As the rest of the province celebrated Family Day, Jim Benning and the Vancouver Canucks locked down their second in-season trade of 2019/20 – and this one was a little more significant than flipping Alex Biega to the Detroit Red Wings.

The Canucks landed 27-year-old right winger Tyler Toffoli of the Los Angeles Kings. In exchange, they sent Tim Schaller, Tyler Madden, and a second round pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.

The value of this transaction will no doubt be litigated for years to come, but that’s not what we’re here to do today – we’re looking for a results-based analysis. In that vein, the Canucks are claiming that Toffoli fills a long-standing gap on Bo Horvat’s right wing and shores up their questionable secondary scoring ranks.

But “top-six solution” is something that the Vancouver fanbase has heard a few times in recent years, almost always in conjunction with players that were absolutely not top-six solutions.

What makes Tyler Toffoli different?

Unlike past attempts to acquire a top-six forward on the cheap, Tyler Toffoli doesn’t just have the potential to produce points – he’s been doing it for his entire career.

As of his trade to Vancouver, Toffoli’s 18 goals and 34 points in 58 games leaves him with a 0.59 points-per-game average. That’s good enough for 32^nd place among NHL right wingers that have played at least 20 games this season, which rates Toffoli’s production on the border of first line quality.

If we apply that same filter to seasons past, we’ll see that Toffoli has been scoring like a below-average first liner – or a well-above-average second liner – for the entirety of his career, with the notable exception of last year’s dreadful campaign.

Despite a rough 2018/19 season for the entirety of the LA Kings that was also Toffoli’s all-time worst, he still produced at an acceptable level for a top-six winger.

Even on Toffoli’s new squad, the high-flying Vancouver Canucks – they of the division-leading goal differential – his current point-per-game rates him a tidy 7^th overall, right behind the team’s existing top-six forwards and the inexplicable Quinn Hughes.

So, to conclude, on the surface it sure looks like Tyler Toffoli has been a legitimate top-six forward for the entirety of his career – and not just.

Between Chris Kreider and JG Pageau, Tyler Toffoli had some tough competition for the honour of being TSN’s top-ranked forward on the 2020 Trade Bait List. There can be no doubt, however, that Toffoli was, at the very least, the best forward available from the LA Kings – mostly because Toffoli has been the Kings’ best forward overall this season.

Sure, at the moment he was traded Toffoli only ranked third in team scoring, behind Anze Kopitar and Alex Iafallo. To find out why Toffoli has actually performed better than either of those guys, one has to dig beyond the surface – and into the cavernous realm of advanced statistics.

Fortunately, one doesn’t have to dig far before everything starts coming up Tyler.

According to our friends over at NaturalStatTrick, Toffoli ranked best on the Kings in basically every fancy stat related to offense generation, possession, and expected success.

And one doesn’t necessarily need the context of a terrible Kings’ roster to make Toffoli’s analytics look good. As of this writing, Toffoli’s possession stats rank him in the league’s top ten amongst forwards who have played at least 400 minutes this season – and that’s especially impressive considering what he had to work with in Los Angeles.

In fact, the more numbers one tracks down, the better Toffoli’s body of work thus far in 2019/20 appears – less a bad season than a good season on a bad team, and that has to be an exciting prospect for a player about to join an offensively potent squad in Vancouver.

As our own Brett Lee astutely pointed out, and elaborated on earlier this week at CanucksArmy, Toffoli does his best work in the “triangle” – and that’s exactly where his likely linemates prefer to do their damage, too.

And speaking of those linemates…

As a rookie in the 2013/14, Tyler Toffoli played a major role in Los Angeles’ run to the Stanley Cup, playing on the aptly-named “That 70s Line.” And who else was on that line? Jeff Carter…and Tanner Pearson.

There’s little doubt that coach Travis Green will attempt to reignite Toffoli and Pearson’s chemistry, and probably right from the get-go. It’s impossible to know whether they’ll reach their old heights of production together, but it is comforting to know that there is a history of a playoff team employing the two of them on a scoring line – and being handsomely rewarded for doing so.

Now, it should be mentioned that there are some obvious discrepancies in the way Jeff Carter and Bo Horvat play the game – but they’re not so dissimilar that there’s no hope of Horvat fitting in just as well with the duo. After all, he’s already meshed nicely with Pearson, and Toffoli is probably the easier to play with of the two.

Could a return of “That 70s Line” be in the offing? In terms of success, it very well could be – just don’t expect Horvat to change his jersey number anytime soon.

Many, many options have already been tried on Bo Horvat’s right wing in the last few seasons – but only a handful of them have been natural right wingers. Of those that have filled the spot in 2019/20, only Brock Boeser and Jake Virtanen actually prefer to play the right side, with everyone else going to their offside to line up with the captain.

Tyler Toffoli, on the other hand, is about as natural a right wing as it gets. He shoots right, he prefers the right side (unless he’s on the powerplay), and he’s played there for nearly the entirety of his career.

Handedness is not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to line chemistry, but it’s undoubtedly a factor – and it’s nice to know that the next individual to attempt to thrive on Horvat’s wing will at least be doing so in a position they feel comfortable with.

With Boeser potentially on the sidelines until the end of the regular season, Toffoli’s presence as a right shot becomes all the more crucial. He can slide right into Boeser’s spot on the powerplay, bumping Brandon Sutter out of a gig that was way above his pay grade – and ensuring that the top unit keeps on rolling.

We said we weren’t going to talk about value in this article, but we’re breaking that promise to make one small point – that the Canucks did not give away any of their existing forwards of importance in the Tyler Toffoli trade (Sorry, Tim Schaller).

There are those in the fanbase who scoffed at the price paid for Toffoli when so many other top-six options riddled the roster – Jake Virtanen, Josh Leivo, Loui Eriksson, Zack MacEwen, et al. While Toffoli’s offensive skill and history of production obviously blows each of them out of the water, the nature of the transaction means that those options will remain open for the remainder of the season.

That is, if Toffoli doesn’t work out on Horvat’s wing, he can simply go elsewhere in the lineup. Having him around and keeping all those other forwards in the stable only increases the flexibility of the notoriously juggle-happy Travis Green’s forward corps – and that can only mean good things for a team that has consistently struggled with secondary scoring.

 

So, does the acquisition of Tyler Toffoli fix the Canucks’ top-six?

Yes it does – and then some.