The Vancouver Canucks appear to have to put last season's disaster behind them.
The Canucks have rebounded in the early going this season. This, after a disastrous 2013-14 campaign that essentially forced them to trade two key cogs in Roberto Luongo and Ryan Kesler, fire their first-year head coach, and ditch long-time general manager Mike Gillis just to restore some confidence in the Vancouver market.
The Canucks are off to an impressive 18-9-2 start to the season and they're a top-10 team in the league by point percentage. Going into Saturday night's tilt against former head coach Alain Vigneault and the New York Rangers, Vancouver currently sits in second place in the tough Pacific Division.
So have the Canucks - a perennial top-team prior to last year's train wreck - put the dysfunction and poor performance of the recent past behind them? Is this team for real?
Veteran defenseman and alternate captain Kevin Bieksa isn't sure.
"I think we’re still figuring that out," Bieksa admitted to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman this week.
On the other hand ...
"Expectations have obviously grown pretty high around here," Bieksa told reporters following the club's practice Friday. "We’ve been playing some good hockey to start the season."
So how good are the Canucks, really?
At 5-on-5 the Canucks have only been an average team, really. With roughly 30 games in the books we can begin to draw inferences from the club's underlying performance with a reasonable degree of confidence, and it sure looks like Vancouver is average - or narrowly below average - in terms of their ability to control play at even-strength.
The Canucks' 49.9 percent score-adjusted shot attempt differential ranks 17th in the league, and their 50.3 percent raw shot differential ranks 18th. The club has fared better by unblocked shot differential and pure shots on goal differential, but that's largely the result of getting a well above average number of shots past the first defender - something that's likely just variance, rather than skill.
The Canucks have been very good on special teams. Vancouver's short-handed units are in the top-five in the NHL in penalty-killing rate, and are super elite when it comes to suppressing 4-on-5 shots against. Only two clubs have scored more goals when short-handed, and only the Sharks generate more shots for when down a man.
The Canucks' power play is converting on nearly 20 percent of its opportunities, too. Although the second power-play unit is something of a wasteland, Vancouver's first unit has found a good deal of success with newcomers Linden Vey and Radim Vrbata punching up a group that grew stale, predictable and inefficient last season.
Bolstered by their polished special teams performance, the Canucks are generating 31.4 shots per game - the eighth best figure in the league - and are also in the top-10 in overall shot prevention based on their stingy per game rate. It's helpful to be outshooting opponents consistently, especially when your goaltending has been as shaky as Vancouver's has been in the early going.
Iffy goaltending aside, the Canucks' all-situations shots on goal differential is a positive indicator. It suggests that perhaps the Canucks can outperform their average puck possession numbers (which will likely get a boost anyway when two-way ace Dan Hamhuis returns from injury).
So how good are the Canucks? It's tough to tell, but after 30 games they certainly have the look of a playoff team.
