The 3rd Hangover of 2013-14

The Canucks completed a successful weekend all-in-all when they finished off a sweep of Alberta’s professional hockey teams on Sunday evening. They went into the Saddledome, sat through some terribly boring player introductions of a bunch of dudes I’m only vaguely familiar with, snoozed through the first 2 periods of play, and then made a furious comeback en route to an Overtime victory.

Just past the jump are the scoring chances totals, and some other interesting numbers that I figured were worth mentioning. You might find them interesting, too.

In last night’s recap, I mentioned that Hamhuis had a rough first period before the coaching staff mixed up the defensive pairings, putting him with Tanev (and Bieksa with Stanton as a result). In the recap of the season opener against the Sharks, I also made a point of noting that Hamhuis looked uncharacterstically off in that particular game. He has seemed to be pinching a ton more than usual, which has been leaving him out of position. At least that’s what my eyes have been telling me.

Judging from my Twitter timeline last night, I’m not alone in the opinion that we haven’t really seen the Dan Hamhuis we’ve become accustomed to in recent years. Our eyes seem to be deceiving us, though:

It’s true. Hamhuis has been absolutely crushing it in the possession game thus far. Guess it turns out that he’s not really struggling in John Tortorella’s new system after all. 

It’s also worth giving Mike Santorelli some props. He was the beneficiary of some line juggling, and found himself playing next to Henrik Sedin in the 3rd period. Sure, he scored 2 goals (including the winner in OT), but check out his possession numbers: 19 shot attempts for, 9 shots against. He killed it. So did Chris Tanev; I got on his case after a poor showing in the season opener, so now I’ve got to give him credit for a strong performance. It probably doesn’t hurt that he spent most of the game playing with Dan Hamhuis.

Also, I have no idea what on earth happened to Chris Higgins when his underlying metrics plummeted last season, but it looks like he’s back, baby. He’s once again driving play (13.6 Corsi Relative) while facing tough competition (2.323 Corsi Rel QoC, 34.4 Offensive Zone Start %), which is surely a welcome sight for the Canucks. He better invite Ryan Kesler over for Thanksgiving dinner this Sunday.

(All of the stats cited were from ExtraSkater [dot] com.)