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The Paper Feature: Why the Canucks desperately need Rasmus Dahlin

The NHL draft lottery will reveal who gets stud Swedish defenceman.
Troy Stecher chips the puck around the glass for the Vancouver Canucks
The Canucks were hoping for more offence out of Troy Stecher, who tallied 11 points in 2017-18.

The Paper Feature is a weekly column and sidebars that appears in the print edition of the Vancouver Courier newspaper. Track it down!


Elias Pettersson is coming off a stunning season in Sweden that saw him lead the SHL in scoring in both the regular season and playoffs. Adding him to a young forward core led by Brock Boeser and Bo Horvat, along with fellow prospects Adam Gaudette, Jonathan Dahlen, and Kole Lind, gives the Canucks some hope for the future at forward.

In net, the Canucks have confidence in Thatcher Demko, who was stellar this year for the Utica Comets in his second professional season. Between Demko and Michael DiPietro, one of the top goaltenders in the OHL, the Canucks have potential for a future number one goaltender.

Their biggest issue is on defence. Really, it’s not just defence, but offensive defenceman that the Canucks lack.

The Canucks got just 21 goals from their defence this past season; only the New York Rangers and Buffalo Sabres had fewer. That’s a far cry from the league leaders, the Nashville Predators, who got a whopping 56 goals from their defence, led by P.K. Subban’s 16 goals. The Canucks were led by Alex Edler and Michael Del Zotto, who each had six.

The NHL’s best teams create offence from the backend, with a mobile defence that can join the rush or spark a breakout with a great pass. That described the Canucks in their best season, in 2010-11, when they got 42 goals from their defence, twice as many as this season.

Let’s look at primary points — goals and first assists — from each NHL team this season. Defenceman on excellent teams can often pick up secondary assists simply because of talented forwards, so looking at primary points can give us a better idea of how defencemen have directly contributed to offence.

2017-18 Primary points from defencemen


The league average per team is 98 primary points from defencemen. All but three playoff teams were at or above 98 points from their defence, with the exceptions being the Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins, and New Jersey Devils. The Penguins and Bruins each had a 50+ point defenceman, while the Devils barely squeaked into the playoffs on the back of an MVP-caliber performance by Taylor Hall.

The bottom-10 teams in primary points from defencemen, including the Canucks, all missed the playoffs. The Canucks’ defence combined for 70 primary points, ahead of only the Detroit Red Wings.

So, that’s one issue: the Canucks defence doesn’t provide enough offence. The bigger issue is that there’s no help on the horizon.

Troy Stecher and Ben Hutton were two young defencemen who put up points in their rookie years, but whose sticks went quiet last season. Olli Juolevi is the Canucks’ best defensive prospect, but he projects as a steady top-four defenceman rather than a point producer.

The two defencemen that led the Utica Comets, the Canucks’ AHL-affiliate, in scoring were Patrick Wiercioch, a journeyman veteran, and Philip Holm, who the Canucks traded to the Vegas Golden Knights for Brendan Leipsic. Potential NHLers on the Comets, like Guillaume Brisebois, Ashton Sautner, and Jalen Chatfield project to be third-pairing defensive defencemen.

Aside from longshots like Jack Rathbone and Matt Brassard, the Canucks simply do not have offensive defencemen in the pipeline.

That’s where the Canucks have to hope for help in the 2018 draft.

Saturday, the NHL will reveal the results of the draft lottery, announcing which teams will pick 1st through 15th. The Canucks have just a 7.5% chance of winning the top pick, which would net them Rasmus Dahlin, the most highly-hyped defenceman in recent memory. Dahlin has the ability to rack up points at an elite level and would provide an instant panacea to the Canucks’ woes.

If the Canucks miss out on Dahlin, there are other offensive defencemen available, like Quinn Hughes or Adam Boqvist. But the Canucks have little choice: they have to pick a point-producing defenceman in the first round.

Big Numbers

50 - The highest scoring defence to miss the playoffs belonged to the Arizona Coyotes, who racked up 50 goals from defencemen, led by Oliver Ekman-Larsson, with 14 goals. If they can get consistent goaltending, they’ll be a team to watch next season, even if it felt like I said the same thing going into last season.

75 - The Toronto Maple Leafs had just 32 goals from their defence, but 75 first assists. Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly didn’t score a lot of goals themselves, but set up a ton of them for the Leafs.

Stick-taps and Glove-drops

I’m dropping the gloves with the NHL’s divisional playoff system, which has led to the two best teams in the regular season, the Nashville Predators and Winnipeg Jets, meeting up in the second round instead of the Western Conference Finals. This could be the best matchup of the entire postseason.

A tap of the stick to Daniel and Henrik Sedin, who were nominated as a duo by the Canucks for this year’s King Clancy Memorial Trophy. The award recognizes off-ice leadership and humanitarian contributions to the community and was previously won by Henrik in 2016.