As we are about to start the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs, any good analyst would look into the true talent of the team to see how likely they are to win though they’d also note that – given how short the Stanley Cup tournament is – predicting outcomes is more of a crap shoot as shooting percentages and variances play a larger role.
Let us take a deeper look into the Vancouver Canucks and see why the odds are already stacked against them. (Hint: You might want to start picking another team).
1. Lacking in Top 6 Talent
While the Canucks have a plethora of quality bottom-six forwards and the Sedins remain elite, there is not much else in terms of top-end talent for the Canucks. We’ve looked into this and found that the Canucks boast a few 2nd liners, but without a depth of top-end talent amongst the forward corps the club is handicapped against all playoff opposition.
2. Defensive Corps is Anemic
We see similar problems with the Canucks’ blue line.
For every top end defencemen the Canucks have in Chris Tanev and Alex Edler they have their counter part in Luca Sbisa, Kevin Bieksa, and Ryan Stanton, all of whom have been permissive in terms of allowing scoring chance and shot attempts against. Because of the bottom end of their defense corps, the Canucks are one of the worst defensive teams among all clubs to have made the playoffs.
If Vancouver does make it out of the first round, team defense could
prove to be a real problem. Not only do they allow more high-danger
shots than the majority of NHL teams, but a larger than normal portion
of the shots that the Canucks allow are from prime scoring areas. In a
league that is this low scoring, where the margins of error are so thin,
a deficiency in team defensive ability may cost the Canucks in the long
run.
3. Sub-optimal lineups
While Vancouver group of players is solid, but not elite, their limitations could be mitigated by playing the club in a way that maximizes their ability to control play.
There’s little point in playing a replacement level 4th liner in a heavy defensive role when they will just keep your team pinned into their defensive zone, but this is what we see consistently in the way Willie Desjardins’ chooses to deploy his roster.
Too often this season we’ve seen the Canucks head coach overuse a variety of players. These choices often include Linden Vey, who often should be a healthy scratch in favour of the other guy sitting out, and even allowing Sbisa to play above his head in top 4 minutes.
These moves only weaken your teams odds to advancing.
4. Uphill Territorial Battle
All 3 of the previous reasons combine to cause the Canucks to be one of the worst possession teams to make the playoffs. This is important to us because statistics such as Corsi and Fenwick (and their score-adjusted variants) are some of our best predictors of future performance.
Teams of the Canucks caliber rarely make the playoffs and almost never make the final. The Boston Bruins were one of the worst teams in possession statistics to win the playoffs, back in 2011, when they were ranked 14th.
One of the best predictor of playoff series winners is using Score-Adjusted Fenick over the Last-25 games. These numbers suggest that the Canucks have the advantage on the Calgary Flames, but that is about as far as they are likely to advance. Travis Yost recently wrote about this stat on TSN.ca and here is how the Canucks stack up to other playoff teams:
The lack of puck possession ability amongst the team is reflected in statistics such as their even-strength scoring where the Canucks are a -9, the worst differential of all playoff teams. The second worst team is the Calgary Flames who are a -2. Thank god the Canucks are able to have success on special teams.
5. Lack of a back up goalie
Eddie Lack has proven himself this year to be a good option in net for the Canucks. After that there are many questions on the team.
Ryan Miller has been an average goalie this year which is reasonable give his age (but not his cap hit – a post for another day). Given that he is just coming back from an injury there are going to be many questions on if he has truly recovered and if he’s able to perform at the necessary level to help the Canucks win.
If Lack and Miller are down the Canucks have a bare cupboard. Jacob Markstrom could be a good option, but it’s pretty clear that the Vancouver Canucks don’t trust him to play.
After Markstrom you have Joacim Eriksson who has yet to prove himself to be better than a league average AHL goaltender and beyond that there is nothing worth discussing. Thatcher Demko is unlikely to sign with the Canucks and leave the NCAA just for the 2015 post-season while Joe Cannata has yet to establish himself in the AHL.
Save your negative comments about our negative article! The companion piece to this article will appear tomorrow and will look at what the Canucks are doing right that could allow them to win the Stanley Cup!
