Would you trade Moritz Seider for Quinn Hughes straight up? I wouldn’t, but that’s because a) I’m an unabashed Homer, b) there’s a premium on right-shooting defensemen, and c) the Hair, obviously. I wouldn’t be mad at the trade, but I personally see it as trading a top-shelf apple for a badass banana. Yes, Hughes had more than double Seider’s point total this season, but then let me ask you this: Would you have traded Vladimir Konstantinov for Brian Leetch? I’m not saying these young guns aren’t a long way away from being compared to either of those legends, but in 1996-97, Brian Leetch won the Norris with 78 points in 82 games. Second in the Norris race that season? Konstantinov. With 38 points in 77 games.
Good, now that we can agree to disagree on those two, I want to talk about the Canucks as a team for a minute and then compare them with our Red Wings. The Canucks have bothered me all season long. Their pre-season roster always felt to me like a bubble team at best if they were in the eastern conference, even more so if they were in a division as tough as the Atlantic. They’re obviously no bottom feeder. They have undeniable talent in their lineup and they finished with the sixth-most wins in the League this season. It’s just, overall, I’ve found them to be … unremarkable.
Some quick overall statistics
Thatcher Demko may well prove to be a perennial Vezina candidate throughout the prime of his career. That alone can be enough to buoy mediocre teams to near-contention (hat tip to Carey Price). Goals-Against, in fact, is the only major metric where Vancouver placed top-5 in the League. Only Carolina, Los Angeles, Florida, and Winnipeg allowed fewer goals this season, and the ‘Nucks did that while being 30th in the League in blocked shots. They were 8th in goals-for (one goal ahead of Detroit). They were 12th on the Power Play, 17th on the Penalty Kill. I don’t want to dive too deep into advanced metrics, but the Canucks’ expected goals for at 5-on-5 was 168.1 and they scored 187. Their 5-on-5 expected goals against was 159.1 and they only gave up 136. All of that and my unimpeachable feelings tell me top-tier goaltending, a little puck luck, and the League’s fourth-easiest schedule led to phenomenal regular season results for a team that is, at best, somewhat above-average.
Anecdotes Disguised as Comparisons
As the Red Wings flirted with a playoff spot all season, a repeated point of discussion was the opportunity cost of playoff experience versus higher draft picks when it’s obvious there is no hope for a serious, deep run in the playoffs. Detroit’s roster is no Terry Malloy. Not a bum, but never gonna be a contender neither. I could easily be proven wrong in the near future, but I do not see this Canucks squad ever truly contending for a Cup either. In fact, I see a lot of parallels between Vancouver and Detroit and would like to offer them as a cautionary tale. Yes, even without Demko throughout the playoffs they made it within one win of the Conference Finals, but I am not convinced this is a team as close to championship caliber as that might suggest.
I’m not trying to go out of my way to bash the Canucks here, by the way. I genuinely hope they finally win the Cup the next time they draft Hall of Famer twins back-to-back in the first round. So maybe I should take some time to give them some due compliments. First, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson are an outstanding 1-2 punch up the middle, something Detroit is desperately lacking. They’re not quite in the elite tier of the McDavids, Kucherovs, and Matthews of the world, but they’re close. The aforementioned Quinn Hughes, on the other hand, is very much in the elite category of defensemen. Brock Boeser is certainly A Guy on the right wing. Vancouver’s top scorer after those four? Filip Hronek with 48 points in 81 games. There is a precipitous drop off in points production on their roster indicative of a lack of depth and scoring balance.
Get Deep
A lack of depth and balance is the biggest and most common hallmark of a paper tiger in this League (hey there, Toronto!). The most terrifying ‘outcome’ to me of this rebuild is to become exactly this: a perennial playoff team with no real hopes of getting past the 2nd round. Six years of that is what got us here in the first place. Detroit’s 6-10 points leaders this season were Patrick Kane, David Perron, Daniel Sprong, Moritz Seider, and Michael Rasmussen. I think that’s pretty damned solid. Vancouver’s was Conor Garland, Nils Hoglander, Dakota Joshua, Ilya Mikheyev, and Pius Suter. Which would be your preferred fivesome?
The Blue Line
The two big differences between Vancouver and Detroit are pretty obvious. Vancouver has a genuine 1-2 punch up the middle, and their defense is rarely as putrid as Detroit’s can be at times. But I don’t even envy Vancouver’s top-five-in-the-League scoring defense. Hughes-Hronek is a bona fide top pair (almost entirely because of Hughes in my opinion, but that’s another discussion). Their next-most impactful defenders were Tyler Myers, 33, and Ian Cole, 34. Both overperformed a fair bit this season and are likely to start seeing significant decline in the next season or two. Vancouver traded a third and a fifth for Nikita Zadorov who spent more time in the penalty box than any other Canuck by a vast margin despite only playing 54 games for them. The rest of their defense is a hodgepodge of Noah Juulsen, Carson Soucy, and Mark Friedman and …. For me, this hardly inspires like the futures of Simon Edvinsson, Albert Johansson, William Wallinder, and Axel Sandin-Pellikka.
The Hard-Hitting Conclusion
There is of course much more to the big picture here. For the first time in years, Detroit is going to be genuinely constrained by the salary cap. We’re not contenders yet; we’ll need to get out of contracts like Copp and Petry and bring in / up a top centermen to enter that conversation, but it’s also easy to forget that for two months of the season, the 2023-24 Red Wings were a top-3 team in the League and nigh unbeatable. Do I think it’s possible this year’s squad could have put up 109 points in the Pacific Division? With a healthy Larkin and consistent goaltending, I absolutely do. Would that have made us any more of a contender this season than we all knew we truly were? Absolutely not. But as the NHL rosters and farm systems go, I’ll take Detroit’s 91-point franchise over Vancouver’s 109-point franchise every single time.
I just hope that, if by some miracle Detroit finds itself comfortably atop its division at the next trade deadline, we don’t go out and trade a first, third, fourth, fifth, and two prospects for Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov. I, for one, am still happy drinking Yzerman’s Patience-ade and like where we’re headed.
