettersson lost a faceoff in the defensive zone and both Forbort and Tyler Myers went to Mikko Rantanen in front of the net, leaving Mikael Granlund wide open on the left wing. Lankinen gave up a bad rebound on a Cody Ceci shot from distance, punching the puck with his blocker directly to Granlund for an open net.
- “I think I can probably do a better job of just making sure it stays out of play,” said Lankinen. “It’s a small-margin game, especially this time of year. We’ve got to make sure we do the right things for the next game.”
- Tocchet shook up the lines in the third period, reuniting the Good Job Boys — Conor Garland, Dakota Joshua, and Teddy Blueger — and moving Pettersson to the fourth line with Kiefer Sherwood and Nils Höglander. Elements of the shakeup worked: the Good Job Boys created some chaos in front of the net on their first shift, while Höglander drew a penalty after a Pettersson faceoff win on their first shift together. Overall, however, it was a bust.
- To be fair, the Canucks came close in the third period a few times. DeBrusk had two quality chances on one shift, Joshua had an open shot off the rush that he couldn’t convert, and Elias “Junior” Pettersson hit the crossbar. One could argue that the Canucks deserved a few more bounces to go their way. It wouldn’t be a particularly convincing argument, but it could be made.
- The Stars took a 3-1 lead off the rush to essentially put the game to bed midway through the third. On a Canucks rush, Joshua had his pocket picked by a backchecking Jason Robertson, and he swung the other direction for a 3-on-2. Matt Duchene carried the puck in and Marcus Pettersson chose to tie up Robertson and leave the shot for Lankinen. Only, like someone chickening out of BDSM, he didn’t tie him up at all, allowing Robertson to tip in Duchene’s centring pass.
- For a moment, it looked like the Canucks had clawed one back late in the third period. Sherwood chipped a puck in front to an open Höglander and he tried to swat the puck down to his stick to smack it into the net. Instead, , he put it in the net directly off his hand. He didn’t even try to convince the referees, immediately grimacing instead of celebrating.
- The Stars added an empty-net goal to make it 4-1. A tough bounce handcuffed Filip Hronek at the blue line and the puck clipped off his shoulder and out into the neutral zone. Rantanen skated onto the loose puck and slid it into the middle of the vacated cage for his second goal in as many games as a Star.
- “It’s frustrating. Obviously, we need every point we can get,” said Elias Pettersson. “They’re a good team, made it hard for us, but maybe we’ve got to simplify it and, I don’t know, get some more shots on net.”
- “We’re in the thick of the race,” said Tocchet. “We need some desperation, like to grab a puck and do something. But I liked a lot of guys’ effort tonight. We were right there.”
