It’s Christmas, and we here at CanucksArmy thought it’d be fitting to give our ideas of what might be on the Vancouver Canucks’ Christmas Wishlist, whether that be to Santa Claus or, in this case, the blueline for some improved team defence.
You know Myers and Soucy and Hronek and Juulsen
Brännström and Vinny and Derek and Friedman
But do you recall
The most famous defenceman of all?
Quinn the exhausted captain…
When I ask for better defence on the Vancouver Canucks on my Christmas list, am I asking for a quality addition to the team’s defensive forces or improved performances from their existing blue line? The answer is yes.
I suppose they could be threatened with coal in their Christmas stockings, but that seems like a last-ditch incentive by Rick Tocchet.
What appears to be plaguing the Canucks’ defensive efforts at the moment is a lack of confidence. Other than the Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek top pairing, there hasn’t been a truly reliable defensive core this year or really a core to speak of at all. This is becoming increasingly problematic, with Hronek recovering from lower-body surgery and on LTIR until at least the end of January. Hughes may be the elite talent he is, but it doesn’t mean he should have to be out there on his own. No one accomplishes anything great in a vacuum, and it must feel much better when you’re truly accomplishing things as a group rather than through lopsided game impact charts. Hughes may be the leader of this group, but he needs support from his teammates here, and a united front and group effort have never been more needed.
I am growing weary of watching the second and third pairings giving away the puck when it’s entirely unnecessary or chipping it off the boards countless times, expecting different results. Most Canucks defencemen with the puck look like me, panicking when a friend from high school hands me their newborn baby. What am I supposed to do with this? Why are you trusting me with it? Can someone else please take it instead?
Either the message from the coaching staff isn’t getting through, or they don’t have enough faith in their own playmaking abilities. Playing it safe and panicking, whether under pressure or not, is actually causing them more mistakes and turnovers than the alternative of making confident moves with the puck. I would rather see attempts at breakout passes that don’t result in an attack or scoring chances than no attempts at all.
Take Saturday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators.
Brady Tkachuk is on Noah Juulsen, who is probably crying, screaming, and throwing up, so he dumps the puck. Brock Boeser fails to connect on the pass, Claude Giroux picks it up at the blue line, and before you know it, it’s through traffic and in the back of the net.
This is not to pick on Juulsen particularly, but this is just one egregious example of a bigger issue at play. Juulsen himself actually had a decent week in the lineup, but it seems like Canucks defencemen are on a rotation of having great weeks followed by two or three really bad weeks.
Again, this is happening to more than just Juulsen.
You don’t know what to expect from them from game to game. Players such as Juulsen, Tyler Myers, and Carson Soucy will look “on” for a game, backchecking and easing the load on the forward group by trying to break out of their own zone with purpose rather than dumping. Then suddenly, in the next game, it’s like they’re emergency recalls and not NHL regulars. Derek Forbort has hardly played, and Vincent Desharnais is not working out the way I think anyone hoped.
What of the other new addition to the defence group, Erik Brännström? He can move the puck, that’s for sure. That’s part of the reason why seeing him out of the lineup has been frustrating – but I do understand his downside. Though a puck-mover, he couldn’t quite seem to generate the offence that was promised while he was with the Ottawa Senators, and he would experience defensive slumps. He never quite worked out in Ottawa after being the central piece in the Mark Stone deal with Vegas.
Brännström put up six points in his first month as a Canuck before hitting a wall, with a goal against the Detroit Red Wings on December 1st being his seventh point and last score sheet appearance. Since his initial call-up to the team and run of success, he’s suffered somewhat, coming back down to earth with a minus-three rating. Considering Brännström came to Vancouver for very little – a fourth-round pick and Tucker Poolman’s salary off of LTIR – he’s been a solid defensive depth pick-up for the value. But he can’t change the blue line on his own, and he definitely can’t change anything if he’s about to be a consistent healthy scratch.
If the Canucks’ cap accrual allows them to pick up that fabled to-four defenceman that we’ve all been looking forward to at the trade deadline, you could see it as the Poolman deal bringing two defencemen to the Canucks; if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person.
One single consistent puck-moving defenceman is all I ask on my Christmas list. Or maybe the real puck-moving defenceman was inside the blue line all along, like the spirit of Christmas in a holiday movie. But I digress. The point here is that you don’t have to panic and pass the puck at the first sign of danger like a game of hot potato.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good old defenceman fight.
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