Welcome to the first of (at least) 82 Vancouver Canucks statistical recaps. The intent of these posts is to provide sober second thought the following morning after Canucks games, providing microstatistic data like zone entries, zone exits, and scoring chance setups that you would not get on a traditional boxscore.
These posts will be free through October and, after then, I will stick them behind a paywall (I haven’t decided how much yet, that will be based on their popularity). Please bear with me as I work through formatting, as well. My preparation for this season was hockey-related, not WordPress-related.
We will start with Wednesday night’s loss to the Edmonton Oilers. The stars showed up for both teams, but the Oilers stars happen to be way better, unfortunately for Vancouver.
5v5 Team Stats
Zone entries
The first thing I usually look at after a game is the entry differential: the number of attempted entries for one team compared to their opponent. Simply put, the Oilers dominated this game beginning to end, as they won neutral zone battles, took advantage of the Canucks’ inability to move the puck, and attacked with speed. The total entry attempts by the end of the night were 84-69, a +15 advantage for the Oilers.
Even when the score was 3-0 and the shot clock was tilting in the Canucks favour, to me it never seemed like Edmonton was out of it. At the time of the 3-0 goal, the 5v5 entry attempts were 34-19, and they were well-positioned for a comeback.
Also, the Oilers dominated in controlled entries, with 40 compared to the Canucks 27. Two Oilers centremen accounted for 16 of those, and I’ll let you guess who (we’ll get to that later).
Shots and scoring chances
The shots in this game were plenty even, though the zone entries weren’t. Still, I had the scoring chances at 28-23 including non-shots, and 23-17 if you only include shot attempts.
What’s interesting is that the Oilers D accounted for a lot more offence than Vancouver’s did: of the 15 shot attempts taken by the Canucks D, only 1 qualified as a scoring chance, compared to 7 of 19 shots by Oilers D.
Exits and DZ touches
A big question this season is whether the Canucks D are going to be able to exit the zone efficiently and get the puck to their forwards. In this game it wasn’t a problem. Even though the Canucks D were quite strong (exiting the zone with control on 56% of their exits), the team overall did poorly, as the forwards did not have a great night.
Meanwhile, the Oilers did the opposite. Their D did just enough to get the puck to their forwards, and their forwards exited the DZ with speed, and that was apparent throughout the game.
While the game was very slow (there were a LOT of stoppages in this game), it wasn’t particularly sloppy, as both teams kept the turnover count low.
5v5 Individual Stats
Zone entries
Vancouver:
- Pettersson had a huge night here, with 6 controlled entries on 8 attempts, both numbers were team-highs.
- After Pettersson, there wasn’t a lot going for the Canucks. Boeser, Podkolzin and Hughes had decent evenings, but there isn’t a whole else of note here.
- The good news is, as noted above, the Canucks recovered 58% of their dump-ins, so they were creating offensive possession despite not being able to enter the OZ with control. Another good sign is how little the Canucks failed to make zone entries (ie: turn the puck over at the offensive blueline). Only Kuzmenko had multiple failed entries.
Edmonton:
- What a night it was for not only McDavid, but also Draisaitl. Both had 8 controlled entries, on 9 and 12 attempts, respectively. Their speed was evident in this game, and, while I have no way of looking at this just yet, it seemed like they linked their controlled exits to entries seamlessly, and took advantage of every inch of space the Canucks gave them in the NZ, which was a lot.
- Bouchard and Ceci both had reasonably nights as defenders, here, with some stretch passes to take advantage of the Canucks’ poor gaps.
- Volume was king for the Oilers’ middle-tier of forwards. While none of Puljujarvi, McLeod, or Nugent-Hopkins had offensive breakout nights, they each had a high number of entry attempts, forcing the Canucks D to spend a lot of time dodging forecheckers.
Zone entry defence
Vancouver:
- I think Tucker Poolman has had better nights. He was pretty poor in this game, allowing a game-high 10 controlled entries against on 13 targets. McDavid and Draisaitl accounted for 4 of those entries, and the remaining Oilers were 6-for-9 against him.
