Canucks stock watch: Who's trending up, and down, since the Quinn Hughes trade?
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Thomas Drance
Without game-breaking skaters, the Canucks have largely performed like a side that's consistently undermanned.
On the back of stellar goaltending, quality special teams and a run of fortunate finishing efficiency, the Vancouver Canucks won their first four games in the aftermath of a franchise-altering decision to trade Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild in a mid-December blockbuster. Since then, however, Vancouver has predictably come back down to Earth with a pair of convincing losses to the Philadelphia Flyers and the San Jose Sharks on either side of the holiday break.
Without Hughes logging nearly 30 minutes per game on the back end, the Canucks have struggled mightily to control play at five-on-five. In the six games since dealing Hughes, Vancouver has been outshot by 29 shots on goal, or nearly six shots on goal per game on average.
Vancouver has been more structurally sound of late, and this team has found ways to counterattack effectively and manufacture offence off the forecheck. Still, without game-breaking skaters, the Canucks have largely performed like a side that’s consistently undermanned.
If the Canucks don’t get elite goaltending performances and make their shots at a sky-high rate, they’ll likely struggle to sustain success over the balance of the regular season — and that’s even before the team subtracts key pending unrestricted free agents before the NHL trade deadline, as it’s expected to.
Let’s dive into some of what we’ve seen from three Canucks players whose performance has trended up since the Hughes trade, and from three more who have struggled over the past few weeks.
Stock up
Thatcher Demko
In five starts since returning to the lineup following the Hughes trade, Thatcher Demko has been nothing short of magnificent.
The star netminder is two years — and a variety of extended injury-related absences — removed from playing at a Vezina-calibre level. However, Demko has been in vintage form in December.
In his five games this month, Demko has made 136 saves on 147 shots against, good for a sterling .925 save percentage in all situations. His performance, however, has been even more impressive than those numbers indicate, given some of the looks that he’s stared down and turned away.
According to Natural Stat Trick, Demko has been in net for 18.5 expected goals against in his five December starts. In terms of the actual retail price, the Canucks netminder has permitted just 11 goals against. His goals saved above average number is seventh among all NHL netminders since Hughes was traded on Dec. 12.
If Demko is stopping shots at this sort of rate, he may be able to throw a wrench into the Canucks’ ability to finish at (or at least toward) the very bottom of the NHL standings. However, this Canucks lineup should be limited enough that Demko can perform at a near-superstar level without too severely impinging their ability to lose games over the balance of the season.
Since trading Hughes, the Canucks have controlled play better with Linus Karlsson on the ice than they have with any other regular skater at five-on-five. Karlsson is also producing, scoring three goals and managing five total points in the first six games of the post-Hughes era in Vancouver.
Karlsson isn’t the fastest skater and can occasionally struggle to arrive on time in some phases of the game, but for the most part, his significant strengths have permitted him to succeed in spite of those limitations. In particular, Karlsson is exceptionally heavy on his stick and wins far more than his fair share of 50/50 puck battles along the wall as a result. Karlsson is also both tenacious and very skilled down low and in close quarters, which allows him to make skilled plays as both a net-front finisher and as a playmaker from down low in the offensive zone.
On Saturday night against San Jose, Karlsson ended up at the net front on Vancouver’s first power-play unit, and finished a lovely feed from Conor Garland by choking up on his stick and holding position in the blue paint. It was a goal that hinted at the sort of impact that Karlsson can have when deployed down low, especially with the man advantage.
Given Karlsson’s recent run of offensive success, his overall hockey IQ and the fact that he’s right-handed, it really might be worth taking a look at what he might accomplish if his role on the power play were expanded even further. Though Karlsson is 26 and shouldn’t really be thought of as a prospect or a young player, his skill set is unique enough that he could yet carve out an NHL niche as a bottom-six winger and net-front power-play specialist.
Conor Garland
Hughes’ departure has left the Canucks with a critical need for both playmaking creativity and overall puck carrying, two areas of the game that Garland is best positioned among Vancouver’s skaters to fill. And he’s filled it admirably this month, especially on the power play.
In six games without Hughes, Garland has recorded three power-play assists. Several of those feeds have been absolute beauties, and all of them have been primary assists. Garland has often been a more effective five-on-five point producer than power-play contributor, but at the moment, the Canucks have needed to run the power play through Garland from his downhill flank. And Garland has been up to the task, and then some.
