Canucks Year in Review
After a truly messy season it remains to be seen if it is current GM Trevor Linden left picking up the pieces or if the ever impatient ownership in Vancouver will make a change and bring in a new management team. It was a dark season in the twilight of the magnificent careers of Daniel and Henrik Sedin, with both of them struggling to produce numbers to their usual standards and also both missing significant time to injury. Even with the offseason additions of Pouliot and Martin the blueline looked shaky and the forwards still lacked game breaking firepower. Markstrom was streaky, sometimes looking like the show stealing Vezina candidate he was last seasons and at times looking so pedestrian that backup Thomas Greiss was a better option. Either way, the "retool" moved forward as Linden moved out more veteran pieces to restock the cupboards for the future, offloading Lapierre, Higgins, Burrows, Bonino, Martin and Russell to bring back draft picks, prospects and promising young players like Tyler Bertuzzi.
There were bright points going forward still. Derrick Pouliot, after struggling early, found a bit of a groove offensively and finished with ten goals and thirty two points. He led the league in giveaways and will have to work on that and his consistency for next season but he has the potential to still develop into a first pairing powerplay quarterback who pushes fifty points a season. Chris Tanev continued to cement his reputation as one of the premier defensive defenseman in the league, leading the NHL in takeaways and blocked shots.
Nikita Filatov led the team in almost every offensive category and looks to be a bargain for two more years at only a $915,000 cap hit. A slew of young players saw more icetime and made an impact. Brandon Tanev looked comfortable in a third line checking role and played a physical and responsible game. Josh Anderson scored eleven goals in his first (almost) full NHL season. Virtanen struggled but stuck in the NHL all season coming straight from junior. Cole Cassels centered the third line much of the year in his first season in the NHL and finished seventh in rookie scoring in spite of being given a defensive role all year. Jared McCann stepped into the lineup when injuries struck in December and never looked back, taking on a top six role and making sure it was never an option for the coaching staff to remove him or diminish his role. He struggled defensively but made a big impact on the powerplay, where he scored the majority of his goals. Stefan Noesen played in a bottom six role all year and performed well enough to keep his place in the lineup most of the year. Deadline acquisitions Tyler Bertuzzi (four goals and four assists in nineteen games) and Evgeny Svechnikov (five goals and four assists in twenty games) both showed promise and with another offseason of conditioning and development they could bring some of the needed offensive punch into the lineup next year. Bo Horvat took a great step forward as well, moving up to a top six role and setting career highs in goals (18), assists (20) and points (38) not to mention being second on the team in scoring and leading all centers in faceoff percentage.
It will be an interesting offseason for sure, we will have to wait and see if Trevor Linden will get to use the top draft pick he "earned" or if a new regime will take over, but at least some of the pieces are going to be there to build a youthful roster that has some promise for the coming years. If Kirill Kaprizov can come over from Russia that would also instantly boost the Canucks forward lineup and if they sign young blueliner Charlie McAvoy out of college their defense will certainly take a step forward. At goal they have a developing star in Demko, whether they sign him now or let him play out his senior year. There is nowhere to go but up for the beleaguered franchise, although whether they can ascend quickly enough to give the twins one more playoff run is doubtful.