Welcome to a brand-new summer series on the Goals and Expectations for each Vancouver Canuck in the 2024/25 NHL season.

It’s a series that can best be summed up as “No fears, just tiers.”

Look, part of the reason that we all love hockey so much is that it is entirely unpredictable. That’s the beauty of it. But it can make it a frustrating sport to forecast.

So many factors go into whether or not an individual’s season is successful, never mind that of an entire team comprised of said individuals. Focus, fitness, health, the mental game, off-ice pressures. It’s a lot, and it means that a lot of different things can do down in any given year of NHL hockey.

With that in mind, our intrepid leader David Quadrelli has ordered up this series in which we CanucksArmy writers will attempt to provide multi-tiered sets of expectations for each Canucks player. It’s not quite The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but more of a The Good, The Bad, and The Acceptable.

Today, we tackle Filip Hronek, the possessor of a brand-new big ticket contract, and a player who somehow managed to both greatly exceed and then greatly underperform expectations all within the 2023/24 season.

These articles are mostly going to deal with the statistical side of the game, and on that front, Hronek’s performance last year was already “above expectations.”  His 48 points in 81 games were both a career-high and good enough to rank 21^st overall amongst NHL defenders.

That’s good stuff.

But folks who actually watched the Canucks with any sort of consistency last year will know that one can’t just look at the year-end totals and deem it a successful year for Hronek.

Hronek got off to one of the hottest starts in Vancouver blueline history. By mid-January and the rough halfway point of the schedule, Hronek had worked his way up to 36 points in just 42 games.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out what happened next. In his remaining 39 games, Hronek notched just 12 more points. He followed that up with a run of just two points in 13 playoff games.

It might be easy enough to say that an Above Expectations season for Hronek is simply his keeping up his early pace for an entire year. But there’s Above Expectations, and then there’s Excessive.  At that rate, Hronek would finish a full 82-game schedule with about 70 points.

A 70-point season would be the most points of any Vancouver defender ever not named Quinn Hughes. It would fall just outside the top-20 of the highest-scoring seasons by any NHL defender over the past five seasons.

It’s a bit much, is what we’re saying.

Now, a 50-point campaign is definitely in reach. Playoffs included, he hit that last year, and he’d nearly hit it by the halfway point. So, 50 isn’t quite Above Expectations.

Let’s settle on something in between. A 60-point season for Hronek, so long as it came with at least as high a quality of defensive play as was provided last year, would be a clear-cut step forward, and go a long way toward justifying that big contract.

It also feels very in reach.

Honestly, those 48 points weren’t bad. When Hronek was first traded for, such a total would have probably been a touch above expectations.

If Hronek were to simply repeat those totals in 2024/25, most folks could probably live with it…so long as those numbers were delivered on a more consistent basis.

Just peep the quarterly season split for Hronek’s production last year:

Had Hronek put up a season in which he scored 12 points in each quarter, he’d have still hit 48 total points, and probably put up with a lot less criticism about his inconsistency.

So, a roughly 50-point season, parceled out more equitably, would probably constitute an At Expectations season for Hronek.

That being said, we’re just talking regular season there. Hronek’s quality of play dipped even further in the postseason, and part of the expectation of consistency is for that not to happen this time around.

An At Expectations Hronek is one that can be counted on year-round.

Normally, it’d be a bit unfair to state that a player who has just experienced a career season must not take a single step backward, lest they be deemed Below Expectations.

But tough cookies for Hronek, because that’s exactly how we feel.

Point blank, the Canucks have invested an enormous amount of resources into Hronek. They traded multiple picks, including the first rounder they obtained in exchange for Bo Horvat, in order to secure his services. They then signed him to an eight-year, $7.25 million AAV contract extension, right on the heels of that back-half flame-out and playoff collapse.

This was all done with the expectation that Hronek is a player on the rise.

That said, any fewer points for him next year has to be considered a disappointment – unless that dip in production were to be accompanied by a sharp uptick in defensive play.

We’ve hinted at it a bit already, but we’ll state it outright here: point totals are far from the be-all and end-all when it comes to the quality of an NHL blueliner.

For someone with Hronek’s profile, yeah, it’s a big component. But when we talk about consistency, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Hronek’s defensive play also ranged wildly throughout 2023/24. A more reliable effort in his own end goes a long way toward Hronek hitting expectations in 2024/25.

There are two more intangible success-measures worth discussing here at the end, and they go down two different branching paths.

There has been talk of splitting up Hronek and Hughes. If this happens and stays happening for any length of time, a new expectation for Hronek will be the ability to carry his own pairing. Under that scenario, the expectations for point-totals probably decrease, but then the defensive responsibilities probably increase.

If, on the other hand, Hronek and Hughes stick together, then the playoffs become the real big test for the pairing. The Hughes/Hronek pairing got physically bullied at times during last postseason, and while Hughes was able to skate and think his way out of it, having two players under the gun on the same pairing was not a recipe for success.

If Hronek is going to be Hughes’ partner well into May, he’s going to need to find a way to respond better to that physical pressure. Being the kind of partner that elevates Hughes’ game year-round, as opposed to hampering it when it counts the most, is perhaps the most important expectation ahead of Hronek for 2024/25.

Heck, if he can just do that, folks probably won’t say much about the point totals at all.