Vancouver crushed expectations in 2023-24, winning the Pacific Division with 109 points, but the betting market isn’t expecting a repeat. Sportsbooks currently have the Canucks listed at 99.5 regular season points, largely due to the uncertainty surrounding their starting goaltender.
| Canucks Futures | Sports Interaction | bet365 |
|---|---|---|
| Regular Season Points | Total: 99.5 Over: -115 Under: -115 | Total: 99.5 Over: -105 Under: -115 |
| Playoffs | Yes: -250 No: +200 | Yes: -290 No: +220 |
| Pacific Division | +450 | +300 |
| Western Conference | +1000 | +650 |
| Win Stanley Cup | +2200 | +1400 |
Last Season
Last year, Vancouver was seen as a 90-point fringe playoff team with the chance to surprise if things went right — and much of it did. Looking back, 90.5 points was far too low for a team with elite talent at every position and a coach who knew how to get the best from them. The Canucks finished as a top-5 team in both offence and defence. Their overachievement made them one of the most profitable teams to bet on and one of the most frustrating to bet against.
Offence
It’s natural to be skeptical of a team that gets a lot of bounces. According to Evolving Hockey, Vancouver posted the highest 5-on-5 shooting percentage in a single season, raising questions about their sustainability.
J.T. Miller hit a career-high 37 goals and 103 points, a 25% increase from the previous season. It was his third straight 30-goal campaign, and with 99 points in 2021-22, sportsbooks like Sports Interaction have set his totals at 88.5 points, while bet365 has him pegged for 32.5 goals. Brock Boeser not only reached 30 goals for the first time but also hit 40. He’s scored at a 30-goal pace four times, but sustaining a 40-goal pace remains unproven, so his total is set at 32.5 goals. Boeser could exceed that, but his health will be crucial.
| Player | Points | Over | Under | Sportsbook |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elias Pettersson | 90.5 | -110 | -110 | bet365 |
| Quinn Hughes | 83.5 | -110 | -110 | Sports Interaction |
| J.T. Miller | 88.5 | -120 | -105 | Sports Interaction |
| Brock Boeser | 62.5 | -120 | +100 | Sports Interaction |
Danton Heinen and three-time 20-goal scorer Jake DeBrusk were acquired in the offseason to boost the left side, with hopes that DeBrusk can build chemistry with Elias Pettersson. Pettersson had another solid season, scoring 30-plus goals for the third straight year and topping 85 points for the second consecutive campaign, despite spending most of his 5-on-5 time with Ilya Mikheyev. Pettersson’s production slowed in the second half due to a knee injury, but sportsbooks haven’t lowered expectations. They aren’t raising them either. His regular season totals are set at 34.5 goals and 90.5 points.
Dakota Joshua, Teddy Blueger, and Connor Garland played dominant hockey last season, logging 360 minutes together at 5-on-5. The trio controlled 68% of the goals and over 60% of expected goals. Joshua is currently sidelined with a cancer diagnosis, but the prognosis is positive, and the team doesn’t expect a lengthy absence. Daniel Sprong was brought in to bolster the bottom line and will also get a chance to contribute to the power play.
Vancouver ranked 12th in power play percentage last season (22.57), but their underlying metrics suggested they deserved better. With their depth of talent, a special teams turnaround seems likely.
Defence
Whether it was aforementioned forwards like Miller and Pettersson shutting down the opposition’s best players or Quinn Hughes showing everybody why the team named him captain before the start of the 2023-24 season. The Canucks deserve a lot of credit for their defensive efforts. Vancouver ranked sixth in expected goals against, fourth in shot attempts against, and fourth in goals against (per 60 minutes) at 5-on-5 last season.
Hughes put up 92 points while playing 24 minutes per game, and he won the Norris Trophy. The 24-year-old played almost 1,200 minutes of 5-on-5 hockey with Filip Hronek last season and the Canucks controlled more than 56 percent of the shots and 60 percent of the goals when that pairing was on the ice. Hronek probably makes too much money not to be running his own pairing, though, so it’ll be interesting to see how Tocchet decides to deploy him this season.
Carson Soucey only played 40 games last season due to injury, but he made a good impression when he was in the lineup. The 30-year-old defenseman played almost 400 minutes of 5-on-5 time with Tyler Myers, and the two did a solid job controlling high-danger chances and goals. Tocchett might choose to shake up his top four, but newly acquired players Vincent Desharnais and Derek Forbortt should form the team’s third pairing and play on the penalty kill.
The Canucks ranked 17th on the penalty kill last season with a success rate of 79.13 percent, but they did a decent job suppressing shots and chances as a unit. With Desharnais and Forbort eating up shorthanded minutes and a little luck, the team should do a better job killing penalties in 2024-25, but goaltender Thatcher Demko’s injury woes have cast a cloud of uncertainty over the team.
Goaltending
Thatcher Demko is one of the best goaltenders in the league when he’s healthy, but there’s currently no timetable for his return, and that makes projecting where the Canucks will finish even more difficult than it already is. Demko missed three months in the middle of the 2022-23 season, but he was able to play the majority of the 2023-24 campaign. However, he was injured in the final regular season game of the season and hasn’t played since Game 1 of Vancouver’s first-round series against Nashville.
Artur Silovs and recently acquired Kevin Lankinen will man the crease while Demko is on the shelf. Silovs proved that he could provide adequate goaltending in a pinch when he gave the Canucks a chance to win in the playoffs, but the 23-year-old goaltender only had nine NHL games under his belt prior to the postseason. That said, Silovs did go 6-2-1 in those games, but even if we include his ten playoff appearances, it’s not a meaningful sample size.
Meanwhile, Lankinen has 112 regular season games under his belt, and he went 20-14-1 over the last two seasons as a member of the Nashville Predators. He’s posted a .908 save percentage or better in three out of his four seasons. Lankinen hasn’t started more than 18 games in the last two seasons, so while Silovs might have the inside track on the starting job right now, Lankinen’s experience could help him force his way up the depth chart.
Prediction
It’s impossible to know how many games Thatcher Demko will play or how effective he’ll be given that he’ll seemingly have to play through injury. However, given that he missed three months in 2022-23 and still managed to play 35 games, 40 seems like a reasonable guess with no timetable given by the team. Vancouver could still be a 100-point team, but if Demko misses a significant amount of time, it’s more likely that the Canucks will fall short of that mark. Our model has the Canucks finishing with 97 points on average, which means they’re probably good enough to make the playoffs for the second season in a row, but not good enough to win the division again.
