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Old vs New: Canucks free agent signings vs the players they replaced

The Canucks lost five significant players from last season’s roster over the last several months. First, it was Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen at the trade deadline.
Anders Nilsson and Ryan Miller

The Canucks lost five significant players from last season’s roster over the last several months. First, it was Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen at the trade deadline. Then Nikita Tryamkin bolted for the KHL, Luca Sbisa was plundered by Vegas in the expansion draft, and Ryan Miller left for the greener pastures of Anaheim in free agency.

It was thought that the Canucks would replace at least some of these departing players from within, particularly with the team in rebuilding mode. Forward prospects like Brock Boeser and Nikolay Goldobin seem ready for full-time NHL action, while the Canucks added Philip Holm to battle with the likes of Olli Juolevi, Evan McEneny, Andrey Pedan, Jordan Subban, and Jalen Chatfield for a spot on defence.

Instead, the Canucks added five new players in free agency to replace the five departures. So how do the newest Canucks compare to the players they are replacing?

Sam Gagner is the new Alex Burrows

Name-wise, Alex Burmistrov is a much better replacement for Alex Burrows, but I’m giving the nod to Sam Gagner. Like Burrows, Gagner has cracked the 40-point barrier several times, something Jannik Hansen has yet to manage.

Gagner, of course, has been a consistent 40+ point centre/winger since his rookie season in 2007-08, while Burrows scored 40+ points four times in his career while playing alongside the Sedins.

Let’s compare the two of them using Domenic Galamini’s HERO charts. This is a quick and easy way to see how two players stack up in several areas at 5-on-5: icetime, goals, first assists, shot generation, and shot suppression. They show where each player ranks as a percentile by each measure: 5 is league average, 10 is top of the class, and 1 is appallingly bad.

HERO Chart: Sam Gagner vs Alex Burrows

Over the last couple seasons, Gagner is the superior player when it comes to assists and shot generation. When you consider that includes his terrible season in Philadelphia, there’s reason for optimism. The one area where he doesn’t match up well is in his shot suppression. Gagner is an offensive-minded forward who doesn’t fare well in the defensive zone, whereas Burrows is still an above-average defensive forward.

There are some very obvious differences when it comes to special teams: Burrows has been an elite penalty killer during his career, but has barely gotten a sniff on the power play, while Gagner has produced plenty of points on the power play, but does not play on the penalty kill at all.

Alexander Burmistrov is the new Jannik Hansen

Burmistrov definitely has the right ingredients to be a Hansen-type — speed, defensive responsibility, offensive upside — but in practice, the recipe hasn’t quite come together.

Early in his career, Burmistrov looked like the real deal, putting up respectable point totals, while posting unusually good underlying possession numbers for a teenager. In his two-year stint in the KHL after the 2012-13 lockout, he led Kazan Ak-Bars in scoring in his first year before a more disappointing second year.

That disappointment was to continue when he returned to the NHL, as his scoring plateaued and his underlying possession numbers plummeted. He put up points this past season after a trade to the Arizona Coyotes, but still looked ugly by the advanced statistics that once favoured him.

HERO Chart: Alex Burmistrov vs Jannik Hansen

Maybe a comparison to the post-Sedins Alex Burrows would have been more favourable than the Sedinified Hansen. Burmistrov clearly can’t compare in point production to Hansen over the last two seasons and is terrifyingly low in shot generation.

To his credit, Burmistrov is solid on the penalty kill and could potentially replace Hansen in that regard, though the Canucks might be better off using him to replace Horvat on the penalty kill instead.

Michael Del Zotto is the new Luca Sbisa

In many ways, Del Zotto is the defenceman version of Sam Gagner. He can produce offence, helps on the power play, but gives up a lot in the defensive zone. In that last regard, he’s a lot like Luca Sbisa.

HERO Chart: Michael Del Zotto vs Luca Sbisa

In all other respects, there’s no comparison. Del Zotto is just as bad as Sbisa at shot suppression, but is vastly superior to him in pretty much every other way.