- Other than Hughes, who was victimized for 6 controlled entries against, it was a pretty strong night for the rest of the D. Schenn did very well for himself, holding the Oilers to below 50% against him, and forcing 3 failed entries.
Edmonton:
- As noted above, the Canucks didn’t make a lot of mistakes here and create turnovers. Somehow, Ryan Murray turned both his targets into failed entries (both were dump-in attempts by Canucks fourth liners).
- Tyson Barrie has also had better games. He allowed 8 controlled entries against, forced 0 failed entries, and allowed six different Canucks to gain the line against him.
Shots and scoring chances
Vancouver:
- The Pettersson line was great, with all three members recording multiple scoring chances. The real issue here for Vancouver was they generated very little out of the Miller line.
- Ultimately, though, the Canucks had a fine game 5v5. I haven’t figured out how to write up powerplay stats just yet (that’s something I’m working on) and the reason this game was lost, other than McDavid, was how little the Canucks were able to generate 5v4. I’ve been a big believer in their powerplay, and despite the fact that Kuzmenko scored the only powerplay goal, I much prefer Boeser being in that net-front spot because that unit was so effective last season.
- Despite the fact I’d rather see Boeser on the top unit than Kuzmenko, I can’t deny that Kuzmenko had a great playmaking game. He set up two scoring chances at 5v5 and had three shot assists, but not counted in that are the three times he set up his teammates in great spots and they just completely whiffed on their chances (Horvat in the first period on the powerplay, Miller in the second on the powerplay, and Pettersson at even strength in the third). I can’t say I was impressed by Kuzmenko in the preseason, and it seemed like his decisions were a bit too slow. He might have been the best playmaker the Canucks had outside of Podkolzin.
Edmonton:
- Not only did McDavid take 4 shots that were considered scoring chances, but he set up 3 more. Just a dominant game and there isn’t much more to say.
- Look at how much green there is in the Oilers D group relative to the Canucks’. Bouchard, particularly, was jumping up offensively quite a bit throughout this game, and was also the only D to record a scoring chance assist.
- It feels like some nights Draisaitl wants to be a passer and some nights he wants to be a shooter. This was a night he preferred to pass, though, despite his zone entry dominance, that line wasn’t really generating a whole lot of scoring chances. Draisaitl had a three point night, but all three points were recorded on special teams.
Exits and DZ touches
Vancouver:
- As I said above, a pretty good night by the Vancouver D when it came to exiting the zone, but less so for the forwards. The first line were brutal at getting the puck out of the DZ with control, which is probably a reason they weren’t able to string together much offence. Hard to create offence when you’re spending so much time fighting for the puck back in the key areas of the ice.
- I really liked Podkolzin’s game. He came back to support a lot in the DZ, and while he had 3 uncontrolled exits, he also had a team-high 5 controlled exits.
- The defence was quite good, particularly the top pair, who not only exited with control at a clip above 50%, but also really limited the turnovers.
- It’s clear what role Poolman and Stillman are going to have in the DZ: pass it off to the better players and don’t ask questions. OEL and Burroughs saw much more volume than their partners.
Edmonton:
- Draisaitl just had such a huge night exiting the DZ with control, a big reason his entry count was so high. Now, I did check the Natural Stat Trick game page and it seems like Draisaitl had a pretty poor corsi on the night. On one hand, he played a lot in his own end, but on the other hand, he was very good at getting out of it.
- Big night for Bouchard in this aspect as well. He and his partner Murray each had 5 controlled exits on 7 attempts, far more efficient than Nurse and Ceci.
- Rough night for Kulak handling the puck. I generally like his game, but he commit a turnover on 25% of the DZ touches he had and had a single uncontrolled exit.
So, this concludes the first data dump of the new season. I hope you found something informative in here. I’m not a huge fan of website comments, so if you have suggestions, notes on what you liked or didn’t like, kindly get at me on Twitter @camcharronyvr, or send me an email camcharron@gmail.com.
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