The Vancouver Canucks’ blue line has been nothing short of brilliant this season. New additions like Carson Soucy, Ian Cole and Nikita Zadorov have fit in seamlessly, while Quinn Hughes could be on his way to his first Norris Trophy, and Noah Juulsen and Filip Hronek are having career campaigns. However, they have absolutely dominated in the last eight games, taking their performance to the next level at the right time.
Almost every Canucks defenceman has been playing well at 5-on-5, making backup goaltender Casey DeSmith’s life easier as he fills in for Thatcher Demko, who has been out with a lower-body injury. They’ve only given up more than three goals in a game once since the beginning of March. Here’s a look at two of Vancouver’s defensive pairings and their elite on-ice statistics during this impressive run of play.
Quinn Hughes-Filip Hronek
As they have all season, Hughes and Hronek have been the driving force behind the team’s defensive unit, and more so in the last eight games. According to Natural Stat Trick, the two have spent 134 minutes of 5-on-5 time together since the beginning of March, racking up an eye-catching 58.3 Corsi-for percentage (CF%). An opponent is almost guaranteed to spend most of their shift in the defensive zone when they’re on the ice.
Related: NHL Rumors: Canucks, Flyers, Oilers, Penguins
There isn’t much more to be said about this top-pairing. The league knows how good they have been on both sides of the puck. Offensively, they’re arguably the best pairing in the NHL. Defensively, they’re still among the top 50 pairings, sporting a 2.53 expected goals-against per 60 minutes (xGA/60). If they continue to play like this for the rest of the season, head coach Rick Tocchet will have at least one elite pairing headed into the postseason.
Carson Soucy-Tyler Myers
Tyler Myers and Soucy have been playing out of their minds in three games together, and that’s putting it lightly. Although this duo hasn’t played much together before now, Tocchet is a huge fan of the two together, saying this after last Thursday’s practice: “They had a really good stretch playing more of a shutdown role. I thought they did a really nice job unfortunately [Soucy] got hurt. But we do like that pair. I’m not sure whether we’ll stay with it or not, but we’d be crazy not to get them back in the mix. They were pretty good a month ago.”
Tocchet should stick with these two. In three games, they have been a shutdown pairing, putting together a whopping 84.47 expected goals-for percentage (xGF%). They’ve conceded just 0.28 expected goals-against in those 33 minutes together at 5-on-5. It’s a small sample size, but it’s hard not to be drawn to stats like those. Plus, when you consider how good they’ve been before this stretch, it seems like a sure-fire dynamite pairing.
This pairing, along with Hughes and Hronek, has solidified the Canucks’ top four. Having Cole, Zadorov and Juulsen in the bottom-two with the ability to rotate them makes the Canucks one of the deepest teams in the NHL on defence, something that couldn’t be said during the last six or seven seasons.
Getting hot at the right time is vital to win the Stanley Cup. This group – specifically the blue line – is. Once their All-Star netminder returns, they will become even scarier to play against. It’ll be interesting to see if Soucy-Myers can continue to play at this level, and if they can churn out top performances with Hughes and Hronek leading the way, Vancouver’s path to glory will be a lot clearer.