For a team that hasn’t been able to get much in the way of goalscoring from the blue line, Del Zotto has the potential to put in a few in the coming season. A lot more potential than Sbisa, at least.

Del Zotto can also replace a bit of Sbisa’s physical game, as he historically hasn’t shied away from playing the body and getting involved in scrums. He’s also a reasonable penalty killer and adds power play potential.

Patrick Wiercioch is the new Nikita Tryamkin

Tryamkin may have a couple inches on him, but Wiercioch is still a towering defenceman at 6’5”. And, like Tryamkin, he doesn’t always use it to play a tough, physical game. That was the frustration the Canucks had with Tryamkin, as they attempted to get him to play physical by showing him tapes of Chris Pronger in his heyday.

He also doesn’t bring much offensively in terms of point production. He only scored four goals last season and two of them were pretty much entirely luck, but his goal against the Flames at 1:10 of this video shows some of his surprising skill, dangling around a defender 1-on-1, even if he only scored because the puck rolled off his stick and surprised Brian Elliott.

At the same time, he could be a significantly better defenceman if he used his size more effectively, which is something that was often said of Tryamkin. For instance, in the below video of Ryan Johansen walking around Wiercioch, he could have made a more effective play by closing the gap and putting a shoulder into Johansen instead of fishing for the puck with his stick. Easier said than done, of course.

When it comes to his HERO chart with Tryamkin, they look very similar:

HERO Chart: Patrick Wiercioch vs Nikita Tryamkin

Wiercioch has long been an analytics darling, but his underlying possession statistics took a serious hit with the Colorado Avalanche last season. Even still, he’s above average in one area: shot generation. Though he doesn’t put up points, his team tends to put up an above-average number of shot attempts when he’s on the ice.

That ability can be useful to a team if they put him in the right position. While he previously looked like a top-four defenceman with the Ottawa Senators, the Canucks will be happy if he can be a reliable seventh defenceman capable of stepping in on the third pairing when needed.

All in all, Wiercioch looks like he’ll be a solid replacement for Tryamkin in the coming season, though the buzz around Tryamkin was less about how he actually performed, but about his potential for seasons to come.

Anders Nilsson is the new Ryan Miller

Anders Nilsson lacks the track record of Ryan Miller, but he does have one thing on the former Vezina winner: 10 years. Miller turns 37 in less than a week, while Nilsson just turned 27.

There are some other obvious differences: Nilsson has never carried a starter’s load, though he won’t be expected to be in a tandem with Jacob Markstrom. As a result, Nilsson faced nearly half the number of shots that Miller did last season.

Still, when we dig a little deeper using Ian Fleming’s SAVE chart, we can see that Nilsson and Miller are comparable in one key way.

HERO - SAVE Chart: Anders Nilsson vs Ryan Miller

In the middle of the chart is each goaltender’s save percentage broken down by high-danger, medium-danger, and low-danger, based on shot distance. Nilsson is on top, Miller on the bottom. While Miller’s is over the past three seasons, Nilsson’s only counts the last two, as he didn’t play enough games in the 2014-15 season.

What jumps out is how similar their high-danger save percentage is. Miller has posted an .821 save percentage on high-danger shots over the past three seasons, while Nilsson has posted an .827 over the past two seasons.

Both of those numbers are above average among NHL goaltenders.

This is important as high-danger save percentage tends to be more predictive of overall save percentage in the future than medium and low-danger save percentage. It makes intuitive sense that a goaltender’s ability to stop shots from point-blank range would be more indicative of his overall talent than his ability to stop shots from the blue line.

The area where Miller is above Nilsson is in his medium-danger save percentage, as he is slightly above average in that area, whereas Nilsson has been below average. But if Nilsson’s high-danger save percentage is a better indicator of his abilities, he may surprise Canucks fans next season.