Canucks hope what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas for Nate Schmidt: 2021 year in review

Acquired in the offseason for the low, low price of a single third round pick in 2022, how could Nate Schmidt be anything other than a beneficial addition for the Vancouver Canucks in 2021?
They had two drafts and a full calendar year to go before they even had to pay up for him, and he arrived on a Vancouver blueline seemingly devoid of the steadying presence he was said to provide.
And yet, most would deem Schmidt’s debut season with the Canucks a disappointment. Not a disaster, mind you, but a disappointment all the same — and one primarily based on Schmidt’s track record prior to hitting the West Coast.
Through three seasons with the Golden Knights, Schmidt had evolved into one of the best two-way defenders in the game, period. He led the Knights on two major playoff runs, posting among the strongest defensive metrics in the league as he did, all the while elevating less-than-stellar partners like Brayden McNabb to new heights. In time, Schmidt would lose his top-pairing spot, first to the younger and dynamic-er Shea Theodore and then to UFA Alex Pietrangelo, whose gigantic salary necessitated the trading of Schmidt for pennies on the dollar.
Unfortunately, Schmidt’s regression in Vancouver was also two-way.
Games | Goals | Assists | Points | +/- | PIM | |
2021 | 54 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -7 | 4 |
From NHL.com
The most clear and present sign of Schmidt’s struggles is his raw offensive production. He played five fewer games in 2021 than he did in 2019/20, but he scored less than half the points. Given that most of his fallback came in the assist category, one could posit that this had at least a little to do with the quality of his teammates, but it’s still impossible to ignore.
Goals-per-game | Assists-per-game | Points-per-game | Avg. TOI | Shooting % | |
2021 | 0.09 | 0.19 | 0.28 | 20:06 | 6.6% |
Career Avg. Prior | 0.08 | 0.27 | 0.34 | 19:21 | 5.4% |
From Hockey-Reference.com
Schmidt’s per-game ratios make the drop-off seem a little less dramatic, but they also put to bed the lie that Schmidt regressed because he was given a more difficult assignment in Vancouver. His ice-time actually decreased by quite a bit compared to what it was in Vegas, and his deployment was far more favourable – but more on that in a minute.
Sticking with offence, it’s important to note that Schmidt still finished third among Vancouver blueliners in scoring and that the Canucks relied more on their defenders for offence than any other team in the league.
This came with limited opportunities on the power play, as Quinn Hughes greedily gobbled up most of those minutes.
Schmidt seemed to be at his best when he was able to activate into the offensive zone and jump up into plays, but those moments were few and far between.
Perhaps this was due to Schmidt feeling the need to cover for his teammates more often, and perhaps it was part of his overall difficult transition to Vancouver’s style of play.

From HockeyViz.com
Either way, Schmidt remained a reliable shooter from the point, capable of consistently getting pucks on net, even if most of them were turned aside by opposing goaltenders.
Really, all it would take is a small uptick in production from Schmidt, coupled with greater overall scoring from the Canucks as a whole, to get him right back to his previous offensive standard.
In terms of quarterly results, Schmidt was relatively consistent, though it is curious that his best results by far came during the season’s second quarter, during which Schmidt received his least ice-time of the season.

From Dobber’s Frozen Tools
For a player who had previously thrived under huge minutes, that’s possibly cause for concern.
Flipping over to more multifaceted measures, we arrive at Schmidt’s advanced stats, which went from holy to holey this year. That was definitely to be expected as he transitioned from the analytic juggernaut Knights to the notoriously porous Canucks, but dropping between 5-10% in each major analytic category is evidence of inferior on-ice impact regardless of the context.

From NaturalStatTrick.com (even-strength)
Somewhat surprisingly, Schmidt wasn’t a go-to penalty killer in Vegas, nor was he in Vancouver. He did kill penalties regularly, but only achieved moderate results on a team that ranked in the middle of the shorthanded pack overall – results made even less impressive by the fact that Schmidt played most of his PK shifts against second power play units.
Shorthanded TOI | PP GA/60 | ||
2021 | 1:45 | 7.01 | 4th |
Recent articles from Stephan Roget
- Thatcher Demko has as much to do with the Canucks’ PK turnaround as all those shorthanded goals
- The Canucks’ penalty kill under Rick Tocchet is a statistical enigma, but it’s also one of the most effective of all-time
- After two decades as the heart and soul of Canucks broadcasts, John Garrett deserves a spot in the Ring of Honour