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Do the Canucks have any star players?

At one point the Canucks were the home of some of the NHL's biggest stars.
Bo Horvat celebrates a goal

At one point the Canucks were the home of some of the NHL's biggest stars. Daniel and Henrik Sedin won back-to-back Art Ross trophies, Roberto Luongo was consistently one of the best goaltenders in the league and Ryan Kesler won the Selke as the league's best defensive forward.

These days, however, the Canucks are a bit lacking in star power. That’s not unexpected: they’re in a rebuild, after all. But they do still have the Sedins and rising star Bo Horvat led the team in scoring and represented them at the All-Star Game.

But what if I told you that the Canucks were the only team in the NHL to play a game last season without a single star player? You might get upset.

Dom Luszczyszyn wrote an article for the Hockey News about which NHL teams have the most star power, using his Game Score statistic to rank the NHL’s top players into tiers.

 

 

The Canucks ended up without a single player as even a “Tier 5” star. Meanwhile, some odd players ended up ranked as stars. Would you rank Blake Wheeler in the same tier as Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid? Maybe you should.

Is Anthony Mantha a star player with his 36 points last season? Tomas Tatar? Michael Frolik? It’s pretty understandable to be upset to see those players ranked as Tier 5 stars ahead of Horvat and the Sedins.

But the important thing to understand is that this isn’t a subjective ranking. Luszczyszyn didn’t arbitrarily decide that Mantha is a star and Horvat isn’t. He used an objective measure — his Game Score statistic — and put them into tiers based on percentiles.

If a player had an average Game Score better than 98.5% of the rest of the NHL, they were in Tier 1. Better than 96.5%? Tier 2. And etcetera.

That may be a different definition of a “star player” than you might use, but it’s an intriguing measure nonetheless.

The reason the Canucks were said to not have any star players is that they didn’t have any players with an average Game Score better than 87.5% of the rest of the NHL, the limit for Tier 5.

When a statistical model comes up with a result you don't like, there two ways you can respond: you can dismiss it as wrong or you can look into it and figure out how and why it came up with that result. You can, of course, then dismiss it, but at least you'll have a better idea why you are doing so.

Odd results can actually be enlightening and further your understanding of the game. It may help you appreciate the contributions of an underrated player or question why another player is so highly regarded. So, what is Game Score?

Game Score is an attempt to calculate a player’s contribution to each individual game. It does this by combining some pretty uncontroversial statistics: goals, assists, shots, blocked shots, penalty differential, faceoffs, corsi, and goal differential, each weighted by its frequency to goals. You can get more detail on his methods at Hockey Graphs.

The important thing is none of this is arbitrary. He didn’t land on these statistics and weights by accident and he didn’t do it to make certain players look good or bad.

For his article, Luszczyszyn used the last three seasons, with the most recent season weighted highest. None of the Canucks forwards ended up with an average Game Score above 0.71 per game, the lowest mark for a “Tier 5” star forward, and none of the Canucks defence had an average Game Score above 0.56, the lowest mark for a “Tier 5” star defenceman.

The closest Canuck to star status is Horvat, who had a 0.57 Game Score last season, though if you include Brock Boeser and his small sample of 9 games, he’s the closest at 0.68. None of the Canucks defence come even close, with Alex Edler the highest at 0.35.

Here are the Game Score results pulled from Luszczyszyn’s data for all the Canucks skaters that played at least 5 games last season.

