The 2023-24 Vancouver Canucks: What You Need To Know

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It’s October, the weather is gloomy and rainy, and the days are getting dark, quickly. These can all signify many things, but for me, it tells me one thing.

Hockey season is officially here.

I am absolutely pumped that I get to say that. I’ve been a die-hard hockey fan for as long as I can remember. The days leading up to the NHL’s season opener feels like the leading up to Christmas as a kid. There is nothing I love more than the beginning of the NHL season.

Well, that’s actually a partial lie, as part of me absolutely dreads it.

You may be asking yourself, why?

I’ll be blunt, I cheer for the Vancouver Canucks.

Being a Canucks fan has to be the most complicated thing. You have this love/hate relationship with the team. The good times feel incredible. Even when it feels like you’re grasping at straws, it doesn’t matter, the fanbase always unites to celebrate their hockey team doing great, even if it’s only moderately great!

And then there are seasons like last year…

The 2022-23 season was nothing short of disastrous for the Vancouver Canucks. They were inescapable last year. It seemed as if they were always the biggest story in the league for all the wrong reasons. Bad PR move after bad PR move lead to a good portion of the fanbase feeling alienated from the team.

The team started the season with seven straight losses, the sixth of which came in the team’s home opener.

I’m assuming that you probably know how the fans in the arena felt about that.

Fun fact: I was at that game. It was the most hostile environment I have ever seen. No one in that building left there feeling good. Well, maybe unless you were a Buffalo Sabres fan, then you were probably feeling great!

Players were underperforming, maybe except for Elias Pettersson, who had a monster year laid to waste. Fans were upset, and the relationship between the management and coaching staff was souring by the day.

Speaking of which, that was probably the biggest storyline of the season.

Even stemming from the 2021-22 campaign, it was a pretty well-known fact that Canucks management weren’t particularly fond of then head coach, Bruce Boudreau.

It was the worst ‘kept secret in the league that the Canucks were going to relieve him of his duties around the NHL’s All-Star break, and that former NHL power forward, Rick Tocchet, was going to be his replacement.

For Boudreau’s sake, I wish there was some sort of Disney-level plot twist, but that was unfortunately not the case.

A loss against the Edmonton Oilers on January 21, 2023 marked Boudreau’s final game as Vancouver’s head coach. The game itself doesn’t matter, it was what happened after the final horn sounded.

Canucks fans in attendance were sure to give Bruce his fair shake, as they gave him a standing ovation and one final “Bruce, there it is” chant once the game was over, leaving the beloved coach in tears.

Bruce will always be remembered in Vancouver as a bubbly, refreshing personality during a rather dark era of Canucks hockey. He will forever be a cult hero in Canuck land.

So yeah, last season was, for lack of a better word, horrible.

But as us Canucks fans are, we like to look forward towards something better than whatever we’ve been accustomed to over the last decade or so.

It seems this year that even the most level-headed Canucks fans are slightly more optimistic about this season compared to the last few (which includes myself.) If you’re wondering why that might be the case, well, you’re in the right place.

Here are a few things to know about the Vancouver Canucks for the 2023-24 season.

The New Guys

Free agency is always a terrifying time for Canucks fans, as the previous management regime would usually make decisions that would absolutely torch any sort of long-term ambitions the team may have had down the road.

Whether it was the Loui Eriksson signing in 2016 or the Tyler Myers signing in 2019, Canucks fans have a lot of baggage from July 1.

Patrik Allvin’s regime clearly aren’t as reckless as Jim Benning’s, as this past off-season showed a level of conservatism that feels foreign compared to how the organization was operated during Benning’s tenure.

Instead of going big game hunting, the Canucks opted to shuffle some depth pieces.

It started with the signing of veteran defenceman, Ian Cole, who secured a one-year deal at $3,000,000, and centreman, Teddy Blueger, who also secured a one-year deal.

Later on that day, the Canucks made their biggest signing of the off-season, locking up former Seattle Kraken defenceman, Carson Soucy, to a 3-year, $9.75 million deal. The 6’5″ defenceman is known for his physical play and solid defensive instincts, and should help the Canucks defence.

It was quiet for the following month or so, but the Canucks eventually made one more signing. The Pius Suter signing was maybe the tidiest piece of work that Canucks management put together all off-season. Suter, who is a qualified 3C in the NHL, was locked up to a two-year deal at an AAV of $1,600,000 per year.

A bargain of a price tag for what he brings.

The Canucks also made some bottom of the lineup acquisitions via trade.

The first one was trading Tanner Pearson and a third round pick to Montreal for goaltender Casey DeSmith, followed by acquiring Sam Lafferty from the Toronto Maple Leafs about a month later. Just this past week, the team traded prospects Jack Rathbone and Karel Plasek to Pittsburgh, which returned them depth defenceman Mark Friedman, and forward Ty Glover.

Patrik Allvin is clearly attempting to create an identity for this team, and I think it would be fair to assume that he is nowhere near close to being finished.

The Stars Need to Continue to Elevate

It seems crazy to think that Elias Pettersson can hit another level after what he accomplished last season. The Swedish star tallied 102 points in 2022-23, shattering his previous career high of 68.

He wasn’t the only one to best previous totals, as Quinn Hughes tallied 76 points in 78 games, besting his previous career high of 68.

JT Miller, who has been the target of scrutiny in the Vancouver market since signing a giant seven-year deal which kicks in this season, had a rather inconsistent season, but still finished the season over a point-per-game.

And of course, Andrei Kuzmenko exploded for 39 goals and 74 points in his inaugural NHL season in 2022-23.

All of those impressive individual performances lead to nothing come playoff time, so what can they do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?

It’s simple, in theory at least.

All of the Canucks’ main core players need to control play at 5v5 more so than before. Kuzmenko was great last year, but a big part of that was Kuzmenko’s ludicrous 27% shooting percentage, a conversion rate that hadn’t been seen in the NHL for roughly thirty years.

With that said, Pettersson has been a great player at 5v5 for most of his career, and I expect that to continue.

As for Miller, last season was tough for him at 5v5. Only 31 of his 82 points came at 5v5, and he wasn’t driving play particularly well. He’s looked a lot better to start this season, as his line with Phillip Di Giuseppe and Brock Boeser has been the Canucks’ best line at even strength.

And for Hughes, he looks like he’s continuing to elevate his game. The main thing that I wanted to see from him this season was to dictate pace and drive offence at 5v5, and he has more than delivered on that to start the season. He has looked dominant alongside Filip Hronek.

The Rest

The Canucks’ top guys are going to score. We know that. They just need to get contributions from the rest of the lineup.

So far, the results have been spotty, but depth forwards like Nils Höglander and Sam Lafferty have been relatively productive, with the likes of Dakota Joshua and Anthony Beauvillier leaving more to be desired.

The big ones are the likes of Brock Boeser, Ilya Mikheyev, and Conor Garland (barring a trade.)

Mikheyev has been hurt and Garland hasn’t found his place in the lineup to start the season, but Brock Boeser has had an electric start to the season, scoring six goals and one assist in five games, four of the goals came in the Canucks’ opening game at Rogers Arena.

No matter how you feel about this team, I think we can agree that we want, at the very least, one thing from the Canucks this season.

Just please be a fun team to watch.

Yes, I hope they can be better than expected and build on it, but I hope that this year is a positive one for Canucks fans, because, wow, we are in dire need of a fun season of hockey in Vancouver.

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