Vancouver Canucks on the trend: Brock Boeser

In my second instalment of “On the trend” I look at Vancouver Canucks forward Brock Boeser’s play through his entry-level deal and where he’s trending; comparing him to other similar players around the league, past and present.

With all the talk this past week about what deal Brock Boeser may or may not sign, it’s a great time to look at how he’s trending, while comparing his past seasons to another young sniper as well as one from the Vancouver Canucks past.

Brock stormed the league, scoring four goals and picking up one assist in nine games at the end of the 2016-17 season. He followed it up with 55 and 56 points respectively in 17-18 and 18-19, while suffering from injuries in the process. Many considered this past season as a slumping season for Brock, but this season Brock not only maintained his scoring touch but he found some important chemistry and was an advanced stat machine, boosting up both Elias Pettersson’s and Bo Horvat’s CF% to around 50% while he was on the ice with them individually.

While it is a small sample size, when he is on the ice with them both the CF% jumps up almost 22% as to when he’s not on the ice with those two.

(see chart below from NaturalStattrick )

Lots of players who put up large offensive numbers don’t lift other players up the way Brock does, for example, Patrik Laine who is an elite offensive talent actually made his teammates Corsi worse when he played with them. Not to mention that it took Laine 18 games to reach three assists.

(see chart below from NaturalStattrick )

Now don’t get me wrong, Laine is an amazing young talent and Brock Boeser isn’t on the same level as Laine talent-wise. Laine scored five goals in a single game, that’s something that you don’t get from players these days. But Laine is trending in the wrong direction compared to Brock and only scored once in his last 19 games; while Boeser has been improving each aspect of his game the past three seasons and actually outscored Laine this past season despite missing 13 games from injury.

Boeser is an interesting player in this franchise’s history, there are not many players in the Canucks history who have done what Brock has done at the level he has. His ability to beat a goaltender clean with no traffic is unreal and there’s a reason he won the all-star accuracy shooting competition.

Boeser scored 26 goals in 69 games his second full year, a .37 goal per game pace. Scoring is down 24% of what it was in 1983-84, when Tony Tanti scored 45 goals and 41 assists in 79 games. If we give Boeser the benefit of the doubt, that works out to be around 34 goals in 79 games in today’s NHL, a .43 goals per game pace.

Boeser has the potential to be a game-changer not only in a regular-season playoff push, but in a playoff series as well. Brock isn’t a small guy and shouldn’t suffer from what ailed Johnny Gaudreau in his playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche when he failed to score and only registered one assist.

Brock Boeser has definitely been trending in the right direction especially considering we haven’t yet seen a fully healthy Brock enter training camp.  If the Canucks are going to push for the playoffs and maybe surprise a few people, they will need Brock at his “Boest”. Join me in the comments for any feedback or discussion.