The Vancouver Canucks were one of the highest-scoring teams in the NHL last season. And yet, the focus of the Canucks’ offseason and the first few days of training camp has primarily been about getting more offence.
With the addition of four wingers in free agency to an already potent core led by J.T. Miller, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser, the Canucks have one of the deepest forward groups in the NHL heading into the 2024-25 season. Meanwhile, the Canucks will be bringing back essentially the same group on defence, with the two new additions, Derek Forbort and Vincent Desharnais, not exactly known for their offensive upside.
At camp, many of the drills have been aimed at improving the team’s offence, primarily how they attack in transition. The Canucks are clearly looking to create more odd-man rushes in the coming season and, in particular, playing a faster style of hockey.
“We talk about our pillars and staples, that’s a foundation — we’ll never get away from that — but I think, especially the first two days of camp, I really want to stress a transition game,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “A lot of regroups, a lot of odd-man rushes — just a lot of speed. I’d like to really put that into place.”
Why so much focus on offence? Because the Canucks’ management and coaching staff know they need it.
The Canucks' offence dipped when they needed it most
The Canucks scored 279 goals, which was the most for a Canucks team since the 1992-93 season and that was back when stand-up goaltenders still plied their trade in nets across the NHL and the neutral zone trap was just a gleam in Jacques Lemaire’s eye.
So, offence wasn’t an issue for the Canucks. Until it was.
In the regular season, the Canucks averaged 3.40 goals per game, making them one of the top-scoring teams in the league. In the playoffs, that dropped to 2.54 goals per game, 10th among the 16 teams in the postseason.
Perhaps that shouldn’t have been surprising. The Canucks led the NHL in 5-on-5 shooting percentage during the 2023-24 regular season, scoring on 10.48% of their shots. Regression was inevitable, right?
Only, the Canucks’ shooting percentage barely changed. The Canucks also led the playoffs in 5-on-5 shooting percentage at 10.48%.
Instead, the biggest reason why their scoring dropped was a decline in shots on goal. The Canucks, who averaged 28.4 shots per game in the regular season, only managed 20.8 shots per game in the playoffs. That’s the lowest in the playoffs since the 2000-01 Carolina Hurricanes.
In other words, it’s not that the Canucks were any less dangerous when they shot the puck, it’s that they couldn’t get shots in the first place.
Despite their offensive struggles, the Canucks still came one game away from the Western Conference Final, losing to the Edmonton Oilers by one goal in Game 7. But it leaves open the question, what if the Canucks had been able to score just one or two more goals in the playoffs?
"It's only day three but I just like the creativity"
Tocchet acknowledged the issue at the end-of-season press conference — the lack of shots and chances — and said he would need to do a “deep dive” on the Canucks’ systems and see where they could find more offence. He said that’s something that he would bring to training camp.
“I always feel that, as a coach, you've got to give the players something to look at and maybe going into training camp, maybe it's something we'll work on a little bit more offensively,” said Tocchet at the time. “I think we were heavy system last training camp. I wanted to make sure that guys knew exactly what we needed at certain times and I think we were successful because we did it at training camp.
“I think that next training camp might be a little bit different: a little more creativity, a little more skill-oriented that will help some guys. But good old fashioned we need people to get to the net — we've got to get that in there too.”
Sure enough, creativity has been an early watchword for Tocchet at training camp, enjoying how the puck has repeatedly found the back of the net in drill after drill.
“It’s only day three but I just like the creativity,” said Tocchet on Saturday. “I like that the guys understand what we’re trying to do and I like the D that have been jumping up in the play.”
The focus on defencemen jumping up and creating odd-man rushes was something Tocchet brought up at the end of last season.
Early in the 2023-24 season, the Canucks didn't have many odd-man rushes but they finished on the few they created, masking the issue. The finishing dried up as the season progressed and the Canucks struggled to attack and score in transition, putting a lot of pressure on their in-zone offence to make up for it.
“It comes from execution and getting your defence in the rush,” said Tocchet after the playoffs. “I love the makeup of our D, it’s big, gangly — you keep McDavid at, what, three assists? That’s hard to do. I credit our D for that. You’ve got to rob Peter to pay Paul sometimes, right?
“Saying that, we do have to get better on the rush and more execution. I think at the start of the year, the first half of the year, I think we got some good luck. We scored on a 3-on-2, our conversion rate was high. Second half, it wasn’t, and we weren’t getting a lot of 3-on-2s and 4-on-2s. It’s another thing we’ve got to look at, for sure.”
