The Vancouver Canucks made the difficult decision to move off not only their leading scorer from last season but also their emotional leader in JT Miller.

But as you say goodbye to one player and the legacy they left, it’s time to welcome a fresh face to the franchise. And while he might not be the exact replacement, Filip Chytil’s success in Vancouver will be linked to Miller for the rest of his Canucks career.

Chytil, along with Victor Mancini and a 2025 first-round pick, were acquired by the Canucks in exchange for Miller. Chytil was the main part of the package, and he lived up to some expectations in his Canucks debut.

We already touched on what to expect from the 25-year-old ahead of Sunday’s game. But to reiterate, he’s a 6’2″, 210-lb forward with the speed and puck skills to cause damage with open space – which you’ll see a lot of in the clips below.

The Czech centreman can score goals but isn’t known as a premier sniper. He uses his speed to beat defenders and utilizes his quick release from close range — as he showed in his debut — but struggles to beat goaltenders from distance.

While he’s an entertaining player, one red flag about Chytil is his history of concussions.

The 25-year-old has suffered through multiple concussions throughout his young career. His latest came last season when he suited up for only 10 games but displayed his talent by registering six assists in that span. As a former first round pick, Chytil clearly has the talent to make some noise. And who knows? Maybe now that he’s given an expanded role in Vancouver’s top six instead of playing in Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck’s shadow, we see Chytil take the next step and breakout — as long as he can stay healthy.

Well, enough yapping. Let’s dive into our shift-by-shift analysis of Filip Chytil’s debut in our series called, The Tape.

Chytil starts his Canucks career with an offensive zone shift. He was waved out of the faceoff, so he was playing the wing after the draw. He goes to the opposite wing off the draw, opening his stance up to receive a pass in a semi-threatening shooting position. The puck didn’t go his way but continued to wheel through the offensive zone and to the slot area.

But the real reason for this clip is his movement in the offensive zone after that, specifically his activity in the cycle game.

Conor Garland, being the little engine that could with the puck in the zone dances around. But watch Chytil. Once he and Garland are level together, Chytil jumps back behind him to give Garland the cycle option. Unfortunately, Garland doesn’t catch it until he’s turned around.

Dakota Joshua and Garland were so successful last year playing along the boards and cycling the puck while their third sat around the net in a scoring position. If Chytil can become a weapon along the outside and in cycle game with them, it will allow for so much more movement around the offensive zone and unpredictability that can hopefully bring the excellence back to this line.

We stay on the same shift, as now Chytil is backchecking. His man receives the outlet pass, but Chytil doesn’t give him an inch of space. He breaks up the pass to regain possession and sends it to his defender.

He then curls off, wheels around, picks up speed, and heads through the neutral zone. The pass goes off his skate, but he makes a great recovery and enters the zone with speed, something this team has long lacked. Chytil does lose the puck, but it was nice to see how he gained speed through the neutral zone and turned that into a quick zone entry.

What won’t be shown in this clip is the start of his shift, where Chytil, again, wheels through the neutral zone with speed. But he saw an advantage he had on one of the Red Wings defenders and slapped his stick on the ice to call for the pass. He got the pass and made a quick pass to Garland on the outside for a rush chance. However, the play wouldn’t amount to anything, hence no clip.

You can see he does it again on this play, tapping his stick on the ice for the pass. Chytil takes the bank pass off the boards without really losing any of his speed. As he’s coming down the wing, he’s able to get the shot off, but sent the distance shot wide.

We’ve got to show the good with the bad. Garland misses Chytil’s missed shot, the Red Wings pick up the puck, head the other way, and Alex DeBrincat beats Kevin Lankinen off the rush.

It’s not really Chytil’s fault on this play, but more or less just wanted to point out his instincts to realize his advantage and not be scared to call for the puck.

More on his board play, as once he notices Tyler Myers’ only option is to send the puck down low and makes himself an option down low. He’s able to brush off the check of Andrew Copp, using his body to protect the puck and drive to the net front, where he nearly beats Alex Lyon five-hole.

