Canucks Coffee: The kids are into it, a big thing for future fans

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“The kids are on board,” my friend Jeremy Davis told me this week.

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He’s a youth hockey coach in Langley and last spring we spoke about how the Canucks’ struggles in recent seasons was risking them losing a generation of fans.

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No longer, he feels.

“My kids and their teams are on the verge of being recaptured. They can actually right some wrongs here,” he said.

“They win, they score. Near the top of the standings, players in Top 10 in scoring, players near the top of the all-star vote, players in consideration for nearly every major award — 12 year old hockey players pay attention to that sort of thing.”

His son Linden is a top player on the U13 team, so you know what he talks about affects his teammates.

“Linden likes perusing the NHL app, he’s always watching standings and scoring races. When NHL.com posts those ‘awards watch’ articles, he’s the one that tells me that Tocchet is gonna win the Jack Adams etc.,” Davis adds.

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“Plus, if they score highlight reel goals? I get kids trying to copy the moves in practice that week.”

The mirage is dissipating

The Canucks’ shooting percentage remains sky high, but an important underlying data point has emerged: no longer are the Canucks getting out-chanced.

All the various public models that track expected-goals — a measure of how good a team’s shots are — show the Canucks are getting off better shots than their opponents.

The public models are very flawed — they don’t show how the puck got to the shooting spot, or what the goalie was doing before the shot, or whether there are things like traffic between the shooter and goalie — but they are a useful descriptive tool in understanding from where teams are getting their shots.

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And the Canucks being in the positive means they really are doing all the right things.

They’re also outshooting their opposition at five-on-five, a sign that they’re really dominating possession.

This team is good.

Chasing an upgrade

There’s lots of talk about how the Canucks will improve their team. A source close to the team says the Canucks are ready to deal just about any prospect or pick they have, save their three key Swedish prospects: Tom Willander, Elias Pettersson and Jonathan Lekkerimaki.

All three were big players for Sweden at the recent World Juniors and will be looked to in helping the Canucks manage their way through their cap challenges over the next couple of seasons.

But pushing their chips in otherwise really does seem like a plan for the Canucks at this point. That means, yes, the likes of Nils Höglander or Vasily Podkolzin could be on their way out. So, too, is the first rounder this summer, which will be in the high 20s as it is.

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Canucks management knows the time is now, given how well they’re already performing.

The lesson always is to add as close to the top of the lineup as you can because the players filling those roles well now will fill roles further down the lineup even better.

Think of 2011, when the Canucks added Chris Higgins. He was brought in to play a third-line role, taking over a spot that Raffi Torres had been ably filling, pushing Torres down to the fourth line, which made the fourth line a potent threat every time they were on the ice.

[email protected]

@risingaction.bsky.social

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