Evidently, Tocchet’s offseason deep dive into the Canucks’ systems reinforced that desire to create more in transition.
“We saw a lot of film this summer where we had chances to be 4-on-2 and somehow the other team caught up to us,” said Tocchet.
The promotion of skills coach (and master of practice drills) Yogi Svejkovsky to assistant coach has led to a lot of creativity in the drills they’ve been running to promote that transitional attack.
“There’s a reason why we did this, there’s a reason why we’ve put a lot of thought into the drills,” said Tocchet. “It’s tough on the goalies — a lot of odd-man rushes. It’s hard to evaluate a goalie when they have 4-on-2s and 4-on-3s at you all practice.
“But I think it’s really something that we have to start from day one and continue in October and November — push the pace.”
Canucks creating an attacking mindset at camp
For Tocchet, it’s not just about systems but about mentality. He wants the players to have an attacking mindset so there’s no hesitation when opportunities present themselves.
“When there’s an odd-man rush, the teams that take advantage — Edmonton’s one of the best at it — they just attack right off the bat,” said Tocchet. “Where sometimes we’re processing it: ‘Is it okay if I go? Does Tocc want me to go here because I’m F3?’ There’s a lot of that and I don’t want that thinking.”
With the speed of the modern game, there’s little room for thinking on the ice. So much of it has to be instinctual but that instinct doesn’t come naturally — it’s created through repeated practice until it becomes an ingrained habit.
In a game, when an opening for an odd-man rush presents itself, that habit created in practice should turn into immediate action.
Tocchet also doesn’t want his players to be afraid of the middle of the ice when attacking in transition. Often, the fear of making a mistake can cause a player to move the puck to the outside and carry or pass the puck up the boards but while that can avoid costly turnovers in the middle of the ice, it’s also easier for the other team to defend.
“We’re trying to make guys understand that we don’t want the puck going down the wall all the time,” said Tocchet. “You’re skating into the wall and then the D’s shift and then you lose it and we have to dump the puck in. You have to get the puck into the middle.
“That’s why I think today, especially that last couple of drills, guys were scoring a lot of goals because we were getting the puck in the middle and bringing the two D together. Then you can make your play from there.”
“We want to be a little more risky…but we don’t want to be a high-risk team”
What the Canucks needed most last season was to overhaul their defensive game, leading to a systems-heavy camp that was very successful in accomplishing what they set out to do. The Canucks went from giving up 3.61 goals against per game in 2022-23 to 2.70 goals against per game last season.
Some of that was due to Thatcher Demko’s Vezina-caliber season but the Canucks also gave up fewer odd-man rushes, improved their penalty kill, and prevented the cross-seam passes that gave their goaltenders headaches in previous years.
But, as Tocchet said at the end of last season, some of the Canucks’ improvement defensively came at the cost of some offence — robbing Peter to pay Paul, as he put it. The question is whether this focus at camp on attacking in transition will, in turn, cost them defensively.
According to Tocchet, it’s about finding that middle ground: identifying when you can jump up and attack in transition and move the puck through the middle of the ice and when to play it safe.
“If there’s a play to be made, make a play. If there’s no play there, make sure that you don’t make a mistake. And the guys understand that,” said Tocchet. “We want to be a little more risky, obviously, but we don’t want to be a high-risk team. We’ve just got to find that sweet spot.”
The defensive details are still a key to Tocchet’s systems. This camp is about adding an extra layer to that foundation, giving the players more freedom to attack in transition when the defensive game creates a turnover.
“We’ll never get away from D-zone coverage drills and stuff like that — that’s our staple,” said Tocchet. “But we’ve got Jake DeBrusk, [Danton] Heinen, [Kiefer] Sherwood — we’ve got some faster players — and some of our D, we like the way they look back there in getting the puck up to our forwards. We just want to play a really fast brand.”
In theory, this faster brand of hockey that attacks more often in transition should lead to not just excitement for the fans but more shots, more scoring chances, and more goals. But the only way this brand of hockey works is if the Canucks start implementing it right from day one of training camp.
“When you want to play a certain way, you’ve almost got to eat, sleep, drink it every night,” said Tocchet. “That’s the way we have to approach this training camp so that guys are ready to go, where we’re going to play a lot faster.”