Conor Garland has become the Canucks’ top playmaker on the power play since Quinn Hughes was traded. (Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
Stock down
Jake DeBrusk
Jake DeBrusk is Vancouver’s fastest skater and has been an ace at the net front on Vancouver’s first power-play unit. This season, however, DeBrusk has struggled significantly to impact the game at five-on-five.
Usually, DeBrusk has performed at the level of a complementary top-of-the-lineup winger. He’s not a player who drives exceptional two-way results on his own, but he’s consistently been a winger capable of holding up in top-line usage without giving too much back defensively.
This season, however, DeBrusk’s defensive impact has cratered, and the club has struggled to generate much of anything in his five-on-five minutes.
This is more than just a dry spell for a player who’s often been regarded, and not unfairly, as a streaky player. DeBrusk’s defensive impact this season has been the worst of his career and there’s a variety of peripheral numbers — DeBrusk’s hit rate is the lowest it’s been in four years, and he’s also taking the fewest hits of his career and drawing the fewest penalties of his career (both of which suggests that he doesn’t have the puck very often) — that are concerning.
Most troubling of all, however, is that all 12 Canucks skaters with whom DeBrusk has logged at least 50 five-on-five minutes this season have fared better away from DeBrusk than they have when they’ve shared the ice with him by shot attempt differential.
I find it difficult to identify specifically what’s fallen off in DeBrusk’s game. He’s often been the sort of winger whose game can seem a bit quiet when he’s not scoring, but when he gets hot, he can carry a team for a couple of weeks on end almost singlehandedly. Even when that’s been true, however, DeBrusk has usually been a player whose defensive impact was roughly neutral, as opposed to how he’s performed this season, where his defensive impact has been uncharacteristically harmful.
It is, as a result, not a massive surprise that Adam Foote has determined that DeBrusk will be a healthy scratch on Monday when the Canucks visit the Seattle Kraken.
Aatu Räty
Aatu Räty has only appeared in two games since the Hughes trade, and appears to have some work to do to earn the trust of Foote and the Canucks coaching staff.
The 23-year-old centre is clearly Vancouver’s best and most reliable faceoff man, and his underlying performance has been as auspicious as it has been for any other Canucks centre based on the underlying data. Foote and the Canucks, however, don’t seem to believe that Räty’s defensive game is sufficiently robust or trustworthy, which is why he’s found himself yo-yoing in and out of the lineup over the past few weeks.
Eventually, the Canucks are going to need to commit to playing Räty regularly, if only to see what they have, gather information and see what he can contribute going forward. While there are evident areas defensively in which Räty will need to improve to be a regular middle-six level contributor, his mastery on draws, his shooting ability and his overall skill level are high enough to warrant an everyday spot in an NHL lineup. And if he isn’t progressing in those areas as a centre, then the club may want to consider giving him a look on the wing (pairing him, perhaps, with a centre like Max Sasson who struggles, relatively speaking, in the circle).
Arshdeep Bains
Arshdeep Bains earned a top-nine shot out of training camp, but where his Calder Cup linemates — Sasson and Karlsson — have cemented themselves as regulars, Bains struggled to take advantage of his opportunities, tumbled down the depth chart and recently cleared waivers before being reassigned to Abbotsford.
It may take a while for Bains to get another opportunity, and I wonder if he’ll need to carve out a different sort of niche to hang regularly at the NHL level.
Before this season, if you’d asked me to pick between Karlsson, Sasson and Bains as NHL prospects, I’d have picked Bains first of the three (and I’d have been dead wrong).
While Karlsson had obvious strengths (his size, his puck battle winning on the wall and his skill at the net front), I was concerned that his speed wouldn’t play at the NHL level.
Likewise with Sasson, while he had obvious strengths (his speed, in particular), I was concerned that he lacked the length required to carve out an everyday role playing centre in the NHL.
Bains, to me, was like the Goldilocks of the three Abbotsford champions. He was the player who had some evident NHL skills (his passing and hockey IQ), without the worrying drawbacks.
As it turns out, Karlsson’s and Sasson’s strengths were significant and have helped them win a regular spot in the Vancouver lineup. In contrast, Bains’ strengths have been less pronounced, and as a result, his well-roundedness didn’t give him a durable edge in holding down a spot.
I wonder if, at this stage of his career, Bains may have to commit to playing on the edge physically. He’s a wildly intelligent passer and defensive player, but may need to add a toughness or pest element to his game if he’s going to carve out an everyday role at the NHL level whenever that opportunity next presents itself.
