Vancouver Canucks’ Micheal Ferland: A modern day enforcer

Micheal Ferland is a very smart hockey player, the fans were outraged last season at the lack of pushback the Vancouver Canucks had and with this signing, they seem to have addressed that.

The Vancouver Canucks recently picked up the tough and agitating Micheal Ferland. Some critics say he’s another “bottom 9” forward, but if you take out the dead weight from the Canucks current bottom nine, then you’ve got the potential to build a championship calibre team.

The 2011 Vancouver Canucks relied heavily on players such as Manny Malholtra and Raffi Torres, who played vital roles within the run.  Many also wouldn’t have pegged Alex Burrows as a top 6 player either, but his energy and chemistry with his teammates allowed him to excel in that role and become a Ring of Honour inductee for this franchise and an all-time fan favourite.

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As per Hockeyfights.com Ferland has not only gotten into 19 fights in his NHL career but the fans voted him winning 15 of those, tying three and losing one, that loss was to none other than yours truly “Juice” aka Kevin Bieksa.  Not only does Ferland bring a great fighting ability to the team, but he brings it without the extra-curricular activities leading to dumb penalties.

Last year Ferland got into six fights and only came out of the season with a minuscule 58 PIM; to put that into perspective, Antoine Roussel who many considered to be an awesome pickup by Jim Benning, got into two fights last year and amassed a whopping 118 PIM. Surely that doesn’t tell the whole story because Roussels ability to throw off star players games by getting under their skin is truly underrated.

There are non-physical aspects of Ferland’s game that make me excited to have him join our roster, being only 27 years old and having improved points per game in consecutive years, he had .56 last year and seemed to have hit his stride physically as well.  We can hope that our young power forward Jake Virtanen can learn from Ferland as to how to enhance the edge of his game.

According to the stats, Virtanen is two years ahead of where Ferland was at his age.  Ferland was 24 when he scored 15 goals and 10 assists then he went on to have two consecutive 40 point campaigns.  Jake has a much higher ceiling than Ferland does and this allows me to once again believe that Virtanen could reach his potential as a top 6 power forward.

Having someone that fights but doesn’t win, or who hits but doesn’t play; these are all player types that have faded away from the game of hockey, adding Ferland, a solid top 9 forward that could develop some chemistry with this group is a beautiful move by GMJB and it will have a ripple effect on the dressing room that will make the players feel safe. If you have a comment about Ferland or what he brings to the table, let’s discuss.