With the Vancouver Canucks 50th anniversary well underway, the team is now primed for their home opener Wednesday, October 9th against the LA Kings.
Here’s a look at three burning questions that still remain unanswered ahead of the Vancouver Canucks‘ home opener tomorrow night.
1. What is going to fix the powerplay?
Lots of Canucks’ chatter heading into the season revolved around the expectation of a much-improved power play — and for good reason.
The Canucks’ assistant coach Newell Brown was given even more weapons to work with for this year’s iteration of the powerplay units. J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes, and Tyler Myers were all expected to deliver on improving last years’ powerplay that ranked 22nd in the league.
That delivery has yet to come to fruition. In the Canucks preseason-opening loss against the Edmonton Oilers, the powerplay went 0 for 4. The following game against Calgary? An abysmal 0 for 6.
While the two games on the road have yet to provide any sort of real sample size, it is something that is already being questioned — justified or not.
Travis Green has opted for a first powerplay unit comprised of Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Miller, and Josh Leivo, with the lone defenceman in Alex Edler manning the point thus far.
Many fans have called for Hughes to replace the latter on the unit, including boiling down Green’s reluctance to swap the defenders to Edler merely being the more experienced of the two.
Green recently addressed these rumours to TSN 1040 reporter Jeff Paterson:
after practice today, #Canucks Travis Green provided some real insight into his views on Edler vs Hughes on PP1: pic.twitter.com/EvrEzEH2oP
— Jeff Paterson (@patersonjeff) October 6, 2019
Whether a change is needed or not, the powerplay is a question that remains to be answered heading into Wednesday’s game. Although, today’s practice lines would suggest that Leivo and Horvat will be swapping places.