PLAYER POS TEAM GP TOI G A SOG BLK CORSI +/- GOAL +/- PEN. DIFF FACE OFFS   GAME SCORE PER GAME
BROCK.BOESER R VAN 9 16.2 4 1 25 0 11 0 0 0   6.1 0.68
BO.HORVAT C VAN 81 18 20 32 158 41 -97 5 2 14   46.1 0.57
DANIEL.SEDIN L VAN 82 18.3 15 29 216 18 -38 -7 -7 0   43.6 0.53
JANNIK.HANSEN R S.J/VAN 43 16 8 12 73 15 -14 5 8 -1   21.6 0.5
MARKUS.GRANLUND C VAN 69 17.3 19 13 122 11 22 -15 5 -21   31.7 0.46
LOUI.ERIKSSON L VAN 65 18.6 11 13 132 26 11 -5 6 -1   28.8 0.44
HENRIK.SEDIN C VAN 82 19 15 36 99 11 -32 -16 -7 -24   35.7 0.44
SVEN.BAERTSCHI L VAN 68 15.8 18 17 114 29 -126 2 3 1   28.5 0.42
ALEX.BURROWS L OTT/VAN 75 14.6 15 16 143 34 -65 2 -4 -4   30.5 0.41
BRANDON.SUTTER C VAN 81 18.7 17 17 160 53 -170 -14 15 124   30.7 0.38
DEREK.DORSETT R VAN 14 9.9 1 3 24 6 16 -6 1 1   4.9 0.35
ALEX.EDLER D VAN 68 24.2 6 15 138 138 -72 -13 -13 1   23.6 0.35
TROY.STECHER D VAN 71 19.9 3 20 125 66 -72 -7 2 0   22.9 0.32
BEN.HUTTON D VAN 71 20.4 5 14 130 106 -82 -15 -7 0   20 0.28
REID.BOUCHER C N.J/NSH/VAN 39 11.7 6 4 69 12 -33 -6 3 -1   10.8 0.28
JACK.SKILLE R VAN 55 8.8 5 4 73 24 -20 0 -1 2   12.1 0.22
PHILIP.LARSEN D VAN 26 16.4 1 5 32 22 -28 -4 -2 0   5.3 0.2
ERIK.GUDBRANSON D VAN 30 20.3 1 5 40 44 -36 -12 0 0   5.9 0.2
CHRIS.TANEV D VAN 53 20.2 2 7 39 91 -71 1 -1 0   9.7 0.18
JAYSON.MEGNA C VAN 58 12.4 4 4 72 23 -114 -3 9 -12   7.3 0.13
BRENDAN.GAUNCE C VAN 57 9.5 0 5 51 12 21 -3 -5 4   7.4 0.13
NIKITA.TRYAMKIN D VAN 66 16.7 2 7 65 87 -65 -8 -21 0   7.4 0.11
NIKOLAY.GOLDOBIN R S.J/VAN 14 11.4 3 0 14 4 -42 0 1 0   1.6 0.11
LUCA.SBISA D VAN 82 18.9 2 11 75 122 -192 -5 -8 0   8.3 0.1
JAKE.VIRTANEN R VAN 10 10.1 0 1 13 4 -18 1 -1 3   0.9 0.09
ALEX.BIEGA D VAN 36 13.2 0 3 37 24 -20 -3 -7 0   3.3 0.09
MICHAEL.CHAPUT C VAN 68 11 4 4 64 29 -75 -11 -6 21   5.7 0.08
JOSEPH.CRAMAROSSA C ANA/VAN 59 9.9 4 6 36 23 -167 -2 2 5   2.3 0.04
DREW.SHORE C VAN 14 12 0 2 11 3 -29 -3 -1 5   0.4 0.03
JOSEPH.LABATE C VAN 13 6.8 0 0 5 2 -22 -2 -2 1   -1.2 -0.09
GRIFFEN.MOLINO C VAN 5 10.6 0 0 3 1 -15 -2 2 0   -0.5 -0.1

 

Game Score has its flaws, as Luszczyszyn would readily admit. It seriously underrates defensive defencemen like Chris Tanev, who don’t put up points, for example, and it can be hard to separate a star from a good player who plays with stars. But it also draws attention to aspects of the game that people might miss, like the ability to draw penalties without taking any of your own.

Even using a subjective definition of “star player,” you would be hard-pressed to say the Canucks had any legitimate stars. It seems clear that Horvat is on his way, but isn’t there yet. Boeser has potential, but a lot could go wrong in his rookie season. And no one else on the Canucks seems even close at this point.

But the Canucks are in a rebuild and have added players that they hope will be stars in a few years’ time: Olli Juolevi, Elias Pettersson, and Thatcher Demko.