One of the big questions about the Vancouver Canucks heading into the 2016-17 season is whether or not new acquisition Philip Larsen will be able to fulfill the job description that he has been assigned—offering an offensive presence on the blue line for Vancouver's woeful power play.
When the Canucks were a Presidents' Trophy team, their power play was one of the best in the league. The peak was in 2010-11, when the team enjoyed a league-leading success rate of 24.3 percent. Daniel Sedin won the Art Ross Trophy with 104 points, 42 of which came with the man advantage, and Christian Ehrhoff was the right-shot defender that ran the show from the blue line, with six goals and 28 points.
As soon as Ehrhoff left after the 2011 Stanley Cup run, the decline began, though left-shot Alex Edler initially held the fort on the blue line.
2011-12: 19.8 percent (fourth overall); leading scorers Henrik Sedin (27 pts) and D Alex Edler (5 goals, 22 points)
2012-13: 15.8 percent (22nd overall); leading scorer Henrik Sedin (13 pts in 48 games) and D Alex Edler (5 goals, 10 pts in 45 games)
2013-14: 15.2 percent (26th overall); leading scorer Henrik Sedin (18 pts in 70 games) and D Jason Garrison (4 goals, 15 points)
2014-15: 18.9 percent (11th overall); leading scorers Daniel and Henrik Sedin (25 points) and D Alex Edler (5 goals, 14 points)
2015-16: 15.8 percent (27th overall); leading scorer Henrik Sedin (20 points in 74 games) and D Alex Edler (3 goals, 9 points)
The Canucks ranked 21st in the NHL last season with 247 power play opportunities over the course of the year. They spent 425:21 with the man advantage, was 16th in the league and that's probably not a good thing: it most likely means that they spent more time than most playing out full two-minute man advantages without scoring a goal.
Yannick Weber failed to become the new Christian Ehrhoff last season, finishing with no goals and just five power-play assists in the 45 games he played. So, it's on to the next plan.
Assistant coach Perry Pearn is the man who unearthed Larsen, according to a weekend article from
Jason Botchford in
The Province.
“My nephew played with him in Helsinki last year,” Pearn said. “He was really, really positive in terms of what (Larsen) can bring from an offensive standpoint.
“He said his puck possession skills, and the accuracy of his shot, and ability to move the puck and see the ice are all really, really good.
“Those are all good things.”
With 11 goals and 36 points in 52 games last year, Larsen ranked fifth among KHL defensemen in points—but bear in mind, the league's best defenseman was Cam Barker, who we saw firsthand for 14 unimpressive games as he finished out his NHL career in 2012-13, before leaving for Europe.
Four of Larsen's 11 goals came on the power play last season. The
KHL website doesn't give total power-play points.
In the 125 NHL games that Larsen has played with the Dallas Stars and Edmonton Oilers, he's 8-23-31, averaging just under a quarter of a point per game. By comparison, Alex Edler has 279 points in 670 games, which is 0.45 points per game.
That being said, Edler has been a top-pairing defenseman on a team that was very good, averaging 22:39 of ice time per game in his career. Larsen would have been a depth defender. He averaged 16:40 per game when he played in the NHL, a little better than Yannick Weber's 15:55. Weber, for the record, has 70 points in 274 NHL games, a PPG average of .255 points per game—pretty comparable to Larsen's number.
The hope, of course, is that the 26-year-old Larsen that is returning to the NHL after two years away is a better player than the 24-year-old that left after one season with the Edmonton Oilers/Oklahoma City Barons in 2013-14.
When the Sedins first hooked up with Radim Vrbata two seasons ago, they showed that they could still make power-play magic. Hopefully Larsen will have the same impact this fall.
Alex Burrows Finishes Second in Smashfest Ping-Pong Tournament
Once again, Alex Burrows fell just short of the championship at Dominic Moore's Smashfest Ping-Pong Fundraising Tournament in Toronto last week.
In his article about the event for Yahoo's Puck Daddy,
Dhiren Mahiban includes some quotes from Burrows about his connection with ping pong.
“We used to play everyday back in the days with AV (Alain Vigneault),” Burrows said. “When Torts (John Tortorella) came, he kiboshed the Ping-Pong table so we didn’t play that year, but now we’ve brought it back a little bit.”
Burrows, who failed to win the Pro-Am event for a third consecutive year, picked up the game while growing up in Pincourt, Que.
“I remember coming out of class, at the ring of the bell, we’d sprint to the Ping-Pong table to be the first one there to play the first game,” he said. “I think in high school we used to play quite a bit. That was one of the sports in gym class, Ping-Pong while others were playing badminton. That’s where it all started.”
Smashfest has now raised over half a million dollars for concussion and cancer research in its first five years, and has become an important date on the offseason hockey calendar.
One other Canucks personnel note today:
Cederholm is now 21. He had three goals and 17 points—and was plus-18—in his first pro season, with the Kalamazoo Wings of the ECHL.
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