Canucks offseason needs: How Vancouver stacks up with the conference finalists (2024)

The NHL’s conference finals are in full swing, and they’re both shaping up to be highly competitive series and tremendous exhibitions for hockey.

What we’re seeing from the New York Rangers and Florida Panthers in the East and the Dallas Stars and Edmonton Oilers in the West is fast-paced, physical, well-structured, two-way hockey punctuated by moments of exceptional skill and execution.

While the quality of the teams still alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs — and these four teams averaged 110 points this past season, a number that would’ve been even higher if not for Edmonton’s cataclysmic first month — is beyond question, there’s some variation in their relative strengths and weaknesses. And there are even some material flaws, too.

Every year at The Athletic, we utilize Dom Luszczyszyn’s Net Rating model to compare the Vancouver Canucks roster to the average roster of the NHL’s four conference finalists. It’s an exercise we find valuable as a method of grounding our assumptions about the Canucks’ needs heading into the offseason.

In previous years, Vancouver wasn’t particularly close to advancing to the third round of the playoffs. This year is different. They weren’t just close, they were agonizingly close.

In case you spent the entire month of May in a cave on the moon with your fingers lodged in your ears, you know that just last week Vancouver was tested against Edmonton in the second round. It was a close, hard-fought series.

Edmonton’s quality ultimately overpowered Vancouver in the final two games, however. In Games 6 and 7, the Oilers outshot the Canucks 56-32 and outscored them 8-3.

Still, the Canucks pushed the Oilers to the brink and were only defeated by a single goal in the decisive contest.

The quasi-miraculous extent to which this Canucks team managed to improve year over year makes this an entirely different exercise than in previous seasons.

This time, though, there are several areas on the roster in which Vancouver’s lineup doesn’t just compare with that of the remaining finalists — it’s legitimately better.

Before we get into the weeds on the specifics, let’s spend a moment on the metric we’re leaning on here, which is The Athletic’s in-house Net Rating model.

We often cite the Net Rating model because it’s proven to be predictive — for the first time in several years, the bookmakers actually outperformed Net Rating (and its predecessor Game Score Value Added), but Net Rating was still the most accurate of the public models — and because it does a solid, but admittedly imperfect job of capturing what individual players are contributing to a team’s success.

Now this isn’t gospel, and we’re not claiming this analysis should exist in isolation from common sense or good old-fashioned hockey expertise. Net Rating is a single tool, like an Allen key, which doesn’t mean it’s all you require to assemble that bed frame you picked up from Ikea.

With those qualifiers noted, I’d add we’re going to compare the Canucks roster as it appeared going into the second round with that of the four conference finalists. This is necessarily backward-looking and doesn’t lean on projections.

The point isn’t to anticipate how the Canucks will stack up with the remaining teams next season but to take a snapshot of how they stack up with this past season’s most successful playoff teams. Our purpose, after all, is to try and isolate those areas in the lineup that the Canucks should look to prioritize in attempting to get beyond the second round next season.

Let’s jump into it, beginning with what the average roster for the conference finalists looks like:

In the hard cap era, NHL teams are necessarily top-heavy.

Balance is essential to a point, but the average conference finalist in 2024 has the vast majority of their talent loaded into their top-six forward group, including two exceptional centremen and at least three star-level wingers (one being superstar level) in the top six.

The bottom six can get pretty iffy in a hurry, even on teams of this quality. Still, the median conference finalist boasts a defensively reliable third line that doesn’t have any meaningful two-way drags.

On the back end, the average finalist has three top-pair-calibre defenders and at least one star-level blueliner (it’s worth noting all of this year’s finalists have at least one superstar blueliner in their lineup, and yes, that’s Gustav Forsling in the Florida Panthers’ case). Their third pairs are also good enough to not hurt their team, with the ability to punch above their weight over a small sample.

The average conference finalist has sturdy goaltending, something that’s been especially true this season. The workhorse starter has enjoyed something of a Renaissance this playoffs, with all four starting netminders in the conference finals having appeared in at least 54 games in 2023-24.

Let’s contrast the archetypal roster of the finalists with what we saw from Vancouver’s lineup as it stood heading into Round 2 against the Oilers:

Let’s start with goaltending. Net Rating has no idea what to do with Arturs Silovs due to his shallow track record in the NHL, and so his rating is much lower than we reasonably think it should be.

Goaltending is so volatile that when a young netminder like Silovs plays exceptionally well over a relatively small sample of games, the model just assumes that’s noise.

Effectively, the model has seen enough seasons where journeymen netminders like, say, Spencer Martin run hot and give their team .950 goaltending over a small handful of games before becoming nearly unplayable the next campaign.

Given the myriad examples you can find in contemporary NHL history of that sort of short-lived jump in performance from fringe goalies, the model isn’t moved by an understanding of Silovs’ athleticism or unflappability the way we should be. It instead assumes it’s most likely that Silovs’ performance will regress toward replacement level as the sample expands, which is why Silovs is poorly rated here.

In any event, as much as we might quibble with Silovs’ rating, if we plugged in Thatcher Demko for Silovs, Vancouver’s starter would get a plus-6 Net Rating and be more formidable than the stock starter for a 2024 conference finalist team.

There’s no such thing as assurances in hockey, but finding a way to maximize the probability that Demko is healthy and able to be a difference-maker the next time his team is in the second round is essentially work for the Canucks going forward.