This was the tail end of a lengthy shift, as the Canucks were hemmed in their zone for 40 seconds after that near chance from Chytil above.

Chytil does a good job playing the F3 position (defensive centre) to shoulder-check and find his man while skating through the slot. He follows his check and beats him to the cycle. Chytil doesn’t get the puck at first but skates behind the net, lifting the stick of a Red Wings player and making the smart play to send the puck off the glass and out of the zone while absorbing the hit.

Solid defensive zone work in his first shift on his own end.

Just a quick clip here, but the 25-year-old sure has some confidence in his own end. Chytil skates into the defensive zone and picks up Filip Hronek’s back pass along the boards. He skates around the forechecking Dylan Larkin but is quickly met by Marco Kasper. Chytil dances behind the net, avoiding a turnover and sends his own back pass to Noah Juulsen, who has the time and space to send a stretch-saucer pass to Garland?

After a poor defensive zone turnover — which is covered in areas of concern — Chytil makes up for his mistake. He picks up the puck from his own defensive zone corner and just does what he does best: skates.

Chytil has no fear of skating the puck out of his own zone. He uses his speed to get past the Red Wings forecheckers and dekes out of the next pressuring forward. He does lose control of the puck but quickly regains possession in the neutral zone and just adds to his speed heading into the offensive zone.

With all the confidence in the world, he outwaits the defender and takes him wide. Now, he’s got a ton of speed, and once he turns the corner, his playmaking antennas pop out, and he’s looking for the set-up pass.

There was a point where he had Garland open for a one-timer option. However, he waits a little too long to feed the pass, where now he’s feeding it through two defenders. The pass does get through, and Garland just fans on it. But it looks like Tarasenko was already in the shooting lane and likely would have blocked the shot, even if Garland got the shot off.

But hey, that chemistry is going to come; this was only the first period. Chytil will learn his teammate’s tendencies and where they like to line up in the offensive zone so he can feed them earlier. Nonetheless, the end-to-end rush awareness around the net to find the open man was encouraging.

Again, Chytil picks up the puck along the boards and pulls off a nice sequence of passing with Garland. Once Chytil gets the puck back, with no defender to stop him, he charges the net and sends a sneaky backhand pass through the crease that just misses Garland. The pass was so close to connecting that if Garland is a left-shot, maybe we’re talking about Chytil’s first point as a Canuck.

There is not much analysis on this play, but just watch him skate through the offensive zone with absolutely no panic. He doesn’t force anything. He just waits to see if anything opens up and makes the smart pass when he needs to. Chytil skated with the puck for 10 seconds on this play.

We finally get to his goal. While he wasn’t buzzing in terms of shot production up to this point, he and his line spent a lot of time in the offensive zone, and it seemed like it was only a matter of time before their line connected. And sometimes, it’s just right place, right time.

Garland carries the puck into the zone but gets checked and loses the puck. However, the Red Wings clearing attempt goes right on the stick of Chytil. There is next to no room for him to maneuver his way through, but he does it anyway. Chytil shoots forward, protects the puck and pushes toward the left side. He takes an extra stride and outwaits the already committed Lyon and finds the opening between his right arm and his body to light the lamp for his first as a Canuck.

Talk about poise on a play to tie the game up halfway through the third period.

Also, I admire his celebration after his goal. Am I the only one who noticed that nobody other than Garland would actually celebrate when they scored? It was encouraging to see, considering the body language lately.

Chytil would finish the game with one goal on three shots, with a minus-1 rating in 20:03 minutes of ice time. He also went 9/12 in the faceoff dot, good for 75% on the night, which was the highest of all four Canuck centremen.

The confidence is real for Chytil. But sometimes, that confidence overtakes making the right play.

Chytil does a great job to poke the puck free from a neutral zone battle, but doing a spin and sending a no-look pass to the middle of the ice in his own end is a no-no. The pass goes straight to the tape of Vladimir Tarasenko for a slot shot.

