Very clearly, things have not gone as smoothly as the Vancouver Canucks had hoped this season. Between infighting, injuries and inconsistency, it has been a disappointing season on so many levels. But one area the team is excelling in is on the penalty kill.
On the season, the Canucks are ranked sixth in the National Hockey League at 82.2%. Since Christmas, the club leads the league at 84.5%. And in 10 games since February 1st, the club has been nearly perfect, killing off 24 of its last 25 short-handed situations (95.8%) and adding a Dakota Joshua short-handed goal in Seattle last Saturday for good measure. By contrast, there are four teams in the league that have allowed 10 power play goals over the same stretch.
So what has worked?
The easiest answer is goaltending. The guy in all the gear is almost always a team’s best penalty killer and during this 10-game heater the Canucks are on their short-handed save percentage is a stunning .972%. To provide some added context, the next best team over that span is getting saves on .904% of the power play shots it faces. So you can see that Canucks puck stoppers – Kevin Lankinen (6 games), Thatcher Demko (3) and Arturs Silovs (2) – are getting the job done. But like anything in a team sport, it’s never just one player. Credit has to go to the skaters in front of the goalies, who are doing a stellar job of limiting shots and scoring chances while short-handed.
According to Natural Stat Trick, the Canucks expected goals against on this run is 4.44. So clearly, they are outperforming the metrics and by a considerable margin. The team has surrendered 39 scoring chances and 11 high-dangers, but the only power play goal the Canucks have allowed over the past 10 games was to Dylan Guenther in Utah on February 23rd. As it turns out, Silovs is the only one of the team’s three netminders to surrender a power play goal over the past 10 games.
Who is doing the heavy lifting?
Pius Suter, Derek Forbort, Teddy Blueger and Filip Hronek lead the Canucks in short-handed ice time on this impressive 10-game run. But it’s not really a big four. It’s more like a big six with Tyler Myers and Marcus Pettersson lumped in with those key killers. Forbort’s contribution to the kill has quietly flown under the radar since earning a regular spot in the lineup in mid-December. And as it turns out, he was in the box for the goal against in Utah, so who knows what might have happened had he not been the guilty party that took the penalty in the first place.
In his team-high 25:49 of PK ice time since February 1st, Suter has not been on the ice for a goal against. Same goes for Forbort in his 25:07 and Teddy Blueger in 24:19. And Marcus Pettersson has yet to be on the ice for a power play goal against in his time as a Canuck. Of all the Canucks key penalty killers, Pettersson has the lowest expected goals against/60 rate at 3.61 which is the best among all NHL defencemen that have logged 20 or more short-handed minutes since the beginning of February. Remarkably, opponents have managed just 12 power play shots on goal with Pettersson on the ice.
He and partner Tyler Myers may face more second-units than Forbort and Hronek, but they have absolutely crushed their assignment regardless of who they’re facing.
What’s interesting in the past 10 games is the fact the Canucks haven’t blocked many shots (Pettersson leads with six blocks followed by Myers with five). So this isn’t a case of Canucks defenders putting themselves in harm’s way on the regular. Rather, they’re remaining in formation, sticking to their structure, forcing opponents to the perimeter and basically eliminating those cross-seam and back door plays that used to plague this franchise.
Where once this team turned to the likes of JT Miller, Elias Pettersson and Danton Heinen to handle some of the penalty killing duties up front, for a number of reasons, that is no longer the case. Now players like Kiefer Sherwood, Conor Garland and Drew O’Connor supplement the group of top-end penalty killers, and the proof of concept seems irrefutable.
So what does this all mean?
After watching the Canucks sink to near historic lows on the penalty kill not that long ago, it’s certainly a refreshing change to witness the team’s resurgence in this one area. And if the Canucks are going to climb above the playoff bar, they’ll likely need the PK to continue to sparkle.
The other part of the equation is that if the Canucks qualify for the post-season as a wild card, they’ll run into one of the top teams in the league. As it stands right now, Winnipeg (31.2%), Vegas (28.6%) and Edmonton (26.5%) are among their likely opponents, and those teams all possess top-five power plays in the league.
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