The media surrounding the Vancouver Canucks would not be doing a good job of playing Battleship this summer. Why not? Because they’ve just been repeating “2C” the whole time!

Yes, there has been an awful lot of chatter about the Canucks’ second line centre, or perhaps their lack thereof, throughout the 2025 offseason. And, really, since JT Miller departed via trade in late January.

Actually, there’s been a lot of talk about the centre position in general. But when it comes to the very top of the depth chart, there’s really no doubt about who belongs there: it’s Elias Pettersson, and the team will live or die on his ability to bounce back to true 1C status – or not.

The 2C question, on the other hand, is a little bit more of a ‘who’ question.

For now, that spot on the depth chart is occupied by Filip Chytil, acquired as part of the package back for Miller from the New York Rangers. But there are some problems with that, even on paper. For one, Chytil is a certified LTIR regular who has played just 66 regular season games total over the past three seasons. His long-term health remains up in the air after his latest concussion.

Another issue is that, even if healthy, Chytil has a limited track record of success. He’s certainly looked good – really good – at times during his NHL career, but those injuries have robbed him of any consistency, and he’s thus far topped out at 45 points in a single season.

There are those who have faith in Chytil stepping into the 2C role ably, and who have hope that he’ll be both healthy and more productive in 2025-26. But, really, those are two different hopes that both have to hit in order for this to have a happy ending.

Others prefer a different approach to solving the 2C question – namely, the acquiring of another centre via trade. Ideally, this would be a centre more suited to the job over the long-term.

But what does it truly mean to be ‘suited’ for a job like second line centre? With the Canucks having enjoyed a depth chart that featured all over Pettersson, Miller, and Bo Horvat in recent years, the expectations may have got a little out of line in Vancouver. So, we thought we’d devise a little inquiry into finding a more concrete answer.

Here’s the methodology: we’re going to look at the roster of each time the Canucks have made the playoffs in their 55-year history and try to pick out the first and second centres on those teams. Then, we’re going to average out their point totals.

This is pretty unscientific – we don’t have intimate knowledge of the exact depth charts of teams back in the ‘70s, and there will be centres acquired partway through a season that don’t get counted. Some centres will not have played full seasons, either (then again, that’s also part o the equation for Chytil in the present moment.)

But for a rough sketch of “What amount of points has it traditionally taken to be a 2C on a Canucks playoff team?”, we think this method will at least result in some interesting results.

The 1974-75 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Andre Boudrias	77	16	62	78
Second Centre	Paulin Bordeleau	67	17	31	48

Right off the bat, we’ve got a slight controversy. Bordeleau was the second-highest point producer among centres, beating Bobby Lalonde by a single point. Now, of the two, Lalonde is certainly the player we’ve heard more about. But we’re sticking with our methodology and counting Bordeleau’s contributions as the 2C in this, the first ever Canuck playoff appearance.

The 1975-76 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Bobby Lalonde	71	14	36	50
Second Centre	Andre Boudrias	71	7	31	38

Lalonde gets his due a year later as the top centre on the team. Boudrias, on the other hand, was on the way out, and would sign with the WHA the very next year.

The 1978-79 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Thomas Gradin	76	20	31	51
Second Centre	Pit Martin	64	12	14	26

This is a low point for Canucks centres and overall team production in general, and might be more a reflection of unbalanced divisions making it easier to make the playoffs back then than anything else. The 26 points Martin achieved are the lowest total you’ll find on this list aside from shortened seasons.

The 1979-80 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Thomas Gradin	80	30	45	75
Second Centre	Ivan Boldirev	27	16	11	27

Gradin began a run here as the team’s 1C that remains underrated to this day.

Believe it or not, Boldirev became the team’s second-highest-scoring centre in just 27 games as a Canuck, going point-per-game. That counts for our list – it’s not like we’re discounting anyone with a higher point total or anything.

The 1980-81 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Thomas Gradin	79	21	48	69
Second Centre	Ivan Boldirev	72	26	33	59

It’s now the Gradin/Boldirev show, with the duo really taking over centre ice in Vancouver for a good long streak.

The 1981-82 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Thomas Gradin	76	37	49	86
Second Centre	Ivan Boldirev	78	33	40	73

The high-water mark for Gradin and Boldirev matches with the first time the Canucks went to the Stanley Cup Finals. The 73 points for Boldirev will stand as the most by a Vancouver 2C until Gradin himself slips down to that role.

The 1982-83 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Thomas Gradin	80	32	54	86
Second Centre	Ivan Hlinka	65	19	44	63

Here, Gradin stays strong, but Boldirev suffers injuries, allowing another Ivan to take his place. Yes, that is the same Ivan Hlinka the modern-day Under-18 tournament is named after. This was one of only two seasons he played in the NHL, and his better of the two.

