Any team adding both Thatcher Demko and JT Miller to their roster mid-season would feel pretty fortunate, and the 2024/25 Vancouver Canucks are no exception. They’ve been without Demko since Game 1 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and without Miller since a November 17 game against Nashville, after which he began an indefinite leave of absence.

But now, without having to make so much as a single trade, the Canucks are about to make two colossal pickups. Demko is already back, having backed up Kevin Lankinen already, and his return to the starter’s crease is imminent. Miller, on the other hand, was reported this week to be targeting a Wednesday return to practice, and thus a return to the game-day lineup shortly thereafter.

Vancouver’s time without two of their greatest stars available is, then, almost at an end. But while the Canucks have no doubt missed both Demko and Miller immensely, they’ve also managed to survive their absences without suffering the direst of consequences.

As of this writing, the Canucks are 14-8-4 on the 2024/25 season, all without Demko having touched the ice for so much as a regular season minute. That’s good for a .615 point-percentage and third place in the Pacific Division.

In the eight games (and counting) without Miller, the Canucks have gone 5-3-1, essentially maintaining their overall point-percentage at .611. That’s a lot better than just treading water.

So how did the Canucks manage the long-term absences of first their starting goaltender, and then their heart-and-soul star centre?

The answer is by stepping up as a team. And, at the same time, stepping up as individuals.

Prior to Miller’s leave, had someone polled Canucks fans about who on the team most needed to give more, chances are good that the responses would have featured four names in particular most heavily, those being Elias Pettersson, Jake DeBrusk, Carson Soucy, and Tyler Myers.

And, minus Miller, giving more is exactly what those four have done.

The pressure was on Pettersson even before Miller departed. At that point, Pettersson had 11 points in 17 games on the season, which isn’t awful by 2C standards, but isn’t anything to write home about.

It’s certainly not 1C material. But thrust into that role, solo, without Miller, Pettersson stepped up into some of the strongest play and production of his career. The 13 points in nine games doesn’t even quite tell the whole story. Pettersson has been taking over games, with 11 of those 13 points coming at 5-on-5. Over those same nine games, Pettersson’s various possession and control stats are each among the team’s best, and that’s with all the added defensive attention and responsibilities that would normally be headed Miller’s way.

This Pettersson renaissance would have been celebrated at any point in the season. That it has come now, when the team arguably needed it most, bodes well for his continuing to do what the team needs of him.

The team’s marquee free agent signing certainly took a minute to get going. A mere 10 points and just three goals through the first 17 games of the season had some feeling buyer’s remorse, but when it was time for DeBrusk to step up, he did so in a big way.

He’s always been a streaky scorer, but then this is more than just a hot-streak. Minus not just Miller, but also last season’s top goal-scorer Brock Boeser for an extended period, DeBrusk has started to put pucks in the net at an unprecedented rate. Nine goals in nine games is a great run for anyone, much less an individual suddenly thrown into the role of top sniper.

DeBrusk stepped up on the power play in particular, where Miller had been perhaps expected to be missed most. Five of those nine goals have come with the man advantage, and those are five of the seven PP goals in total that the Canucks have scored over that span.

The correlation between Soucy’s play and Miller’s absence is certainly not as direct as in the case of Pettersson and DeBrusk. But his play was a point of contention early in the season all the same, and it was true enough for folks to point out that, if the team’s second pairing wasn’t good enough with Miller on the ice, it certainly wasn’t going to be so without him.

That put pressure on the pairing, and Soucy in particular, to perform. And so they have.

Taking on consistently difficult matchups, Soucy was the only Canucks’ defender over this nine-game span to have an expected goals ratio above 50%. Not Quinn Hughes, but Soucy. His minutes have slowly crept up over time to where they’re now threatening to cross that 20-minute threshold, and the more he’s playing, the better Soucy looks. Two assists don’t really tell the full picture here, but a +3 rating does better. Each night, Soucy seems to be going out there against good-to-great competition and coming away at evens. At the very least, Soucy has played adequate top-four hockey since Miller exited the lineup, and that’s all the Canucks really need from him or could reasonably ask for of him.

Myers’ own step-up has been a little subtler than Soucy’s, but perhaps altogether more important. That’s due to the third concurrent core absence to strike the Canucks, that being Filip Hronek’s November 27 injury.

That left Myers as the team’s top-ranking RHD, sliding him up onto a pairing with Hughes. And while that’s a pretty plum assignment, and has resulted in perhaps some easier minutes for Myers, it’s also resulted in more minutes in general.

Myers was never supposed to be playing 21 minutes a night on this contract, at age 34. And yet, not only is he doing that, but he’s looking about as good as he ever has while doing so.

Again, the two points in nine games doesn’t really tell the whole story. Myers has been active offensively, skating effectively, and meshing well enough with Hughes. He, like Soucy, is at the very least giving the Canucks the exact sort of minutes they need right now, and that couldn’t come at a better time.

We’ll return to the original premise of the article. Had one polled those following the team as to which four needed to step it up most after the early goings of the 2024/25 season, the top four vote-getters would have probably been Pettersson, DeBrusk, Soucy, and Myers. That all four stepped up considerably to cover Miller’s (and Demko’s, and Boeser’s, and Hronek’s, and so on…) absence speaks well to the character of the team in general, and of these four individuals in specific.

It also bodes well for the Canucks continuing to step up when the situation calls for it.