The current Vancouver Canucks roster is blessed with some of the most skilled players in franchise history.
Just seven Canucks have ever scored 100 points in a season — this team has two of them in Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. Meanwhile, Quinn Hughes has broken his own franchise record for most points by a Canucks defenceman several times over.
Even the depth players on the roster have more skill than most Canucks of the past. Part of that is simply the evolution of the game of hockey, as skills that were once the domain of once-in-a-generation talents are now far more commonplace. Whether it’s technological developments in skates and sticks or improvements in training and coaching, every player in the NHL today has a wealth of skills to draw on that would make him a star in past eras.
But you can always be more skilled.
I asked several Canucks players to look around the room and pick one skill from one of their teammates that they would like to steal and add to their own game.
"He can just skate away from anyone"
The number one answer ought to be an obvious one, as most looked to their captain, Quinn Hughes.
“I would say better skating,” said Teddy Blueger, and when asked whose skating he had in mind, he didn’t hesitate: “Huggy. Not surprising, eh?”
“Probably Huggy’s skating,” said Carson Soucy. “Just the way he uses his edges, how he turns — he comes out of his turns a little quicker than I do.” He chuckled then looked almost wistful as he added, “That’d be nice.”
Even his head coach, Rick Tocchet, said that Hughes’ skating is something he wishes he had back during his playing days.
“Obviously, I wasn’t the most skilled guy,” said Tocchet, who had 952 career points in 1144 games. “Probably the way that Hughes can cut. The way he cuts, his change of direction — I didn’t have that kind of change of direction. That would be huge to have that. To be able to lose somebody, to be able to turn on a dime — he’s elite.”
Hughes was immediately one of the best skaters in the NHL when he entered the league and he’s only gotten better since then, adding more explosive power to his strides to leave opposing players scrambling to keep up with his quick changes in direction. It’s no wonder that Hughes’ fellow defencemen on the Canucks would be jealous of that aspect of his game.
“The most obvious would be Huggy’s skating,” said Ian Cole. “He can just skate away from anyone, beat anybody one-on-one because of his skating.”
But Cole couldn’t restrain himself to just one skill. He wanted it all.
“Millsy’s shot and his vision. Petey’s shot, his vision. Höggy’s skating. Gar’s vision, his cutbacks in traffic,” Cole rattled off. “I could go around the room, honestly. [Filip Hronek’s] shot. I’ll take everything.”
Then he had to laugh: “Man, if I took a little bit from everybody, I’d be a hell of a player.”
"I would love to have a better shot"
Cole might have wanted Nils Höglander’s skating and Conor Garland’s vision but both of those high-motor play-drivers wanted something else: a better shot.
“I would love to have a better shot, so a guy with a good shot, who’s that on the team? We have a couple,” said Höglander as he looked around the room, then specified that he wanted to steal someone’s wrist shot, rather than a slap shot. “I would say Brock or Millsy’s wrist shot.”
“Petey has a…pretty good shot,” he added, leaving a pregnant pause and laughing as he intentionally undersold his friend’s talent.
Since Boeser, Miller, and Pettersson are the only three players on the Canucks with more goals than Höglander this season, so wanting to crib their wrist shots is pretty understandable. Garland, on the other hand, looked to a more unexpected teammate.
“Probably Phil Di Giuseppe’s shot,” said Garland. “He wires it.”
He’s not wrong. Di Giuseppe may only have 5 goals this season and 27 goals in his NHL career but he has a smooth and deadly release on his shot when he gets the chance to use it.
Maybe it's not so wild to want that kind of release in your toolkit.
"You cannot be in this league if you don't have hockey IQ"
Like Cole, Ilya Mikheyev had a tough time choosing.
“There’s so many skills. Everything, a little bit,” said Mikheyev, but when he took the time to think a little longer, he landed on one skill in particular: “Stickhandling.”
When asked which of his teammates he’d steal their stickhandling from, he smiled and said, “Everybody.”
Nikita Zadorov also thought long and hard about the question, contemplating his answer for a solid eleven seconds before responding.
“Elias Pettersson’s vision,” he said deliberately as if pronouncing the final judgement as an arbiter of an argument inside his own head.
When asked to elaborate, Zadorov said, “I’m just thinking about what I’m lacking outside of the skillset I have. I’m a decent skater, I’m physical, I’m big, I can shoot. I think the vision that Petey has, the way he sees the game — the game slows down for him. I think that would definitely be really helpful for me.
“I mean, I think I can see the ice pretty well but the way he is, not many players can do that. At the end of the day, you cannot be in this league if you don’t have hockey IQ and he has a super-high hockey IQ.”
