The 2022 World Junior Championship is in the books, but we've got one final note on Jonathan Lekkerimaki before we put the tournament to bed.
Rick Dhaliwal connected with Swedish coach Tomas Monten for a breakdown of Lekkerimaki's tournament.
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. Did he "fall" ill with mononucleosis recently? Or did he go through it last fall?
Either way, it can be a debilitating illness that saps energy and can linger for weeks. That could certainly have a detrimental effect on a high-end athlete.
The details probably don't matter too much. The news is just another reminder that Lekkerimaki still has a lot of runway ahead before he makes his NHL debut, and there will always be twists and turns along the way.
Another European U20 tournament kicks off this week, part of the preparation for December's World Juniors in Halifax and Moncton. Two Canucks prospects are set to skate for Sweden at the Four Nations Cup.
Closer to home, the Canucks' social media brings us our first look at Ilya Mikheyev (No. 65) and Andrei Kuzmenko (No. 96) in team colours, on the ice at the Scotia Barn (which will always be 8 Rinks to me).
Kuzmenko's enthusiasm in this clip is infectious!
The impact of these two players is probably the No. 1 story to watch as we head into the new season. If Kuzmenko can deliver an offensive boost to the top six and Mikheyev can juice up the penalty kill, those two outcomes could make a real difference for the Canucks in the standings.
In his recent interview with John Scott on the 'Dropping the Gloves' podcast, J.T. Miller was quick to lay a lot of the blame for the Canucks' poor start last season on the penalty kill that was not just poor, but also operating at Murphy's Law levels of bad luck.
"Our team defense was in the top three or five, like, almost the whole year, 5-on-5," he said. "I'm not sure how we ended up at the end, actually. But I noticed, with Travis there, we were actually leading the league at one point in team defense, 5-on-5. Goals against was very low. We were losing every game 3-2 because our penalty kill gave up two goals. We just couldn't keep the puck out of the net, and we could kill a minute-55 of in-zone time and they would shoot one from the point that would go off of three guys. And I'm not making excuses, but we were losing ad nauseam."
He's exaggerating, of course, but his point holds. And I was impressed that he was able to pinpoint the issues from that dark time so clearly. The Canucks were 8-15-2 when Travis Green and Jim Benning were fired on December 5, 2021. Eight of those losses were by one goal — including the two in overtime, obviously. So, nearly half. And the Canucks gave up one goal on the penalty kill in five of those losses, two goals in seven, and three goals in one. They only lost four times when they didn't give up a goal to the other team's power play.
They were digging themselves out of holes when they won, too. They only had seven games out of 25 where the penalty kill was perfect, so five of their eight wins came despite allowing a power-play goal to their opponent.
At the time of the firings, the Canucks' goals against ranked 23th in the NHL, at 3.16 goals per game. But Miller's dead right about the team defense. On December 5, according to
Natural Stat Trick, they were tied with Washington for the fourth-best goals-against-per-60 in the league at 5-on-5, at 1.94 — with Carolina and Tampa Bay just a hair better in second and third place at 1.93.
But they also ranked 29th in scoring at 5-on-5, averaging just 1.84 goals per game. So at evens, they were losing a little bit of ground. And they couldn't make it up on special teams.
By season's end, the Canucks were allowing 2.14 goals a game at 5-on-5. But with the surge in scoring around the league, that actually moved them up to second place overall, behind only Calgary. And their 5-on-5 scoring improved to 2.34 goals per game — still tied with Los Angeles for 24th overall, but now with a positive differential of 0.2 goals per game at evens.
The difference was even more marked on special teams. Before Green's firing, Vancouver sat 22nd overall on the power play, at 17.4%, and the last-place penalty kill was just 64.6% effective.
By season's end, those numbers had shifted to 23.5% on the power play for the full year — good for ninth place — and the penalty kill got up to 74.9%. Still 30th overall, but in both cases, a lot of good work was done under Boudreau to improve those numbers significantly during the final two-thirds of the year.
Here's hoping that Mikheyev and Kuzmenko can help boost them further this season.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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