Vancouver Canucks F Loui Eriksson will bounce back next season

Loui Eriksson has become the poster child for everything the Vancouver Canucks did wrong last season. But he will score a lot more next season.

Six years, $36 Million; every Vancouver Canucks fan has memorized those numbers by now. That is the contract that general manager Jim Benning gave to unrestricted free agent Loui Eriksson in the summer of 2016.

The idea was simple: the Canucks were coming off a terrible 2015-16 season. Management believed they could improve the next season and compete for a playoff spot. To do that, they needed more production from their top-six.

So, why not bring in a proven top-six forward, and one who had played with Henrik and Daniel Sedin internationally?

The best laid plans…

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Eriksson, of course, began his Canucks career by scoring into his own net on a delayed penalty. Things did not improve much from there. He finished with 11 goals, 13 assists in 65 games — his lowest points-per-game in a decade. A knee injury finally brought a premature end to a miserable season.

Vancouver brass appear to have changed focus away from shoring up the lineup and competing now. In the meantime, fans are treating Eriksson’s deal as the Worst Contract Ever™ — expensive, lengthy, and all for a player past his prime.

That assessment isn’t entirely wrong. But our perception of his contract can be easily skewed by Eriksson’s results the last eight months. And a lot of those results can be explained by bad luck.

How Much Better Can Eriksson Get?

In his 11-year NHL career, Eriksson has a shooting percentage of 13.4. This past season, he scored 8.3-percent of the time.

Instead of 11 goals on 132 shots, had he posted a 13.4 shooting percentage he would have earned 17 goals on that same number of shots. Over a full 82-game season, that translates to 22 goals, which would have led the Canucks.

Yes, Eriksson had a bad year. But most of that was the result of bad luck. Had he experienced “normal” luck, we’d be talking about Eriksson leading the team in scoring.

Instead, we’re looking at his one unlucky season, and talking about the Worst Contract Ever™.

When asked about his bad luck at season’s end, Eriksson chocked it up to changing teams. He recounted how he had also struggled in his first year with the Boston Bruins:

In terms of points, it’s not quite as simple as he makes it sound. His points-per-game in his first season with Boston was virtually identical to his last season with the Dallas Stars.

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But, his shooting percentage (and goal total) took a huge hit — just as it did this season. Here are his numbers:

• 2012-13, Dallas Stars: 48 GP, 12 G, 11.5 Sh%
• 2013-14, Boston Bruins: 61 GP, 10 G, 8.7 Sh%
• 2014-15, Boston Bruins: 81 GP, 22 G, 13.0 Sh%
• 2015-16, Boston Bruins: 82 GP, 30 G, 16.3 Sh%
• 2016-17, Vancouver Canucks: 65 GP, 11 G, 8.3 Sh%

Between his last year with the Stars and his first with the Bruins, Eriksson’s shooting-percentage fell from 11.5 to 8.7. The change between his last year in Boston and his first in Vancouver is even more stark: 16.3 to 8.3.

The good news is, the first time he had an unlucky year with a new team, his percentage reverted to normal the following year. It’s reasonable to expect that he’ll be able to bounce back once again, even at age 32. With a full season and normal shooting numbers, he could easily double his point totals from last season.

Loui Eriksson is not going to be the 60-to-70 point-scorer the Canucks hoped they were signing. His 63-point season in his last year in Boston was a bit of an anomaly.

But, Eriksson is also not going to be a 24-point player for the next six years. His first year in Vancouver was also an anomaly. There’s good reason to suspect he can be a 40-to-50 point-scorer next season, and maybe for the next few seasons.

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Numbers like that will make him one of the leading offensive players on the Vancouver Canucks next season. And that, after all, is what he was brought in to be.

So maybe, just maybe, Eriksson’s deal won’t turn out to be the Worst Contract Ever™.