Relive the 2001-02 Vancouver Canucks season
8 years ago
It was the second year the Vancouver Canucks’ very fun West Coast Express era, and though the club earned the good will of the city by reacquiring Trevor Linden in a deal with the Washington Capitals, they were poised to miss the playoffs.
Then they got hot…
Though the 2001-02 iteration of the Canucks were outshooting their opponents by a wide margin and featured a top-line of Brendan Morrison, Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi that was crushing all comers – the three skilled forwards combined for a whopping 99 goals in an offensively depressed era – the team was toiling at about .500 in early March.
A 7-4 loss to the San Jose Sharks, a game in which Dan Cloutier surrendered four goals against on eight shots, dropped Vancouver to 29-28-6-3. It looked like an upstart club that had returned to the postseason after a long drought the year previous, was poised to miss the playoffs once again.
Instead the Canucks, who were a very good team betrayed by iffy goaltending in this particular season (more on that later!), caught fire. They club went on a sparkling 13-2-1 run to end the year, securing the Western Conference’s eighth seed and a second consecutive playoff berth. They also earned a matchup with a very good, but secretly kind of beatable, Detroit Red Wings team.
We all know how that went…
Results
| Team Record | Total Points | Standings | Goal Differential | Shooting Percentage | Save Percentage | |
| 42-30-7-3 | 94 | 2nd in Northwest Div. 8th in Conference | +43 | 10.9% | .901 |
True talent wise, the 2001-02 Canucks were one of the league’s top seven or eight teams if you excluded their woeful goaltending. Vancouver was dynamite at special teams and controlled nearly 53 percent of all situations shots. They were roughly as good at controlling play in this season as the Chicago Blackhawks were this past year.
Sadly they received well below average goaltending from their tandem of Petr Skudra and Dan Cloutier. It nearly cost them in the regular season and it definitely cost them in the playoffs.
Individual Level
(Courtesy: Hockey-Reference.com)
The Canucks were still a relatively young team at this point, although their top-line performers were in their mid-to-late 20s and right at the peak of their abilities (unbeknownst to Canucks fans at the time). Their main defensive contributors – Ed Jovanovski, Matthias Ohlund, Brent Sopel and Scott Lachance – were all under 30, and the teams key secondary forwards were very young indeed (including the Sedin twins who were 21 at the time, and Matt Cooke who was 23).
This was also Artem Chubarov’s second full season with the club, and along with Jarkko Ruutu and Trevor Letowski he formed a pretty decent fourth line down the stretch. Chubarov was awesome.
Less awesome? The goaltending…
(Courtesy: Hockey-Reference.com)
Cloutier also managed an .870 save percentage in the postseason. If he’d been competent, Vancouver probably would’ve forced a seventh game and maybe even taken a dominant Red Wings team to the brink.
Transactions
Trades!
(Image courtesy: NHLTradeTracker.com)
The Canucks made a variety of minor trades in 2001-02, some of them were good and some of them were bad, but the only one that really matters is the re-acquisition of Trevor Linden for the first-round pick that became Boyd Gordon.
Free Agents
In July, also, the club signed a variety of depth players (like goaltender Tyler Moss, who you’ve definitely heard of). One of those players is Nolan Baumgartner, who is still with the organization as an assistant coach with the Utica Comets.
The 2002 NHL Entry Draft
(Courtesy: HockeyDb)
The Canucks made 11 draft selections at the 2002 NHL Entry Draft and managed to select players who combined to appear in a single game with the organization during their professional hockey careers. Classic Canucks!
Season Review
2001-02 was a fun season of Canucks hockey overall.
The West Coast Express was dynamic, the very young Sedin twins were manufacturing chemistry with Trent Klatt in just their second NHL season, Chubarov’s fourth-line brought energy and played pretty damn well for a bottom-of-the-roster unit, and Ed Jovanovski and Brent Sopel helped to key the offense while also keeping things entertaining with the odd giveaway. That Cloutier was Cloutier helped with that too.
That Vancouver caught fire following the re-acquisition of Trevor Linden (even if it took a couple of months) makes for some compelling narrative building, and the Nicklas Lidstrom goal from centre ice is an iconic Canucks fan struggle moment. So the season had pretty much everything you can ask for, except for playoff success, but don’t get greedy. This is still the Canucks we’re talking about!
Leading Scorers
Markus Naslund
This was the first of Naslund’s two consecutive 40 goal seasons with the Canucks, and he finished fifth in Hart Trophy voting this season. He was a beast.
Todd Bertuzzi
Naslund’s primary running mate managed 85 points in 72 games, making him the club’s most productive player by points per game rate. Bertuzzi was a stud this season, but he was even better the next year. This was just his ‘signs of MVP caliber seasons to come’ year.
Rethinking the 2001-02 Vancouver Canucks
At the time it was believed that the West Coast Express era Canucks were a team on the rise, but in fact, this 2001-02 iteration of the team may have been the Burke era’s best shot at winning a Stanley Cup…
What I found really interesting, however, is what the possession data tells us about the Canucks between the years of 1997 and 2006. I don’t really care about 06-07 because by then, the team was completely different and built around Roberto Luongo. 97 to 06, however, was all about the rise and fall of the West Coast Express:Isn’t that interesting? If Tyler’s data is correct, the Canucks probably peaked a year or two before people expected they did. The 2000-2001 team was the first to make the playoffs after a devastating three four-year absence. That was not only the year that Mark Messier ditched Vancouver and went back to New York, but also the Sedins’ rookie year, the first year Markus Naslund scored 40 goals, but most importantly, the day the Canucks traded Adrian Aucoin to Tampa Bay for Dan Cloutier.To see the Canucks as a 52% possession team that won 30 and 36 games in those first two years of the Sedins in the NHL, well… back in the day nobody was talking about Cloutier’s .894 or .901 save percentages those years. Save percentages have risen now, but both marks were well below the NHL average, at least 12 goals worse than the average SV% during those years, per Hockey Reference.As a result, the Canucks entered the playoffs with a low seed in each year and got clobbered in four straight by better teams in both respective years. The Canucks put up a hell of a fight against Detroit in 2002 and after the hot second half, it looked like the best was yet to come for Vancouver.
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