Now, there wasn’t a defender in the zone he could have passed it back to. But he had other options. The smarter player would be to ring the puck all the way around the boards to Marcus Pettersson on the far boards. Or, why not turn back up the ice? Andrew Copp was behind Chytil. If he moved his feet up the ice, he positions himself to be able to find a better pass out of danger.

Those mistakes will often end up in the back of your net and will certainly not impress Tocchet.

This didn’t amount to anything bad. But watch Chytil (and Joshua) get caught flat-footed puck-watching. Now, there was a puck battle behind the net, so he knew there wasn’t really any danger. However, if that puck goes array, there’s a wide-open lane through the slot for that streaming defenceman to cut into and get an uncontested scoring chance.

He wasn’t playing the F3 during this defensive zone shift, but when he sees Garland go help down low, maybe glide into the front of the net here, just to avoid disaster.

We head to overtime, where Chytil was honoured with the start after a strong game.

However, this was my least favourite part of his game. Look, I understand he’s tired. This is the most minutes he’s played in a game this season and only the fifth time in his career he played over 20 minutes of ice time per game. The first time he was traded, the travel, having to learn new systems, and the lack of sleep that he shared post-game.

But there’s got to be a little bit more urgency on the backcheck in overtime than this.

Chytil was slow to get back on the Red Wings game-winning goal as well. He coasted from the blueline in. By the eye test, that’s not a great look. But we can forgive him this once, given all the circumstances weighing on him.

We discussed this earlier, but Chytil is great on the boards. As the shifts went on, it became increasingly noticeable that he’s not afraid to get involved, and more often than not, he’s going to win the puck.

Here, he sends a pass to Garland before entering the zone, who then sends it around the boards and behind the net for Chytil to skate onto. Chytil stops up behind the net and looks to have cornered himself in. But he just keeps pushing through, evading the two Red Wings defenders and recovers from having his stick tied up quickly enough to poke the puck out to Garland in the faceoff dot.

What could have easily been a quick turnover led to the Canucks getting set up and some offensive zone time due to the board work from Chytil.

This Joshua-Chytil-Garland line has potential. Closely watching each shift, that line was often in the offensive zone. If they weren’t, they were able to quickly break the puck out – primarily due to Chytil’s speed. We’ll see if they stick with how often Tocchet likes to change up his lines, but we could see some of the same spark the Joshua-Garland line had last year but with Chytil as their centre.

Chytil oozes confidence. He’s not afraid to have the puck on this stick. He’s not afraid to carry the puck into the zone. He’ll take players on one-on-one and most likely beat them. Which is all encapsulated in this clip:

Solid defensive zone play. He often went in and helped puck battles and either skated the puck out himself or made the smart outlet pass to clear the zone.

When the defence had the puck in their own zone as the team reset before a rush, Chytil would often stay back and want to be that outlet pass to take the puck up the ice. His ability to use his speed to turn the tides was evident, especially on this play:

Although, one thing he needs to work on is his puck control. Chytil is a fantastic puck carrier, but when he makes these plays dangling between the team, he occasionally loses the puck, leaving us to wonder what might have been had he possessed the puck the whole way through.

Now, he isn’t perfect by any means. There were still some concerns with his backchecking in overtime and getting caught puck-watching, and you’ll frequently be hesitant to see him take a routine hit out of the gate here.

However, he brings an added element to this Canucks forward core that we, quite frankly, haven’t seen all season. Somebody who prefers to carry the puck in rather than dump-and-chase.

It was just one game. We’ll see if this is the true player they have. Chytil has a career average of just 14:05 minutes per game but is hungry to prove he can be a top-six centre at the NHL level. But if his debut was just a sign of what’s to come, Chytil could be a more appealing asset than originally thought.

What do you think, Canucks fans? Were you happy with Filip Chytil’s debut? Let us know in the comments below!