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The Statsies: Buium and Rossi make strong statements in Canucks win against Devils
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Photo credit: © John Jones-Imagn Images
Michael Liu
Dec 15, 2025, 14:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 15, 2025, 13:46 EST
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And so begins the rebuild era.
The Vancouver Canucks topped the New Jersey Devils by a 2-1 scoreline, fully committing to the ethical tank with a pretty solid performance on the road. It was by no means the most exciting contest that this team had ever played, and certainly the matinee was a little bit sleepy when it came to actual in-game action. However, there were plenty of narratives and things to keep an eye on, including the three new faces in the lineup that this Canucks team acquired for the best defenceman in franchise history.
Here’s the win, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Game Flow

Vancouver got two quick goals in succession, and that was pretty much all they needed. The first period was the only period that the Canucks were ever in the driver’s seat in terms of share metrics, coming in at 64.71 CF% and 70.46 xGF%. After that, though, it was all New Jersey, with the home side racking up a 67.2 xGF% in the second and an 84.06 xGF% in the third, with CF% over 60.00% during the same time span. However, all of those shares need to be contextualized in the fact that either team did all that much. Overall, the xGF split was a mere 1.61-0.8 for the Devils, both teams combining for 28 scoring chances and just 8 high-danger chances at 5v5. It was a low-key affair, which probably contributed to the Canucks win by not allowing the Devils to get too much traction for a comeback.

Heat Map

The heat map reflects the overall story of the game pretty darn well. At 5v5, New Jersey was up 16-12 in scoring chances and 6-2 in high-danger chances. Yes, that was literally all that these two teams managed to put together. The wide spread of green in the Devils’ attacking end was because they totalled a lot of chances, but at the same time never managed to get good concentration anywhere along the line. Vancouver should take some positives away from this, to be able to prevent a massive high-danger hot spot right in front of the crease.

Individual Advanced Stats

Corsi Champ: Linus Karlsson was dropped back into the bottom 6 and posted the team’s best CF% at 75.00. It was a more fitting role for him as things stood, the winger not making too much noise last night (much like the rest of his team). Karlsson’s 47.70 xGF% did rank him as the 6th-best Canuck in that category, but it was a marginal 0.01-0.01 xGF split that gave him that expected goals share. There really wasn’t too much to note about his performance besides the nice Corsi number – but that honestly could be a lot worse.
Corsi Chump: The tank commander David Kampf continues to reign supreme. Leading the team in TOI at 5v5, his numbers were absolutely putrid last night. A 12.50 CF% was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Kampf as the forward also recorded a team-worst 4.17 xGF%. He faced a 0-7 hole in scoring chances and 0-2 hole in high-danger chances, which just goes to show how badly even a low-event game like this one went for him. This was while centering the nominal second line, dragging both Conor Garland and Nils Hoglander down with him.
xGF: Jake DeBrusk broke out of his slump against New Jersey, tallying up a power play goal and a team-best 63.98 xGF%. His 0.32 xGF was the 5th-best on the team, while a 0.18 xGA was the second-best rank on this Canucks group. Other than that, there wasn’t too much to note about DeBrusk’s performance, but it was at least nice to see him find the scoresheet again after being ice cold for a hot second. Tyler Myers found himself leading this group with a 0.44 xGF while playing top pair minutes… is this 2009-10 again?
GSAx: Thatcher Demko balled out against New Jersey. While he wasn’t the busiest man in the world, he was certainly the busier of the two goalies as the Devils racked up 2.75 xGF against him. With a single middle-danger goal against, Demko finished with a 1.75 GSAx, which was far more in line with his usual performances to start off this season. Read that as healthy, as there was a clear drop in his numbers when Demko got hurt and tried to play through it.

Statistical Musings

New guys on the block: The trio of former Wild players made their debuts last night, and things went pretty darn solid. Of course, the headliner was Zeev Buium as the 20-year-old looked pretty darn at home in this Canucks lineup in a good way. Buium finished with the second-best CF% amongst defencemen at 63.33, while also recording the team’s second-best xGF% at 49.52. He was on ice for a 2-2 split in high-danger chances, which also means that he was on ice for all of the Canucks’ high-danger chances. Walking away with a goal and an assist on his Canucks debut is pretty tidy work for a future top 4 anchor.
Marco Rossi was inserted into the lineup as the stand-in top-line center, with Elias Pettersson still dealing with injury. The Austrian didn’t put up outstanding individual numbers (as did most Canucks in all honesty) but certainly provided jump in the lineup, some top-end skill that this team was sorely missing. Playing between DeBrusk and Brock Boeser, that line managed to tally a team-high 0.26 xGF and 61.21 xGF%. That’s the sort of contribution a first line should be making, and hopefully Rossi can build off this good momentum when he gets slotted in as the 2C.
As for Liam Ohgren, it was an unremarkable performance in the bottom 6, finishing with the third-worst CF% at 20.00 and second-worst xGF% at 4.60. He was on ice for the third-most xGA at 0.56 despite just playing 11:39 TOI at 5v5. Not the best, obviously, but there’s plenty of room for improvement here.

As a team

CF% – 40.40% HDCF% – 28.57% xGF% – 35.20%
The numbers might look ugly at first glance, because they are, but it wasn’t as if the Canucks got drastically outplayed by the Devils in this one. It was low-event game that saw the home team take a good advantage, but only after the Canucks were able to get in front of them. Considering the amount of games that this team should’ve won but didn’t as well, it was a decent gift – though they can’t win too much now that they’re back in a rebuild.
Vancouver heads into Madison Square Garden next, taking on the New York Rangers tomorrow.
Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com
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