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The Vancouver Canucks moved to 24-10-3 after beating the Ottawa Senators 6-3 on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. After leaping out to a 5-0 lead in the first interval, the Canucks cruised to victory in the remaining two intervals, seemingly by no means taking it out of first gear to finish the recreation. In a matchup between certainly one of the league’s finest and the league’s worst, listed below are three takeaways from the recreation.
Canucks followers know Elias Pettersson is by and huge the straw that stirs the Canucks’ drink. When he’s on, the complete staff follows him. After netting two targets final evening in the first interval, he’s now introduced his season level complete to 45 (15 targets, 30 assists.)
Both of his goals were a bit fluky, however hey, all of them rely the identical. Even trying previous his targets, he was a two-way pressure on the market. According to Natural Stat Trick, Pettersson had the second-highest (solely behind Pius Suter) anticipated goals-for proportion (xG%) with 78.58%. Obviously, the complete staff deserves a boatload of credit score for his or her efficiency in the first interval, however the Swede separated himself from the relaxation.
If the Canucks are critical about being Stanley Cup contenders, they’ll want Pettersson to proceed to play at his finest. The scariest factor about him this season is that he hasn’t reached his full “Elias Pettersson potential” but. 45 factors in 37 video games is spectacular. However, those that have been following his profession since his arrival to the league in 2018 know he has an entire different degree he can faucet into.
Canucks’ Bottom-Six Continues to be Elite
Outside of the aforementioned Pettersson, the complete Canucks bottom-six ahead group led the forwards in xG%. From Suter to Dakota Joshua and everybody in between, all six of them had but once more one other stable day at the workplace. Time and time once more, they lead their staff to victory by taking part in with an impressive mix of velocity, talent, skating, and defence.
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That was no completely different on Tuesday evening. Suter himself scored twice, together with a nifty objective the place he caught the puck off the glass from a rebound, dropped it and slotted it in earlier than Senators netminder Anton Forsberg even had an opportunity to find the puck. Besides Suter’s three factors — he additionally assisted on Pettersson’s first objective — Sam Lafferty was the solely different bottom-six ahead so as to add some extent (an help on Suter’s outstanding objective.)
President of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and normal supervisor Patrik Allvin warrant a gargantuan quantity of reward for placing this bottom-six group collectively. Each participant brings one thing completely different to the desk and collectively, they’ve been producing magic evening in and evening out.
Canucks’ PDO is Here to Stay
The operating gag about this 2023-24 Canucks team is their PDO. It has been from the begin of the 12 months and it nonetheless is midway by means of the season. For those that have no idea, PDO (which oddly sufficient isn’t an acronym) is calculated by the sum of a staff’s capturing proportion and its save proportion. That quantity is multiplied by 10 and voila, that’s the staff’s PDO.
The baseline for PDO is 1.000. Anything above that and also you’re due for regression and something under you’re thought-about unfortunate. The Canucks sit properly atop the league in PDO with a whopping 1.051. It has been sky-high all season, and but the regression nonetheless hasn’t hit. Guess what? It greater than possible gained’t. This is who the Canucks are. Yes, they’ll get outshot. Yes, they’ll get fortunate bounces to go their manner and sure, Thatcher Demko will bail his defence out from time to time. However, that is what occurs when good gamers all have the finest years of their careers.
The Canucks will look to construct off their win on Thursday, Jan. 4 in opposition to the St. Louis Blues in St. Louis. The recreation can be their first cease of a seven-game highway journey.
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