NHL skills competitions are great, but they’re not the real thing.

And until yesterday, the stats showing players’ top speeds and shot speeds have been held from the public, for the most part. Until now, the NHL’s puck and player tracking system’s findings were available to live broadcast teams and for in-arena consumption.

But now, the public has access to all this data and more via the new NHL Edge Puck and Player tracking database. Now, whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. Yes, it’s useful data, but it’s also going to make hockey discussions and disagreements all the more insufferable. “My favourite player has logged five more 18-20 mph bursts of speed than your favourite player, so obviously he’s great and your favourite player stinks.”

As we continue to dive in and chew on all of the available data, we thought it’d be wise to start simple and present two stats for every player that people are most likely to not only understand, but find interesting as well. Who has taken the hardest shots and logged the highest top speed for the 2023-24 Vancouver Canucks through six games?

Here are the 2023-24 Canucks’ hardest shot speeds, sorted from highest to lowest speed (in mph).

What’s the biggest surprise from this list? We’re not sure, but we’d bet money that Elias Pettersson would win a hardest shot competition against his Canucks teammates. After all, he did record a blistering speed of 103.2 mph at last year’s NHL All-Star Skills competition in Florida.

With absolute missiles like this, it’s no surprise that although he’s struggled on the defensive end early on this season, Tyler Myers has taken the second hardest shot of any Canuck so far.

Here are the top speeds that every Canucks skater has hit so far this season, sorted from highest to lowest speed (in mph).

It’s not hard to believe that the players at the top of this list are also the ones who have looked the fastest on the forecheck. Phil Di Giuseppe being at the top confirms what we already knew: PDG is on a mission and has no plans of losing his job in the Canucks’ top six.

Our prediction is that after he’s played in a few more games, Ilya Mikheyev is going to sit at the top of this list, and at some point — likely on a backcheck — Elias Pettersson will join him in the top three among Canucks skaters.

Would you like us to keep updating this list throughout the season? What other stats from NHL Edge are you interested in learning about? Let us know in the comments section below!