Five years is a decent length of time by any measure, and especially so by the measure of professional hockey.

Five years ago – meaning at the outset of the 2019/20 NHL season – Jim Benning was still the GM of the Canucks, Travis Green was still the coach, Elias Pettersson was coming off a Calder-winning rookie campaign, and Quinn Hughes was just five games into his career.

The world didn’t yet know about COVID-19, or ChatGPT, or the Seattle Kraken.

What a difference five years can make.

As we await the official start of the 2024/25 season for the Vancouver Canucks, now just a matter of weeks away, we can’t help but to feel reflective. And after a summer in which we looked back in hindsight at two of the most consequential transactions of 2019 in the JT Miller Trade and the signing of Tyler Myers, we can’t overlook the opportunity to make a more holistic comparison between now and then.

We don’t know with absolute certainty yet what the Canucks’ opening night roster will be this year. But we do have a pretty good idea already, and can at least put together a pretty accurate depth chart.

And, of course, we’ve got plenty of records in our own CanucksArmy archives from that era we now refer to as the “late-2010s,” including Game 1 of the 2019/20 season, played on October 2, 2019 between the Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers.

Without further ado, we’re going to throw both lineups on the hypothetical ice and match them up head-to-head. This isn’t a ‘which team would win’ sort of mental exercise – that shouldn’t be much of a contest at this point. Instead, think of it more as a measure of how far the franchise has come in five long years, and what difference a half-decade can really make.

This game featured Vancouver debuts for JT Miller, Tyler Myers, Micheal Ferland, and Jordie Benn.

We’ve obviously made at least one big assumption here, and that’s that Thatcher Demko will be ready to start as of Game 1. If not, the team will have to find another goaltending solution.

The three most important forwards in the top-six are the exact same now as they were in 2019/20, meaning Pettersson, Miller, and Boeser. But those three forwards are not of the same quality they were five years ago – they’re better.

In 2019/20, Pettersson was entering his sophomore season. Boeser was entering his third year. And Miller has just been acquired from Tampa Bay after a disappointing 47-point campaign.

Compare that to the Pettersson and Miller of now, who each have 100-point seasons under their belts, or to the Boeser of now, who just scored 40 goals. It’s not a particularly close comparison.

The Miller of 2024/25, in particular, kicks the crap out of the Miller of 2019/20. Or, if you prefer the matchup, he kicks the crap out of 2019/20 Bo Horvat, too.

There is a bit more of an argument to be had with the other three members of the top-six. The 2019/20 crew had Horvat, Ferland, and Tanner Pearson occupying those spots.

Jake DeBrusk would have to be pretty disappointing, indeed, in order to be a worse free agent signing than Ferland was. But if we’re ranking members of the top-six, he’d actually be matched up more accurately against Horvat, and in that sense Horvat probably has the edge.

What about Ferland and Pearson versus any two of Nils Höglander, Danton Heinen, or Daniel Sprong? The temptation might be there to go with the 2019/20 veterans, but it’s important to keep in mind that Ferland was about to encounter some severe and irreversible injury troubles, and that Pearson was about to enjoy his last truly productive NHL season.

We could buy an argument that Horvat, Pearson, and Ferland were an overall better trio of talent – at least at the outset of the 2019/20 season – than DeBrusk, Höglander, and Heinen are in this current moment. But it’s relatively close, and it’s pretty clear which of the two groups has more staying power.

And as soon as we enter the other half of the top-six into the matchup – as in Miller, Pettersson, and Boeser versus their past selves – it’s not even close. Those three players have made such enormous strides in their careers that the Canucks’ current top-six is head and shoulders above their top-six of 2019/20.

GM Benning was occasionally accused of trying to build his team from the bottom-six up. With that said, and with all the UFA money he’d put into said bottom-six, one might think that the group would have an advantage over the Canucks current, significantly less-expensive set.

But that is not the case.

Despite his ups and downs, Conor Garland has already performed better for the Canucks than Loui Eriksson ever did. And on the other wing, even if Dakota Joshua doesn’t replicate the scoring of last year, he’s a sure thing to have a much bigger impact on the ice than Josh Leivo.

At 3C, whether we’re comparing Brandon Sutter against Pius Suter or Teddy Blueger, we’re giving the edge to the current Canuck. Sutter had some fine seasons in Vancouver, but was very clearly on the decline as of 2019/20 after an injury-plagued 2018/19 campaign – and he was just one year away from being out of the NHL altogether.

And then there’s the fourth line. Would you rather have Jay Beagle at $3 million, or Blueger or Suter at almost half that amount? It’s a pretty easy decision from where we’re sitting.

On the wings, neither Kiefer Sherwood nor Sprong have made their Canuck debuts as of yet, but we can all-but-guarantee they’ll wind up having a more positive impact than Tim Schaller or especially Jake Virtanen did in Vancouver.

The 2024/25 Canucks feature a much better, and somehow more cost-effective, set of bottom-six forwards.

Alex Edler was an absolute warrior for the Canucks for many years. The same can be said for Myers, though his stint with the team continues into the modern day.

Both, realistically-speaking, played over their heads for the majority of their time in Vancouver. Edler, in his absolute prime, was probably a really good 2D. Myers never quite reached that high.

The two of them, then, should definitely not have been anchoring a top pairing together, and certainly not in the year 2019. But they did, and they did as good a job as they could manage.

They still pale in comparison to the top pairing of Hughes and Filip Hronek.

It’s the other half of the top-four where the 2019/20 Canucks earn back a little ground. Currently, the Canucks’ own top-four is filled out by a Myers who is now five years older, and Carson Soucy.

Soucy can’t hope to compete with even the rookie version of Hughes at LHD. And even at his best, Myers never held a candle to Chris Tanev at RHD.

We’ll say it in no uncertain terms: The 2019/20 Canucks had a better 3D and 4D than the 2024/25 Canucks currently have. That’s about as clear-cut a win as the old Canucks are going to find in this matchup.

The bottom-pairing tips back in favour of the current crew. Benn was a fine fill-in candidate, but Derek Forbort provides a much more well-rounded game and a higher minute threshold. Vincent Desharnais, on the other hand, is essentially the polar opposite of Troy Stecher, and while both have their charms, we’re pretty sure we know which one is the better fit for a bottom-pairing role.

The modern Canucks probably have the better blueline over their peers of five years ago on the growth experienced by Hughes alone. But he’s also got a much stronger support staff around him now than he did when he first arrived in Vancouver.

Here, things get complicated. On the one hand, in securing a Vezina nomination last year, Thatcher Demko has reached a greater height as Canucks starter than Jacob Markstrom ever did.

On the other hand, we’re still not sure if Demko will be in net when the Canucks hit the ice for their 2024/25 season opener.

Were Demko healthy, it’d be pretty hard not to give the edge to him. With the uncertainty, it’s closer – though it’s worth noting that Markstrom also had plenty of injury concerns of his own, including one that forced him to hand over the reigns to Demko in the midst of the 2020 playoffs.

In the backup spot, you’ve got Young Demko versus Arturs Silovs. In all honestly, Demko was always the better and more highly-touted prospect between the two, and that’s true even after Silovs’ postseason heroics.

This one, like many things this year, hinges on Demko’s status. But either way, it’s not enough to take away from what we discovered in the previous sections – that the 2024/25 Canucks are set up to be significantly better than the 2019/20 Canucks, both in terms of their performance this year and where they can be expected to take things in the years to come.