Photograph By DAN TOULGOET / VANCOUVER COURIER
There’s a common saying around the NHL that you can’t start judging a team until ten games into the season. It’s a simple reminder to get neither too high nor too low after a hot or cold start. Ten games is supposedly the time it takes to know if a team is good or bad.
Ten games into the season, the Canucks were fourth place in the Western Conference with a 6-3-1 record.
During the summer, every hockey pundit, analyst, and even most fans would have told you that the Canucks were a terrible team bound for the NHL basement and another top-five draft pick. Does their record after ten games mean that the Canucks, against all odds, are a playoff team?
Unfortunately, the common saying just doesn’t ring true: ten games isn’t enough to judge a team. Ten games into the 2016-17 season, the Canucks were in playoff position and the Nashville Predators were one point out of dead last in the Western Conference. The Canucks crashed and burned, while the Predators went to the Stanley Cup Final.
A team’s win-loss record ten games into the season is not a good predictor of the rest of their season; statistics that have a larger sample size, like corsi percentage, which measures shot attempt differential at 5-on-5, have been found to be more accurate predictors of future results.
With that in mind, the Canucks’ early results suggest they’re nearly as good as their record suggests. The Canucks are currently ranked 8th in the NHL in corsi percentage, 9th in fenwick (unblocked shot attempt differential) percentage, and 6th in shots-on-goal percentage.
That paints a picture of a slightly above-average team. That may not sound like much, but compared to what everyone expected from the Canucks this season, that is glowing praise.
This may seem paradoxical, but one of the best indications that the Canucks are for real will be if they face a series of tough losses in which they continue to stick with their systems and play well. It’s one thing to stick together as a team and execute a gameplan when everything is going your way; it’s quite another to trust in the process when that process isn’t getting you results.
With that in mind, the Canucks’ tough losses this week to the Dallas Stars and New Jersey Devils might have been the best sign for the future. The Canucks soundly outplayed both teams, outshooting them and out-chancing them. It took stellar goaltending performances from Ben Bishop and Cory Schneider to keep the Canucks from picking up two more wins.
“They played, by far, the best team game we’ve seen for a little while,” said Stars head coach Ken Hitchcock after Monday's game. “I can see why they frustrate the heck out of teams, because if you’re trying to make plays...you’re going to be really frustrated.”
If the Canucks can keep frustrating the opposition, then it will become easier and easier for their fans to believe in them.
