Don’t feel guilty. It’s completely fair if you’re holding out on believing in the Vancouver Canucks until this weekend is over. It doesn’t make you a bad Van fan, or some kind of biased skeptic.
With games in San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday respectively, a Canucks fan is no different than a Blue Jays fan heading into a three-game set at Yankee Stadium. California was death valley less than 12 months ago for this team, so even though we’re talking about games 14-16 of an 82-game schedule, it’s not being presumptuous to cross your arms, squint your eyes a bit, and take a long look at the rest of this Canucks road trip.
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I’ll have to admit though, even those of us who had Vancouver as a playoff bubble team this season — guilty, Your Honour — are starting to rethink our predictions, the way the Canucks have come together thus far. We knew GM Jim Benning and new head coach Willie Desjardins would work well. Just not this fast, is all.
“Our belief level is high,” winger Shawn Matthias told the Vancouver Sun after an impressive 5-2 road win in Colorado. The Canucks fell behind 2-0 on the road, then proceeded to score the last five goals and beat the Avalanche going away.
“Our confidence is high,” continued Matthias, an acquisition of the Mike Gillis administration who still may — or may not — turn into a vital cog in Vancouver. “We have a close group here and we’re not worried about the future. We’re not worried what anyone says about this group. We believe in this room and we work hard for one another. I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people this year.”
Surprise! The Canucks sit in second place today in the National Hockey League with a 9-4-0 record, behind only Anaheim. A tidy start, off a schedule that hasn’t been super tough thus far.
But there are reasons to believe this can last. Primarily, Vancouver is winning games with its five-on-five play, ranking in a tie for third in even strength scoring with 27 five-on-five goals. The Canucks are also second in the NHL (behind Pittsburgh) with 42 goals in 13 games, for a healthy average of 3.23 goals per game. Vancouver has scored an inordinately high number of empty net goals however (five), which misleads. Take away the empty netters and the goals per-game average falls below three to 2.85.
Vancouver isn’t winning often when outshot, and are winning most of the time when they outshoot their opponent. Sound stats. They’re averaging more than 30 shots per night (32.2) and surrendering less than 30 (28.7) — all signs that they’re doing things right.
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In goal, Ryan Miller is playing very well, but his numbers are sustainable compared to, say, a Jonas Hiller in Calgary. Miller has gone 9-1 with a .917 save percentage, barely above his career mark of .915.
Hiller, by comparison, is stopping pucks at a .935 clip right now. That’s well above his career mark of .917, and likely — not certainly, but likely — not sustainable over the course of the season.
As a first-time GM, Benning has been perfect thus far. He didn’t listen to the loyalists who said Eddie Lack could carry the load, going straight for Miller and landing the best goalie on the UFA market last summer. He didn’t dither when it became clear to him that Ryan Kesler wanted out, and was unpopular among his teammates.
In a town where the GM hummed and hawed over goaltenders for season upon season, Benning swiftly moved Kesler and brought in a nice piece for now (Nick Bonino) a serviceable defenceman (Luca Sbisa) and a nice piece for later in Jared McCann, who has 15 points in 11 games with the Soo Greyhounds this season. For a team that had a lot of front office drama and nonsense surrounding it for years, Benning’s no-nonsense approach is both welcome and effective.
“We have smart players,” Benning told The Province’s Ben Kuzma. “We don’t have burners that others have, but when they play as a group we can compete in those games. But we can’t beat ourselves and get caught pinching up at the blueline. We have to play tight through the neutral zone to combat the other team’s speed. If we play together, we can compete with anybody.”
The word “anybody” would include the three giants in California that dominated this Canucks club last season and held them to a 2-9-3 record.
We’re not saying the Canucks can’t compete. In fact, I expect they can. After last year however, we just want to see it with our own eyes.
Is that so wrong?
