On Thursday, we dropped the first edition of our quarter season report cards for the 2024-25 Vancouver Canucks, starting with the forwards. Multiple people felt we were too easy with the grades in that one, and I don’t necessarily disagree. It should be a lot easier to manage the grades for this one though, because today, we’re dishing out letter grades for the Vancouver Canucks’ defencemen and goaltenders.

Now, a miss in the first edition of this mini-series was not establishing a clear criteria. So, to be clear, that criterion is two letter grades combined from 1) expectations relative to pre-season expectations and 2) expectations relative to cap hit. It’s why a player like Kiefer Sherwood got a resounding A+, while Jake DeBrusk, who has more points than Sherwood, got hit with a C+. Make sense? Good! Let’s dive into these grades.

Let’s get this one out of the way early, because as you already know, Quinn Hughes has far and away been the Canucks’ best player this season. Hughes has been absolutely dominant through the first quarter of the season, and is in what right now looks like a pretty clear two-horse race for the Norris Trophy once again. His impact is so evident that he’s even getting love for the Hart Trophy, although it’s obviously very difficult for a defenceman to walk away with that trophy. That being said, Hughes has been the Canucks’ best player by a fairly wide margin in almost every game this season. On top of that, he’s also on pace to put up even more points than he did last season when he won the Norris, all while somehow making an even stronger defensive impact. Not to mention, he’s emerged as an even more dangerous shooting threat this season. For all that (and more that we haven’t even mentioned), he gets an A+.

The point totals haven’t been there for Filip Hronek the way they were at the start of last season, but that’s not the only reason he finds himself with a B+. Hronek may have even gotten a B or B- if it weren’t for that stellar performance against Ottawa where he stepped up big time in the absence of Hughes. Hronek is hurt right now, but that showing against the Senators certainly makes me wonder if he can finally be trusted to drive his own pairing once he returns. Nonetheless, the baseline expectations for Hronek are to play with Hughes and ensure he can be at his best, so Hronek certainly isn’t far off there. But with just nine points through 21 games — not to mention some defensive miscues along the way — Hronek gets a B+.

Maybe we shouldn’t have started with the top pairing. But maybe we should have, because it helps illustrate just how bad the bottom four defenceman have been. And not even relative to Hughes and Hronek, we’re talking relative to the individual expectations for each player. Chief among those players is Carson Soucy, who has been something of a tire fire all season long. After a strong first season in Vancouver in which he established himself as the team’s clear number three defenceman, Soucy formed one of the NHL’s worst pairings with Tyler Myers over the first quarter of the season, and is still looking to find his game and look even close to the defenceman we saw last season. Soucy’s puck-moving ability and defensive awareness have been absent from his game this season, and that’s led to bad on-ice results.

The main reason Tyler Myers doesn’t also get a “D” like his defence partner is that the expectations for Soucy were higher heading into this season. A C- is still a low grade, however, and is one Myers is deserving of for his play through the start of this season. Expectations for Myers were higher after signing a three-year contract extension with the Canucks this past season, and after the solid year he put together in 2023-24. Soucy and Myers formed a solid shutdown pair that the Canucks were able to lean on during the playoffs, but this year, the duo has been nearly unplayable.

The expectations for Erik Brännström were basically non-existent when the Canucks acquired him as a supposed throw-in in the deal that sent Tucker Poolman’s cap hit to the Colorado Avalanche. The Canucks had him on waivers right after the trade, and after a strong start in Abbotsford and some absences on the blueline early on this season, Brännström got his NHL shot with the Canucks and never looked back. Brännström spent the first quarter of the 2024-25 season excelling in very sheltered third-pairing minutes, and now is trying to prove himself as capable of handling a bigger workload. For the first quarter of his season though, Brännström certainly exceeded expectations, and relative to his $900,000 cap hit, he’s absolutely giving the Canucks value they weren’t expecting to get this season.

It’s been a run of unfortunate events for Derek Forbort to open his Canucks career, and we’re looking forward to him getting back into the lineup and finally catching a break. He’s played just four games (and not because of healthy scratches) and can’t be properly graded as a result.

Expectations weren’t exactly high for Vincent Desharnais after signing a two-year deal worth $4 million this past offseason, and yet the big defenceman has come up considerably short. Desharnais missed some time with an injury, but has also been a healthy scratch and has struggled through the 12 games he has played. Desharnais has been caught out of position and failed to break the puck out of the Canucks’ zone cleanly many times this season, and obviously wasn’t brought in for his offensive chops. He is part of the reason the Canucks’ non-Hughes minutes have been such a disaster this season.

What were you expecting from Noah Juulsen this season? The answer is obviously not much, but it’s clear that he’s worse than he was last year, when he was at least serviceable as a 6/7 defenceman. In fact, there were times last season where Juulsen was among the Canucks’ more trusted defencemen. This season, however, a lot of the things that Juulsen did to simplify his game are seemingly gone, and his struggles have been real this season. The big question now is if he and the rest of the defence can improve over the final three-quarters of the season and, hopefully, into the playoffs.

Now, if you read this site in the offseason, you likely read a lot about Kevin Lankinen. If you listen to Canucks Conversation, you certainly did. I was a big fan of Lankinen’s game and the results he’s posted so far don’t exactly come as a surprise to me. That being said, he’s been among the Canucks’ most important players this season, and given his low cap hit and what was expected of him heading into the year, he’s certainly an A. A better home record would have him at an A+, but that slight blemish on the first quarter of his season can’t be ignored, either.

Expectations were high for Arturs Silovs after the 2024 playoffs. So high that very few people were sounding the alarm when the Canucks were gearing up to open the campaign with a tandem of Silovs and Jiri Patera. Silovs has had all sorts of struggles this season, and with Thatcher Demko set to return soon, we’ve likely seen the last of Silovs at the NHL level for the foreseeable future. An .847 save percentage and just one win isn’t going to cut it.

What did you think of our grades? Let us know in the comments section below!

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