Up front, Vancouver’s centre depth jumps off of the page. The Net Rating model rates J.T. Miller as a superstar-level contributor — a credible answer to the likes of Connor McDavid, Aleksander Barkov, Wyatt Johnston and Mika Zibanejad. The model also isn’t very moved by the extent to which Elias Pettersson struggled in the second half of the campaign; it ignores his superstar-level performance throughout his career to this point.

In the top six, Vancouver’s one-two punch down the middle is as good or better than what the average conference finalist is icing, according to Net Rating.

Vancouver’s edge and quality at centre are even more decisive in the bottom six. Between Elias Lindholm and Teddy Blueger, both pending unrestricted free agents, Vancouver’s depth down the middle is better outright than that of the average finalist.

It’s a very different story on the wings, however, as Vancouver’s lack of quality, depth and star-level talent sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison.

Net Rating views Brock Boeser as a star, but not quite at the level of a Jason Robertson, Matthew Tkachuk, Artemi Panarin or Zach Hyman type. Even beyond that, Net Rating suggests the generic finalist has two additional star-level wingers in their top six performing at a level beyond any current Canucks winger aside from Boeser.

It’s notable here, however, that Conor Garland at plus-4 is very close to the plus-5 Net Rating managed by the third-best winger on an average finalist this season.

It’s worth keeping that Garland qualifier in mind more generally. Superficially, it looks like Vancouver has more bottom-six depth than our no-name brand conference finalist lineups do, but that’s mostly an elective sorting issue as opposed to a quality one.

Net Rating thinks Vancouver’s “third line “of Garland, Lindholm and Dakota Joshua features three of its six best forwards, a conclusion that’s hard to argue with. Rearrange the Canucks lineup, and their seventh- through ninth-most valuable forwards are still inferior to who the teams still competing in the playoffs are icing on their third line.

Finally, on the back end, Net Rating sees Quinn Hughes as being equivalent in value to Evan Bouchard, Miro Heiskanen, Adam Fox and Forsling. Beyond that, however, the Canucks still have a lot of work to do to level up their blue line to the level of the average finalist.

Net Rating would suggest Vancouver is still short at least one top-pair-calibre defender. The model is also, it seems, somewhat suspicious about whether or not Filip Hronek is at the level of a star performer or if he’s merely a very good second-pairing defender.

Where Vancouver’s defence corps really looks different from the conference finalist’s blue line is beneath the top pair, however. In fact, Net Rating would suggest that instead of the more robust second pair the average final four team is icing, the Canucks were instead icing two really solid third pairings this season.

In some ways, that dovetails with how Vancouver performed in the postseason. It’s notable, for example, that Hughes was only on the ice for two of the 16 five-on-five goals Edmonton scored against the Canucks in Round 2.

So, what does this mean for the Canucks offseason, and where do they need to improve to give themselves their best chance of advancing further in the postseason next time?

Maintain centre depth

Vancouver’s strength is down the middle, but that strength is going to be both tricky and pricey to maintain beyond this season.

Both Lindholm and Blueger are expiring and will be unrestricted free agents this summer. They’ve both earned sizeable raises.

Lindholm is coming off of a difference-making postseason and has a 40-goal campaign and a Selke finalist nomination on his resume. He’s likely looking at something in the neighbourhood of $50 million total value on his next contract.

Blueger, meanwhile, has surely put himself in the David Kampf tier with his performance this season. Even if he’s not going to break the bank in terms of cap hit, he’ll likely require a multiyear deal and a raise to keep around.

Balancing the need to keep a major edge sharp with preserving the cap space required to pick at the improvements needed elsewhere on the roster is one of the key challenges of this offseason for Canucks management.

Acquire another star-level winger

The Canucks know they need another creative engine in their top-six forward group. They tried to acquire such a player at the trade deadline, but couldn’t find a price (or the cap room) they liked enough to pull the trigger.

This offseason, it’s going to be a top priority. And it’s sorely needed if the Canucks are going to generate enough shots, scoring chances and goals to take that next step into the NHL’s inner circle of contenders.

Star-level talent is hard to acquire and expensive, even when opportunity knocks on the trade market or in free agency. Vancouver’s top prospect, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, is a winger, as is Nils Höglander, who is still just 23 years old.

Those are two intriguing internal options that offer some hope down the road, although it’s a stretch to assume Lekkerimäki will be ready to perform at a star level as soon as next season, and Höglander will need to improve significantly as a two-way driver before he’s flirting with being a winger of the quality we’re talking about here.

Add two more top-four-calibre defenders

This is a tale as old as time.

As well as the Canucks did to upgrade the quality of their defence corps — signing multiple sharp deals in unrestricted free agency last summer (Ian Cole, Cason Soucy) and pulling off expensive trades for Hronek and Nikita Zadorov — there’s still work to be done. That work is pressing, too, given that only Hughes, Soucy and Noah Juulsen are currently signed for next season among regular defenders.

The Canucks’ positioning on defense is especially fascinating given that retaining the current group might not be sufficient. As much as Zadorov, Tyler Myers, Cole and Hronek outperformed expectations this past season, the Canucks still need to keep upgrading their blue-line personnel.

Maintaining Vancouver’s current back end will be expensive, but that’s not really the task at hand for Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and company. The task is to get better, and based on this analysis, that might require multiple top-four-calibre defenders, at least one of whom is really a top-pair-calibre contributor.

That’s a massive task, given everything else Canucks hockey operations will needs to navigate this offseason.

(Photo: Bob Frid / USA Today)