The 1983-84 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Patrik Sundstrom	78	38	53	91
Second Centre	Thomas Gradin	75	21	57	78

Sundstrom came out of nowhere here, doubling his rookie point totals in his sophomore year to set a new record for Vancouver points that wouldn’t be surpassed until Pavel Bure arrived.

Gradin’s production, meanwhile, slipped a bit as he dropped down to 2C status, but was still above a point-per-game.

The 1985-86 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Patrik Sundstrom	79	18	48	66
Second Centre	Thomas Gradin	71	14	27	41

Sundstrom never again approached those 91 points, but his 66 points the year after were still tops among Canuck centres. At 29, Gradin was approaching the end of his North American career. One more season in Boston, and that it was back to Sweden for him.

The 1988-89 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Trevor Linden	80	30	29	59
Second Centre	Brian Bradley	71	18	27	45

Welcome to the Trevor Linden era. As a rookie, Linden only managed 59 points, but that was good enough for second in team scoring and first among centres. He was followed by a youngish Bradley, who would go on to put up some big numbers elsewhere.

The 1990-91 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Trevor Linden	80	33	37	70
Second Centre	Dan Quinn	64	18	31	49

Linden continued to ascend in his third NHL season, and he was joined by some newer faces, including Quinn, who arrived in a swap the previous year and didn’t need a full season of play to become the second-leading scorer among centres in 1990-91. Quinn is the only player on this list who was traded away from the Canucks mid-season, as he was shipped to St. Louis in a multi-player deal that included a new 2C.

The 1991-92 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Trevor Linden	80	31	44	75
Second Centre	Cliff Ronning	80	24	47	71

Ronning is the 2C who arrived back in the Quinn trade, and it did not take long to establish himself as a top producer. It’s going to be the Linden and Ronning Show all the way through to the end of the decade from here. It’s a five-year run that will only be equalled one day by Henrik Sedin and Ryan Kesler.

The 1992-93 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Cliff Ronning	79	29	56	85
Second Centre	Trevor Linden	84	33	39	72

Ronning takes over as the team’s top scorer in 1992-93, as his points jump forward and Linden’s take a slight step back. This will end up being far and away the best year of Ronning’s career, but not his only as the top-scoring centre.

The 1993-94 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Cliff Ronning	76	25	43	68
Second Centre	Trevor Linden	84	32	29	61

Hands up if you remembered that it was Ronning, not Linden, who was the Canucks’ top-scoring centre in the 1993-94 campaign that ended in the team’s second trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. We certainly didn’t! And he did it in eight fewer games than Linden, to boot.

Linden, for his part, would seem to have upped his defensive focus at this point in his career, presumably sacrificing personal points for team wins.

The 1994-95 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Trevor Linden	48	18	22	40
Second Centre	Cliff Ronning	41	6	19	25

Now, here’s a conundrum with our first lockout season. It’d be easy enough to throw this year out of the equation as an outlier, but there are two more of these coming, and that’s too much of our sample to discard.

So, for these league-shortened years, we’re going to introduce a multiplier. An 82-game schedule is 1.71 times longer than a 48-game schedule, so we’ll apply that multiplier to Ronning’s 25 points when we average the numbers, giving him an adjusted 43 points.

The 1995-96 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Trevor Linden	82	33	47	80
Second Centre	Cliff Ronning	79	22	45	67

Back to our regularly-scheduled programming, and back to Linden and Ronning at their best. However, this year also marked the end of an era. It’s the last time the Canucks would make the playoffs in the ‘90s, and by the time they made it again, some new centres will have taken over.

The 2000-01 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Andrew Cassels	66	12	44	56
Second Centre	Brendan Morrison	82	16	38	54

A brief two-season appearance here from Cassels, who did fine as a fill-in top-six centre, and the debut of Morrison, who is about to become the centrepiece of the West Coast Express – and start to seriously boost those point totals.

The 2001-02 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Brendan Morrison	82	23	44	67
Second Centre	Andrew Cassels	53	11	39	50

Morrison takes over as the top centre here, sliding in between Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi. Technically-speaking, however, it’s still Cassels with the higher point-per-game here in his final season as a Canuck before heading off to Columbus.

The 2002-03 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Brendan Morrison	82	25	46	71
Second Centre	Trevor Linden	78	8	31	39

Linden returns, and makes one last appearance on this list before we get fully embroiled in the Sedin era. This is Morrison’s best season, with his linemates getting 104 and 97 points, respectively, but Morrison himself being the ‘glue’ that held them together.

