Monday Mailbag: PDO, PK Deployment, and Unsung Heroes

Just enjoy it while it lasts. If the Canucks go on a circa-2014 Colorado Avalanche-style PDO bender en route to the playoffs and it convinces the front office the team is better than it actually is, then you can be upset. The Canucks winning games they shouldn’t only becomes a bad thing if it leads to bad decisions.

He probably should, given the roster crunch in Utica. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stays up until Jay Beagle returns, rotating in and out of the lineup along with Brendan Leipsic and/or Tim Schaller. There’s no sense having him up with the big club if he’s just going to sit in the press box, so I’d imagine they’ll only keep him up if they think he can play.

Thus far, Travis Green has underutilized his best penalty killers from last season in terms of conceding unblocked shots. When looking at the numbers, you could definitely make a case that Loui Eriksson and Ben Hutton both ought to be seeing a lot more minutes while down a man. That being said, when looking at the admittedly small sample from the current season, the team’s shorthanded deployment would appear to be at least partially backed up by the numbers. One thing is for sure: Travis Green has been wise to keep Bo Horvat off the PK this year, and deserves credit for that.

I honestly have no idea. Goldobin’s looked great so far this season, but we’ve seen this movie before, and he’s never played more than 38 games in a season. That makes it hard to know what exactly he’s capable of at the NHL level. His prior history would indicate he’d be poised to finish with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30-35 points if he plays a full season, but that could be low-balling it if he plays in a top-six role and continues to look as good as he has.

I’m not big on fighting, but it’s tough to give a guy a hard time about dropping the gloves when he doesn’t have a lot of say in the matter. Horvat wasn’t looking to start a fight on Saturday night, he was just responding to some rough stuff from Noel Acciari following a big hit. Is that a good thing? Bo is one of the best players on the team, so I doubt it helps them much for him to spend five minutes in the box, but I’m not sure how avoidable it was in this scenario. I’m not going to recommend that he makes fisticuffs a regular part of his game, but if it happens occasionally in instances like this one it’s not the end of the world, either. I’m as concerned about concussions as anyone else, but he’s more likely to sustain one on a legal hit than he is in a fight, so as long as he’s not getting his head bashed in on a regular basis it’s not going to be the hill I die on.

I just don’t see the Canucks being willing to part with the necessary pieces to get a Nylander deal done. Even if they’re willing to eat some cap on the way back, there just aren’t many Nylander-calibre players on the roster or in the system, and the ones that are aren’t getting moved, period.

The 2014-15 Canucks were a middling team at evens in terms of shot shares with a good power play that took advantage of a weak division. This season, they look dangerous on the man advantage and once again find themselves in a wide-open division. The difference is they’ve been severely out-shot at five-on-five. In absolute terms, I think they’re a worse team, but if the goaltending holds up it’s possible they yield similar results.

He had so much success early on with Elias Pettersson that it’s hard to see Travis Green not getting the band back together once EP is good to go. Until then, I think he’s done enough to secure a spot on that line. With the exception of the injured Pettersson, he’s been the teams best forward and arguably it’s most consistent, too.

Burlap.

Many of the league’s best teams have three high-end centres that can produce offence. In the scenario you’re describing, I’d imagine the best course of action would be to play all three down the middle, with Pettersson taking shifts on the wing at times to load up on offense when needed. The leafs have three excellent centres in Auston Matthews, John Tavares, and Nazem Kadri on their roster and it’s been working fine so far. If the Canucks ever found themselves in cap trouble then I’d probably look to move Horvat for some help on the back end, but only if it was absolutely necessary. Having too many good centres is one of the best problems a team can have.

The goaltenders. They’re the only reason the team’s been in half of these games and I haven’t heard so much as a peep about it.