Canucks Player Power Rankings – December 12th, 2016

The Vancouver Canucks are often a little weird, but they were especially weird this week. Led by a few unlikely heroes, the Canucks went 1-3-0. It’s not a strategy that will get them the results they want, but I guess it’s all that they could come up with.

Nobody expected this from Jack Skille. He scored not one, but three goals this week and they were all genuinely nice goals. The Jack Skille era has begun.

Jayson Megna also had an unexpectedly eventful week. He apologized to the Sedins for calling them “sisters” on Twitter, he revealed that his name is spelled like that because he literally the son of a man named Jay, and he scored two goals in front of the aforementioned Jay and the rest of the Megna clan.

Thatcher Demko’s NHL career has thus far consisted of sitting on a bench, but he’s done this very well so far. Barely 21 years old, Demko is optimistic and full of life. For now.

Erik Gudbranson got to see some old fans and friends this week and he scored his first goal as a Canuck. This is probably the second funniest goal scored by a Canuck this year (Loui’s own goal is still funnier).

Despite suffering three losses this week, Jacob Markstrom had some nice moments. None of his saves were as great as his efforts to assist his unconscious teammate, Philip Larsen. Hockey players are often very silly in moments like this (exhibit A: all of the Canucks and Devils that rushed over Larsen to the scrum) so Markstrom deserves props for this.

This is one of those weeks where no longer having a broken rib gets you up into the top 6 on the power rankings.

Even though his role on the powerplay is questionable, I’m just happy for Alex Biega because he finally got to play hockey this week.

The Canucks powerplay is a dark place these days, but Troy Stecher is a shining light.

Daniel Sedin is also a shining light, but we’ve known this for ages:

Henrik Sedin did not have his most productive week, but he did help out the medical staff who arrived to help Philip Larsen. A nice captain.

The extra workload and some defensive issues are evident in Ben Hutton’s game, but he’s probably still having fun.

Bo Horvat had no points this week, but that’s not totally his fault.

Markus Granlund’s efforts to help Philip Larsen were less obvious than Jacob Markstrom’s, but they were still important. Nice job, Markus.

Alex Burrows has cooled off lately but because of this, his ranking number is the same as jersey number!

Nikita Tryamkin continues to hold his own in this league and it is nice to see. Also, here he is hanging out with a towelled Alex Ovechkin post-game.

Loui Eriksson saw a little bit of time with the Sedins this week, but then Jannik Hansen returned.

If there was one word to describe Willie’s deployment of Brandon Sutter so far this season it would be “perplexing”.

As expected, Luca Sbisa is not thriving as a top-4 defenseman. Here he is getting owned by Jagr.

Brendan Gaunce is the only Canuck to make the team out of camp who has not scored yet. Also, the NHL could not find him a decent header photo:

I don’t have much to say about Michael Chaput’s week, but he managed to escape being a healthy scratch at Sven Baertschi’s expense, so that’s nice for him.

Ryan Miller played a wonderful game in Tampa Bay and then he got hurt because who needs good things?

These two are still missing from the blueline, but they’ve given us things to think about at least:

Sven Baertschi was a healthy scratch for Sunday afternoon’s game. Being a healthy scratch on this team is a huge embarrassment. Poor Sven.

Both of these guys are probably in a lot of pain right now and are probably having a worse week than most of us. We don’t have much of an update on Philip Larsen other than the fact that he’s out of hospital and concussed after last Tuesday’s scary moments. As for Derek Dorsett, he is smiling despite having surgery to deal with disc degeneration in his neck, which sounds absolutely brutal.