Quack.

The Vancouver Canucks demolished the Anaheim Ducks, scoring five times in 4:30 en route to a 6-2 win. Now, this kind of victory would’ve been nice when their playoff chances were a little better, but beggars can’t really be choosers. It was a bit of a strange game too, with the rest of the team able to buoy an uncharacteristic outing from Quinn Hughes. Still, it was a nice result to treat the fans on Saturday afternoon.

Here’s the win, by the numbers.

As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

The first period was pretty much the only frame where the Canucks were closest to having the flow on their side. With a mere 42.86 CF% and 49.67 xGF%, they somehow came out of that frame with a 5-1 lead. From the trendlines, it is apparent that the Ducks were the ones who really took initiative of this contest. They would post over 1 expected goal in the second and third periods, while the Canucks never broke 0.50 after the first period. But, in the end, they didn’t make their chances count, and couldn’t surmount the hole that Vancouver put them in during the first.

While the Ducks had a handy edge in total expected goals, the heat map was much more tame than one might expect. Anaheim held a 23-17 scoring chance edge at 5v5 play, but the HDCF was only 9-5 in favour of the visitors. That much is apparent with their hot spot not being all that thick, and while the Canucks didn’t manage to generate one of their own, it wasn’t the worst to be giving up. What should be encouraging is that Vancouver didn’t give up a single HDCA during the penalty kill.

Corsi Champ: Of all players, Derek Forbort led the Canucks with a 53.57 CF% while partnering Elias Pettersson on the back end. The defenceman played most of his minutes against the Ducks’ top 6, making these numbers shine all that more given the context. Forbort split the high-danger chances 1-1 apiece, managing to record the 6th-highest xGF of 0.45 on the afternoon as well. Not bad for a day’s worth of work, in a valuable depth defence role.

Corsi Chump: This one goes to Victor Mancini, who posted a 26.47 CF% as the team’s worst Corsi man. Paired up with Hughes, both defencemen had a rough outing against the Ducks, which is a little surprising. Mancini’s numbers weren’t great across the board, with the defender facing the second-worst xGA of 1.38, posting the team’s worst xGF% of 11.69, and on ice for a 0-5 high-danger chance hole. He was only on ice for one goal against at 5v5 play, so things could’ve been worse for Mancini.

xGF: Teddy Blueger led the Canucks with a 58.26 xGF% which was enough to give him a 26.03 xGF% rel to team average. In terms of raw numbers, it was a little underwhelming, with just 0.28 xGF to his name. But, the Latvian was only on ice for 0.20 xGA, which was the team’s best number. Blueger split the high-danger chance battle 1-1, keeping things pretty low-key during his TOI. Filip Hronek led the Canucks in raw xGF in this one, racking up a 0.89 during 5v5 play. That also goes to show just how limited Vancouver was when it came to offense generation in this one.

GSAx: Thatcher Demko had a tidy bounce-back game from the outing against the Kraken. With the Ducks putting together a total of 2.82 xGF on the game, the netminder turned away everything except 1 middle-danger chance and 1 low-danger chance to finish with a 0.82 GSAx. Now, those goals against would probably be the biggest concern in Demko’s performance, and the low-danger chance especially shouldn’t be getting past him. But given how that Seattle game went, it was nice to see that Demko could rebound nicely and manage to finish in the positives.

Hughes’ off night: There’s been some alluding to this so far, but the numbers that Quinn Hughes put up against the Ducks simply need to be seen to be believed, and not for good reasons. The defender finished with the second-worst CF% on the team, facing down the worst xGA (1.54) amongst all skaters while also only producing 0.23 xGF, which was the second-lowest total. It was just an extremely uncharacteristically bad game for Hughes, who gave up a 5-14 scoring chance differential, with 0 HDCF and 6 HDCA. Perhaps he is finally running on fumes after carrying this Canucks team for big chunks of the season, but the rest of the team was able to step up and absorb this performance well enough.

In many ways, this game felt like the inverse of the Kraken game. It’s hard to say that the Canucks truly deserved to win this game by the numbers, the statistics definitely favouring the Ducks over the course of the entire contest. But again, all it took was one 4:30 stretch for Vancouver to strike five times, and that was enough to bury Anaheim entirely. They didn’t play a full 60, and against better teams this year that has cost the Canucks. But against the Ducks, even with a statistical advantage, they were able to see this victory through.

Vancouver hosts the Vegas Golden Knights tomorrow as they get right back in action.