Jake DeBrusk is about to turn 28 years old and has yet to have a 30-goal season in the NHL. Is next season finally the year he breaks the barrier?
The Vancouver Canucks signed DeBrusk to a seven-year contract with a $5.5 million cap hit, betting big on him being a key component of the team’s top six for years to come. In particular, DeBrusk will likely be expected to partner with Elias Pettersson and help elevate the game of the Canucks’ most expensive player.
That’s a lot to expect from someone who has never scored 30 goals. In fact, last season DeBrusk managed just 19 goals: 13 at 5-on-5, two on the power play, two shorthanded, one at 4-on-4, and one in 3-on-3 overtime.
There are reasons to believe that DeBrusk has more to give, however. For instance, he’s twice scored 27 goals and those goals came in 68 games in 2018-19 and 64 games in 2022-23. In both of those seasons, he likely would have reached 30 goals if he played a full season.
More importantly, DeBrusk played through a broken hand suffered in late January that didn't fully heal into the playoffs. Perhaps that explains why DeBrusk had the lowest shot rate and second-lowest shooting percentage of his career. By his own admission, he couldn't shoot the puck properly.
“I knew my playoffs were going to be better,” said DeBrusk. “I could shoot the puck, use my bottom hand.”
Back to full health in the postseason, DeBrusk elevated his game, scoring 5 goals and 11 points in 13 games.
It’s reasonable to believe a bounceback regular season could be coming with health. But there are reasons beyond that to believe that DeBrusk could hit new career highs with the Canucks next season.
What it comes down to is ice time and opportunity.
DeBrusk could have an elevated role at even-strength
Let’s be clear: DeBrusk wasn’t buried on the Boston Bruins. It’s not like the Canucks uncovered a diamond in the rough who was stuck playing on the third or fourth line of a deep team. DeBrusk was a top-six forward on the Bruins last season.
DeBrusk primarily played on a line with Brad Marchand and Charlie Coyle, who finished second and third on the Bruins in scoring. When he wasn’t on their line, he played with David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha, who were first and fourth in Bruins scoring.
Among Bruins forwards, DeBrusk finished fifth in 5-on-5 ice time, firmly in top-six territory. But he could find himself playing even more minutes next season.
DeBrusk averaged 12:39 per game at 5-on-5 last season, while each of J.T. Miller, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser averaged over 13 minutes per game. It’s a small difference, but it can add up to over an hour more ice time at 5-on-5 over the course of a season.
With more minutes comes more chances to put the puck in the net, especially if DeBrusk is called upon more often when the Canucks need to score. With the Bruins, DeBrusk was the team’s seventh most frequently used forward when trailing by a goal.
That ought to change in Vancouver, where he can likely count on increased rather than decreased ice time when trailing by a goal. He’ll likely be the go-to extra forward in 6-on-5 situations late in games as well.
DeBrusk will likely have a prime spot on the first powerplay unit
DeBrusk can expect a marginal increase in ice time and opportunity at even strength. Where he can expect a much bigger role is on the power play.
The Bruins’ first unit on the power play last season was Charlie McAvoy at the point, with forwards David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Pavel Zacha, and James van Riemsdyk.
That left DeBrusk to play on the second unit with Morgan Geekie, Charlie Coyle, and defencemen Kevin Shattenkirk and Hampus Lindholm. He averaged 1:41 in ice time per game on the power play.
With limited ice time and less talented teammates, it’s no surprise that DeBrusk managed just two goals on the power play last season and one of those goals happened to be when he was on the ice with the first unit, assisted by Pastrnak and Zacha.
With the Canucks, DeBrusk will almost certainly be on the first power play unit. That means he’s likely to play closer to 3:27 per game on the power play, which is what Andrei Kuzmenko averaged before he was traded.
More than that, DeBrusk could end up as the trigger man in the bumper rather than the net-front role he played with Boston. The Canucks haven’t had a proper left-shot in the bumper since Bo Horvat was traded and J.T. Miller’s ability to make plays from the left half-wall should result in significantly more opportunities to shoot the puck for DeBrusk.
It’s easy to imagine DeBrusk and Boeser trading off between the net-front and the bumper depending on the position of the puck, giving the Canucks power play more options for shots from the slot as well as backdoor, tip, and rebound plays.
That means DeBrusk is likely to take a lot more than the 23 shots he managed on the power play last season. Instead, it’s reasonable to expect closer to 50-60 shots on the power play. Finishing on just a league-average number of those shots should result in a big jump in power play goals.
The x-factor: potential chemistry with Elias Pettersson
Finally, there’s the question of chemistry.
In Boston, DeBrusk has had the good fortune of playing with some talented linemates. When he scored 27 goals in 68 games in 2018-19, he had David Krejci as his primary centre. When he put up 27 goals in 64 games in 2022-23, he had Patrice Bergeron as his centre in the twilight of his career.
Last season, however, DeBrusk’s primary centre was Charlie Coyle — a solid second-line centre but whose 60 points was a career-high. Going from Coyle to Pettersson, who had 89 points last season and 102 the season before, is a significant upgrade.
It’s an upgrade that ought to get DeBrusk back to scoring at the same rate as he did with Krejci and Bergeron.
If DeBrusk clicks with Pettersson, it could be the beginning of a beautiful long-term partnership. Pettersson created innumerable chances for his linemates last season, only to see a lot of those chances die on the stick of Ilya Mikheyev. With more of those passes landing on the stick of DeBrusk, who has much better finish around the net, that should lead to more goals for DeBrusk and more assists for Pettersson.
There’s a chance, of course, that DeBrusk and Pettersson don’t click at all. In that case, DeBrusk will likely play with J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser — hardly a step down. In fact, it might be an even better fit with his style of play.
A path to 30 goals for DeBrusk
So, how many goals should Canucks fans expect from DeBrusk next season?
Let’s start off with some assumptions. We’ll assume that DeBrusk plays around 13 minutes per game at 5-on-5, which would place him fourth behind Pettersson, Miller, and Boeser. We’ll also assume that he averages 3:27 per game on the power play, same as Kuzmenko before he was traded.
That gives us a total of 1066 5-on-5 minutes and 283 power play minutes.
If we take his shot rate and shooting percentage from the last three seasons in each of those situations, that gives us a decent estimate for his shot rate and shooting percentage for next season.
Using those assumptions and estimates, that projects to approximately 19 5-on-5 goals on 162 shots and approximately 8 power play goals on 60 shots for DeBrusk.
That would match his career-high of 27 goals. To get to 30, however, we need to make a couple more assumptions.
DeBrusk has scored a few goals in other situations over the past three seasons: one goal at 4-on-4, three gamewinners in 3-on-3 overtime, two shorthanded goals, and six empty-net goals — two in each season. Average those out over three seasons and Bob’s your uncle.
It seems pretty reasonable that DeBrusk would get at least one overtime gamewinner next season and a couple of empty-netters to pad his goal total. Add it all together and we get a projection of 30.79 goals for DeBrusk next season.
This might even be considered a conservative projection, as it uses numbers from when he was playing through injury last season and he might have even more success on the power play.
What do you think? Is it reasonable to expect DeBrusk to score 30 goals next season? Is this projection too optimistic or is it too conservative?