The 2003-04 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Brendan Morrison	82	22	38	60
Second Centre	Henrik Sedin	76	11	31	42

Morrison stays as the top centre for one more season, but now the Sedins have not just entered the picture, they’ve begun to build up momentum. Henrik will, of course, eventually more than double this point total, but this is where it all started to move in the right direction.

The 2006-07 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	10	71	81
Second Centre	Brendan Morrison	82	20	31	51

The first of several breakout campaigns for the Sedins, with Henrik just missing out on PPG status by a single point. Morrison hangs on for one more year as the 2C, but there’s been a very clear changing of the guard at this point. Just look at those assist totals!

The 2008-09 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	31	51	82
Second Centre	Ryan Kesler	82	26	33	59

Kesler had been around for a while already at this point, but he really stepped into himself as of this season, adding 22 points to his previous season and taking on more and more defensive responsibility with each passing moment. This is the start of a five-year run for this duo, and it’s no surprise that it coincides with the most successful period in franchise history.

The 2009-10 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	29	83	112
Second Centre	Ryan Kesler	82	25	50	75

Henrik and Kesler’s high-water marks came in the exact same season, with 112 and 75 points respectively, far and away the highest cumulative total between two Canucks centres ever achieved. This is also the season that the Canucks became recognized as a true, blue contender.

The 2010-11 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	19	75	94
Second Centre	Ryan Kesler	82	41	32	73

While his previous season featured two more total points, this was probably Kesler’s best overall season in his career. Those 41 goals speak for themselves, as does the one-and-only Selke Trophy win of his career. In fact, if we’re picking out a best season by a Canuck 2C ever, this is probably it, hands down.

The 2011-12 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	14	67	81
Second Centre	Ryan Kesler	77	22	27	49

After the crushing defeat of 2011, it was only natural for the entire team to take a step back, and indeed they did. Henrik’s points dropped by 13, and Kesler was down a full 24. It didn’t stop the team from winning their second consecutive Presidents’ Trophy, but it sure did prevent them from going far in the playoffs again.

The 2012-13 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	48	11	34	45
Second Centre	Ryan Kesler	17	4	9	13

Another anomalous lockout year, made further complicated by Kesler only playing in 17 games…and still being the second-leading scorer among centres. We’ll apply that same 1.71 multiplier to this one, giving Kesler an adjusted total of 22 points – a scant difference. This was the end for this era of Canucks hockey, in more ways than one.

The 2014-15 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	Henrik Sedin	82	18	55	73
Second Centre	Nick Bonino	75	15	24	39

Kesler’s trade demand drama played out over the previous offseason, and one of the end results was the arrival of Bonino from Anaheim, who did fine enough in his only season as a Canuck with his second-highest point total ever, but who also very plainly no Kesler replacement. This would be the last time the Canucks made the playoffs in the 2010s.

The 2019-20 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	JT Miller	69	27	45	72
Second Centre	Elias Pettersson	68	27	39	66

The Canucks returned to the playoffs during the weirdest season in NHL history, cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic and then restarted for a postseason bubble in the late summer. We’ll be applying a 1.19x modified to Elias Pettersson’s 66 points as a result, giving him an adjusted 78. Speaking of Pettersson, we’ve skipped right over another changing of the guard, with Pettersson, Miller, and Horvat forming one of the strongest centre cores in the league, even if that’s not entirely reflected by their point totals this year.

The 2023-24 Canucks

		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Top Centre	JT Miller	81	37	66	103
Second Centre	Elias Pettersson	82	34	55	89

After a few playoff-less years, we arrive at the recent past. The first full Rick Tocchet season was the best of Miller’s career and the second-best of Pettersson’s – though it’s also the season that Pettersson appeared to lose his mojo midway through. The less said about where it went from here, the better, but at least we’ve reached the end of our little thought experiment and can get to the results.

The Results

So, if we add together all the 2C point totals listed above (with three of them adjusted for shortened schedules), and then divide them by the total number of seasons, we wind up with this equation:

1,581 total points / 29 playoff seasons = An average of 54.5 points per season.

If this were a more scientific experiment, we’d conclude by saying that it takes an average of 54.5 points to be a 2C on a Vancouver Canucks playoff team.

In reality, there are some adjustments that need to be made. Some of these point totals were shortened by injuries, which means that someone else was filling in at 2C during that player’s absence. At the same time, the standards have definitely changed over the years, and what used to cut it for 2C production simply wouldn’t in the modern age.

In the end, 50+ points passes the eye-test as a fair estimate for the standard.

To bring it back to Chytil, that’s a point total he’s paced for exactly once in his career, and never actually achieved. For now, it stands as a goal that he’ll have to attempt to hit – and if he’s unable, that should be a strong indication that the Canucks’ search for a 2C continues onward.

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