This time last year, the Vancouver Canucks were 15th in the Western Conference. They now have the first spot in the West, the hardest shot and the top three scorers in the NHL.
In the NHL, fans should always expect the unexpected.
This season, there's no bigger surprise than the Vancouver Canucks, who leapfrogged the Vegas Golden Knights to take over first place in the Western Conference with their 4-3 overtime win over the New York Islanders on Wednesday night.
To get the two points and remain one of just two teams in the NHL that's still unbeaten in regulation on home ice, the Canucks had to erase a 2-0 first-period deficit after surrendering a pair of first-period power-play goals.
But for new captain Quinn Hughes, the result was never in doubt.
"We believe in ourselves," he told the media minutes after he ended the game on an overtime breakaway. "We think we have a really good team and I think there was a feeling we were going to win that game."
"The entire game, we were just getting so many looks and hemming them in," Hughes continued. "Respect to them, they pushed late in the third after we tied it up. But those are the points that are going to matter in March and April."
The overtime goal was Hughes' sixth, just two shy of his season high of eight — in his 16th game of the year. He also added a pair of assists for his fifth game with three points or more this season, bringing his point total to 26.
J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser also each had a goal and two assists for the Canucks, and since Elias Pettersson settled for just a single assist, he now shares top spot in the NHL scoring race with his teammates Hughes and Miller.
Boeser is also in the top 10 with 21 points, and his 13th goal of the year ties him with Auston Matthews and Kyle Connor for first place in the Rocket Richard race.
That all feels like '80s Oilers stuff.
So does the power play. Three-for-six on Wednesday, 21 of the Canucks' 70 goals this season have come with the man advantage, at an efficiency rate of 33.3 percent. That's ahead of the Oilers' all-time record-setting rate of 32.4 percent from last season.
"We've been playing together for so long, and we can really read off each other," Hughes explained. "I mean, I really know what Millsy and Brock and Petey and some of these guys are thinking about when they get the puck. And a lot of times, the skill and creativity takes over. I love that too."
The Canucks' first power-play unit has been very good for a while, but it hasn't been this good. And it can adjust on the fly. The new wrinkle on Wednesday came after Andrei Kuzmenko was felled by a Miller one-timer at the side of the net during a third-period 5-on-3.
It was a scary sight, seeing Kuzmenko writhing on the ice in pain. But he was able to get to the bench and to the dressing room under his own steam, and both Hughes and Miller said after the game that their teammate seems to be OK.
Kuzmenko also put up a reassuring post on social media not long after the game's conclusion.
When play resumed after the injury, with the Canucks down a goal and 1:10 remaining in the 5-on-3, Filip Hronek joined the first power-play unit.
Coming into the game with 16 assists in 15 games and riding a 10-game assist streak, Hronek picked a dramatic moment to score his first goal as a Canuck. And he did it in dramatic fashion, with a one-timer that was clocked at 107.9 mph by the NHL Edge data collection system.
That's the hardest shot in the database, which goes back to the 2021-22 season. No one else had previously gone above 101 mph in the regular season or playoffs.
Last March, there were grumbles among the fan base when Canucks management traded for Hronek. But his gritty defending, sharp offensive instincts and instant chemistry with Hughes quickly quieted any concerns this year.
It's fitting he would make his first highlight-reel statement with his new team on the night that former Canucks captain Bo Horvat came back to town. After all, it was the first-round pick that Patrik Allvin obtained from the Islanders in the Horvat trade last January that he packaged up with a second-rounder in order to acquire Hronek and a fourth-round pick from the Detroit Red Wings.
Versatile right-shot defensemen who can step seamlessly onto the top pair and play both special teams don't grow on trees. Allvin used the pick from his Horvat deal to address a glaring area of need and hit the nail on the head with his acquisition.
On Wednesday, Hughes and Hronek played apart more than usual. With Carson Soucy now sidelined for six-to-eight weeks after being injured while blocking a shot in Montreal last Sunday, Tocchet shuffled up his pairings — and ended up shortening his bench significantly in the third period as the Canucks looked for offense.
Immediately after the game, the Canucks headed to Calgary for their first meeting of the year against the Flames on Thursday. Hughes finished the night with a season-high 29:24 of ice time, and after Kuzmenko's departure, the top forwards also saw their responsibilities spike even more. Boeser played a season-high 24:21, while Miller logged 23:51, and Pettersson hit 23:35.
As for Horvat, his return dominated the conversation leading up to the game, especially since the nine-year Canuck had thrown a diss in the direction of Vancouver fans during the Islanders' chase for a playoff spot last season.
He received some boos early, but that treatment stopped after his emotional reaction to his tribute video — which earned enthusiastic stick-taps from both benches.
He put his stamp on the game when he squeezed a puck under Thatcher Demko's arm to put the Islanders up 3-1 midway through the second period — the only 5-on-5 goal of the game.
“I was emotional through the whole warmup,” Horvat said post-game. “It brought back a ton of memories and just the whole tribute and everybody, the way they reacted, it just meant a lot to me. So it was pretty special and I had a lot of good times here, a lot of firsts and a lot of memories. So it was a special night. Too bad we couldn't get the two points, but one (game) I won't forget.”
At this time last season, the Canucks were 5-9-3 after a 5-4 road win in Buffalo — 15th in the Western Conference and still more than two months away from ending their relationship with Bruce Boudreau.
Since taking over last January, Tocchet is now 32-15-5 as the Canucks coach, a .663 points percentage which exceeds Jay Woodcroft's much-discussed .643 record with the Edmonton Oilers before his firing.
Injuries are starting to become an issue, and the Canucks are in the midst of a heavy part of their schedule, with six games in the next 10 days. The silver lining is that those six opponents only include one playoff team — the Colorado Avalanche, on Nov. 22. And Denver is also their farthest road destination in a home-heavy calendar over the four weeks.
When the Canucks came out of the gate hot, analytics experts pointed to their league-best PDO, built off tremendous shooting accuracy and a high save percentage. Regression seemed inevitable once their puck luck started to wane.
After Wednesday night's win, with their confidence sky high, there's no sign that's happening anytime soon.
