The new season is inching closer. When I opened up my computer this morning, I found a couple of interesting Canucks-related tidbits that I thought were worth passing along.
The NHLPA rookie showcase is on in Toronto, with Jake Virtanen posing for his hockey card and sharing his thoughts on things that really matter:
Jacob Markstrom's ready to get into work mode:
Markstrom also said that even though his summer was short, his body feels good and he's looking forward to the upcoming season.
I think Markstrom's ready to take this step and that his play might catch some people by surprise. As we all know, Vancouver loves its backup goalies—if Ryan Miller suffers any sort of health issue during the first third of the season, things could be very interesting.
The most interesting piece I saw today is
this one from Andrew Berkshire at Sportlogiq, analyzing Brandon Prust's ability to create scoring chances.
Statistics can be manipulated in so many different ways that I'm wary of taking any analysis like this at face value, but Sportlogiq looks like it's more than some guy crunching numbers in a basement—they're a company that's all-in with its own data collection technology.
Rather than focusing on puck possession, Sportlogiq focuses on scoring chances—and the players who help to create them. Here's how they explain their philosophy:
Essentially each scoring chance play is the result of an event chain, and every successful event in an unbroken chain, will lead to that player getting credit.
Approaching scoring chances this way allows us to see which players are most involved in creating offence, not just attributing everything to the shooter.
According to their analysis, none other than Brandon Prust was actually Montreal's top scoring-chance generator in last year's playoffs based on minutes played.
Prust’s numbers in the regular season were impressive as is for a fourth liner, out-producing Dale Weise in offence creation in spite of significantly tougher minutes, and with significantly less talented linemates. However the playoff numbers he was able to produce are astonishing.
In the playoffs, Prust’s ability to create scoring chances was nearly at Max Pacioretty levels, made even more impressive when you consider that he started a staggering number of his shifts in the defensive zone. Unfortunately for Prust, the Canadiens couldn’t score to save their lives in the playoffs, so all his great play went virtually unnoticed, though perhaps not by the Vancouver Canucks.
The Habs' Achilles heel these days is their inability to put the puck in the net but based on these numbers, it looks like we can hope that, in addition to using his body and dropping the gloves when necessary, Prust will be better than most players in his position at getting the puck down to the offensive part of the ice.
Prust is heading out from his summer home base of London, Ontario today. I imagine he'll start getting settled in Vancouver later this week.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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