The Golden State was a gold mine for wins.
The Vancouver Canucks closed out their road trip with a 4-2 win against the Los Angeles Kings, playing some excellent defensive hockey that gave up very little to the opposition. They made sure that the Kings couldn’t even sniff the road to a comeback in this one, while their own best players were stepping up and contributing. While the calibre of competition amongst the California teams isn’t exactly the greatest, Vancouver didn’t make a meal of things and drop points where they shouldn’t have – and that’s always a good thing.
Here’s the win, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Game Flow

With how little of the first period was played at 5v5, the game flow line looks a little tepid for how Vancouver actually did in the opening frame. It wasn’t particularly close – during the limited even-strength time, the Canucks held a 75.00 CF% share and 88.73 xGF% advantage. Accounting for the myriad of power plays and penalty kills, those numbers dropped to 66.67 and 74.37 respectively, but even those numbers showed the advantage that Vancouver was able to establish in the first. That momentum carried forth into the second period, where the Canucks continued to suppress anything that the Kings tried to muster up while adding to their own lead. The third saw LA control the CF% battle for the first time in the game with 60.87, but even with that, Vancouver still held a 72.49 xGF% to close out the game without too many issues.

Heat Map

This might not look like the most impressive heat map ever, which it isn’t, but it more than demonstrated the kind of effort that’s allowed Vancouver to pull off three straight wins even if they weren’t generating the most chances offensively. Across all situations, the scoring chances stood at 32-22 for the Canucks, Vancouver having a 13-10 edge in high-danger chances as well. That isn’t what is impressive – it’s the 5v5 numbers. The Kings only had a total of 3 high-danger chances at even strength, the Canucks snuffing out anything that they tried to create at 5v5. If you’re only giving up 3 high-danger chances on 5v5 play across any game, that’s generally going to give you a really good chance to win hockey games.

Individual Advanced Stats

Corsi Champ: Again, this is not a surprise to anyone. Quinn Hughes led the Canucks with a nice 69.23 CF%, once more pacing this group from the back end. Against the Kings, Hughes looked to have the puck on a string, simply doing whatever he pleased whenever he wanted. Surprisingly, the 84.50 xGF% didn’t lead the team but still contributed to one of Hughes’ best performances of the year – which seems to be stacking up ever since the opening game of the season.
Corsi Chump: One of only three players to finish the game below 50.00 CF%, Vincent Desharnais brought up the rear with a 35.71 CF%. That sat him at -29.59 CF% rel to team average, but the defenceman still managed to break slightly above even with a 50.43 xGF% (even if that was the second-worst tally on the team). Desharnais did see a lot of time against Quinton Byfield, which may explain some of the numbers that he put up. Still, considering that the defenceman got 71.43% of his faceoff starts in the offensive zone, and 100% of his shift starts in the offensive zone as well, the numbers aren’t the kindest to his performance last night.
xGF: Leading the way in xGF% was… Carson Soucy? Yup, the much-maligned defender managed to turn in one of his best defensive performances of the season to lead Vancouver with a 90.46 xGF%. A big part of that was because of his team-best 0.05 xGA, only facing down one scoring chance and zero high-danger chances. Considering how rough the season has been for Soucy to start, it’s encouraging to see this kind of result from him, and one hopes that this is just the spark for a turnaround in form for the rest of the campaign. Filip Hronek led the team in raw xGF with a 0.83 on the night.
GSAx: Kevin Lankinen continues to dazzle. The stopgap netminder is stopping opposing teams in their tracks, as he finished last night with a 0.30 GSAx. Again, the Finn is delivering more than his fair share to give Vancouver a chance to win hockey games, and that’s all that could be asked of him right now. The two goals scored against Lankinen came from a middle-danger chance and a low-danger chance, so ones that he probably would like to have back. But other than that, given everything, Lankinen was nowhere near a detriment to the team.

Statistical Musings

Pettersson continues to find a groove: Once more, the points weren’t there, but Elias Pettersson has been showing some signs of underlying life. The Swede turned in the team’s second-best xGF of 0.75 to go with the third-best xGF% of 85.63 and third-best CF% of 62.50. His two-way game was on full display as the matchup appeared to have Pettersson and Anze Kopitar going head-to-head, with Pettersson prevailing in this one. Kopitar’s CF% stood at 33.33 with a 0.00 xGF% to boot, completely unable to get anything going while Pettersson was playing against him. The points are something that everyone wants to see, but there’s no question that the game is slowly starting to come back to Pettersson.
The invisible Daniel Sprong: Rick Tocchet had a firm leash on Aatu Räty and Daniel Sprong last night, the only two forwards to finish below 10:00 TOI that completed the game. This made sense for the pair of them, given the numerous special teams that featured last night, but while the young Finn was at least breaking even with his share metrics, Sprong wasn’t. The Dutch winger posted a team-low 32.87 xGF%, the only Canuck to finish below 50.00. Sprong didn’t see much of the ice in the third, which made sense as Tocchet wanted to close out the game with anyone but him.
Does Nils Höglander belong in the top 6?: With Brock Boeser unfortunately exiting the game early, Nils Höglander found himself bumped to play alongside JT Miller and Jake DeBrusk. While the Kings were intent on matching Philip Danault against this unit, meaning that a very competent defensive center was lined up against them, the results that this line turned in still weren’t the best. Of all lines to play more than 1:30 TOI together, the trio turned in the worst CF% (45.00), xGA (0.32), and xGF% (41.65) while featuring the third-most minutes. Those aren’t exactly encouraging, and comparing that to the numbers that this line usually turns in with Boeser alongside them is definitely quite the contrast.

As a team

CF% – 50.00% HDCF% – 56.52% xGF% – 64.41%
The Canucks controlled this contest handily. LA couldn’t manage to get much of anything going if at all, while Vancouver continued to hold pace. Their defensive game looks a lot more organized than it was at the start of the year, helping out Lankinen between the pipes. The offensive chance generation could be better, but the Canucks are addressing it bit by bit. The way they played on the California road trip was encouraging, even if the quality of competition wasn’t at its best. Now, the real test is if they can continue to improve, even in the face of tougher opposition.
Vancouver returns home to host the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
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