Vancouver Canucks already near bottom of ESPN power rankings

It’s the beginning of June and ESPN already has their 2018-19 power rankings out. Things don’t look so rosy for the Vancouver Canucks.

I have to respect ESPN’s hustle. The Stanley Cup isn’t even cold from last night’s victory by the Washington Capitals and they have next season’s power rankings ready to go. Yes, even they know it’s way too early for these, but just for fun, let’s take a look at where the Vancouver Canucks sit.

Oh, boy. Emily Kaplan and Grey Wyshynski rank Vancouver 29th in the league. If you are looking for positives, at least it isn’t dead last. Arizona took that honour. How this works is that each ranked team gets two subsections: “What defined them” and “What could change.” Here are the breakdowns for the Canucks.

What defined them

"The Canucks have had the worst record in the Western Conference the past three years (.441 points percentage). Now they have to replace Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin, who played in 82 and 81 games each, respectively, this season at age 37."

They are absolutely correct about the Canucks being this bad. Some people, like Corey Hirsch like to spin this by saying only single-season records matter. To those in that camp, you are sorely mistaken.

This is the exact reason you don’t rely on one season for evaluation. During the Jim Benning-Trevor Linden era, the Canucks have made the playoffs once and finished near the bottom three consecutive times. I’ll let you figure out which season was an anomaly. And if you are wondering why I am evaluating them on playoff appearances, they promised that every year. Well, until the wheels started flying off the wagon like clockwork.

The fact that ESPN used points percentage was kind. If they used winning percentage, it would be even more humiliating to see the Canucks rock a .374. If that isn’t awful to you, then I don’t know what is. They won 37% of their games in the last three years. That’s not advanced stats. Those are just wins and losses.

As for the Sedins, I covered this earlier when the Canucks were still depending on the Twins for the bulk of their offence.

With no safety net, there are no excuses. And this is where things can get squirrely. I have a good feeling Jim Benning will need a combination of a big trade and dive into free agency to try and replace that production. You could suggest internal promotion, but the last four years have showed me that patience is non-existent with this organization.

What could change

"The rebuild is on* and it’s spectacular! (*Please note that any celebration about the rebuild is on hold until we see if the Canucks do something forward-thinking and proactive with their seventh overall pick in the draft. Sigh … as least Elias Pettersson is going to show when he gets to the NHL.)"

I share their sentiments exactly. A rebuild in Vancouver always has an asterisk. The fans won’t accept it, we are committed to the Sedins, blah, blah, blah. Expectations are so low, that we hold a time for celebration when the Canucks do something right. Nowadays, something right is just avoiding a horrific mistake.