Oh baby, a triple!
The Vancouver Canucks took down the Chicago Blackhawks by a 6-3 scoreline, a convincing victory against a rebuilding team. They have to win against teams that they are supposed to, and in this one, it was clear that Vancouver was ready to assert themselves out of the gate. The depth pieces got them on the board and made their impact felt, while the star players mostly played like star players. Sure, the quality of the competition wasn’t the best – but a good win is a good win.
Here’s the win, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Game Flow

Scoring four goals in the first period is a pretty nice thing. Despite the Canucks only having a 40.54 CF% share in the opening frame, they managed to produce a 1.17 xGF at 5v5, the most of any period last night. That was enough to give them a 57.45 xGF% share, handily controlling the expected goals. From that point on, Vancouver shut the game down. They held a comfortable xGF% and CF% share advantage through the second and third periods, with Chicago unable to break a total of 0.40 xGF in any single frame.

Heat Map

Despite the hot spot in the crease for each of the teams, there really wasn’t a ton of scoring chances to speak of. Across all situations, the scoring chances stood at 24-21 for the Blackhawks with a dead even 11-11 split in high-danger chances. At 5v5, those numbers dropped to 17-15 and 9-6 respectively in favour of the Canucks. Winning the 5v5 chance battle is usually a good thing, considering that the majority of the game is played at even strength, and Vancouver continued the trend of playing solid team defence that snuffed out any chances that the opposition tried to generate.

Individual Advanced Stats

Corsi Champ: Quinn Hughes continues his great form to start the season. The Canuck captain was dominant during his shifts, posting a team-high 71.88 CF% at even strength. Vancouver was outshooting Chicago 14-4 while their top defenceman was playing, with three of the four 5v5 goals coming during that span as well. Yes, it’s six games in, but Hughes has been consistently humming on the back end and it’s exciting to imagine him keeping this up as the rest of the team rounds into form.
Corsi Chump: Tyler Myers brings up the rear in the Corsi department, playing primarily against Chicago’s middle 6 and producing a 34.38 CF%. It was a return to form of sorts for him, a little chaotic at best. He and Carson Soucy were not convincing as top 4 defencemen against the Blackhawks of all teams, Myers facing down the team’s worst xGA of 0.98 while being on ice for 2 goals against at 5v5. Again, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have his place in the lineup, but performances like these aren’t confidence-inspiring.
xGF: Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Quinn Hughes led the way in both raw xGF and xGF%, recording a 1.14 and 86.43 respectively. He only faced a 0.18 xGA, the third-lowest on the team, while helping the Canucks to a 9-3 edge in scoring chances and a 5-1 lead in high-danger chances. The impact that he has on this Vancouver team is immense, and it’s almost strange to take it for granted that he will be one of the best players every single night.
GSAx: While this wasn’t quite the shutout performance from the previous game, Kevin Lankinen did his fair share to backstop the Canucks to a win against his old team. With the Blackhawks recording a 3.11 xGF on the night, Lankinen finished with a 0.11 GSAx, not the most sparkling of numbers but definitely solid enough. Two goals came off of high-danger chances, while the other goal was a middle-danger chance. Definitely not the worst performance from what appears to be Vancouver’s starter until Demko returns.

Statistical Musings

Getting depth offence: Something that stood out was the deployment of Sherwood-Blueger-Heinen, who saw the most ice time of any forward line last night at 5v5. Granted, it was in the face of weak opposition and in a game that was pretty much sown up after the first period, but this unit also played an important role in getting the Canucks to that point. Their CF% of 50.00 and xGF of 0.42 was enough to put them as the second-best line last night, though their xGF% of 45.48 was the second-worst. Still, not awful in the context of the team, a solid performance that they took with and ran. Sherwood once again was a wrecking ball, dishing out 12 hits, while Heinen finally got the monkey off his back as he tallied his first two goals as a Canuck.
Reinserting Bains: One change in the lineup from the Flyers game saw Daniel Sprong sit out after arguably his strongest two-way performance of the season in favour of Arshdeep Bains slotting back in. The Surrey, BC native effectively replaced Sprong on the fourth-line wing as he kept things low-event and tidy. His own CF% of 64.71 was the second-best on the team while facing the lowest xGA on the roster (0.16). Bains didn’t drag down the fourth line at all as they picked up a goal in the dying moments of the game.
A weird occurrence: Not usually does this happen. The Jake DeBrusk – JT Miller – Brock Boeser line finished rock bottom in xGF% amongst Canuck forward lines and it really wasn’t even close. Only generating a 0.02 xGF, a team-low, their xGF% stood at 6.01 against the Blackhawks. Seriously, that’s below 10 percent against Chicago, in a game where Vancouver won 6-3. They didn’t seem to contribute anything overly negative, but those numbers were eye-catching in all the wrong ways.
Getting unlucky: The plays that the Nils Höglander – Elias Pettersson – Conor Garland line was making were looking darn good. Despite finishing as the worst CF% amongst the forward lines, they posted the best xGF of 0.6 and xGF% of 66.43. They also had the most high-danger chances and scoring chances of any forward group too. Sooner or later, the dam will break, because that trio does look really dangerous at any given moment.

As a team

CF% – 49.12% HDCF% – 50.00% xGF% – 47.87%
The Canucks got ahead early and kept the game out of reach of the Blackhawks. It was a good performance where they shut things down, getting goals where they could and making sure that they saw the game out to the end. There weren’t too many negatives to take away from this game aside from the Soucy-Myers pairing, and that’s all that could really be asked for.
Vancouver returns home to face the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday.
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