Team has clearly targeted area of weakness this off-season
The Vancouver Canucks penalty kill will be almost unrecognizable next season. And that's a good thing. A very good thing. Friday's free agent addition of Pius Suter provides the hockey club with yet another new face brought on board with an eye toward boosting the league's worst penalty kill over the past few seasons.
Suter along with previous signings Teddy Blueger, Ian Cole, Carson Soucy and for the purpose of this piece Filip Hronek will almost certainly be thrust into key roles on the team's penalty kill which finished in 32nd in the National Hockey League last season at 71.6%.
More than that, since the start of the 2021-22 season, the Canucks penalty kill has ranked 32nd among all NHL teams (73.2%) and going back three seasons only Philadelphia (74.7%) has done a poorer job while a man short than the Canucks (75.0%). So this has been an issue for far too long now and undoubtedly a rotten penalty kill has cost the Canucks hockey games and points in the standings.
Now, in 36 games under Rick Tocchet, the Canucks showed improvement both in form and by the numbers. Since their mid-season coaching change last January, the Canucks ranked 21st in the NHL on the PK at 78.4%. So they were better, no question, but still in the bottom third of the league and with plenty of room for improvement.
But this is where the summer roster reconstruction ought to pay huge dividends for the hockey club. Four of the top short-handed ice time leaders from last season are no longer with the Canucks. So not only have they brought in upgrades. Those new faces are replacing the likes of Luke Schenn, Ethan Bear, Kyle Burroughs and Bo Horvat who repeatedly drew penalty killing assignments with little success.
To take it a step further, five of the eight Canucks that were on the ice for the most power play goals surrendered last season have been jettisoned in Schenn, Bear, Horvat, Curtis Lazar and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
Tyler Myers led the Canucks in average short-handed ice time per game (2:12) and was on the ice for the most power play goals surrendered (34). But with the likes of Soucy, Cole and Hronek now on the payroll, Myers will surely see his role on the penalty kill reduced. And that should help, too.
So it's not only moving on from players that underperformed in such a key area of the game. They are being replaced by players who all took on legitimately large penalty killing roles with their previous teams.
Ian Cole averaged 2:53 of short-handed time per game in Tampa last season. Pius Suter (1:44) and Filip Hronek (1:37) were among the Red Wings leaders in penalty killing ice time. Carson Soucy logged an average of 1:42 in Seattle. And while Teddy Blueger didn't kill many penalties on a stacked Stanley Cup winner in Vegas, he averaged 2:37 a game in Pittsburgh before being acquired by the Golden Knights.
The Canucks clearly targeted penalty killers and on paper, at least, it appears they have upgraded across the board.
The additions of Suter and Blueger particularly will give the Canucks coaching staff options it did not have last season. Elias Pettersson and JT Miller showed penalty killing chemistry after the coaching change and each scored a league-best five short-handed goals after Rick Tocchet took charge.
By no means should Tocchet abandon his plan to use Pettersson and Miller on the PK. But after Myers, those two were second and third on the team in average short-handed ice time after the coaching change. Dial that back. Include Pettersson and Miller strategically to provide a penalty killing turbo boost for a shift or two -- possibly against the other team's second unit. But don't overuse them in an exhausting role that may limit their ability to impact games in other areas.
With a full season of top form Thatcher Demko and a hopefully fully healthy Ilya Mikheyev back in the fold, too, the potential exists for the Canucks to turn one of their greatest weaknesses the past few seasons into a team strength.
It all sounds promising in mid-August. We'll see what happens when the Canucks open with a pair of games against Connor McDavid and the league's best power play two months from now.