Canucks: 2020 Playoff hopes ride on team scoring power

The Vancouver Canucks have a healthy roster thick with scoring talent that could shock the hockey world if and when the 2020 playoffs get underway.

The 2019-20 Vancouver Canucks have been a fun and exciting group of players to watch this season. Travis Green has done an excellent job making the most of what/who he has to work with up to this point, and the result of it all has been a highspeed team that can beat opponents with a relentless attack of scoring depth.

For the majority of the year the Canucks have led the Pacific Division in Goals Per Game (3.25), and Goals For (224). Their power play (24.1 percent) was second to only the league-leading Edmonton Oilers (29.5), but luckily for Vancouver, scoring is scarce in Edmonton once you look past the superstar duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Thanks to excellent drafting (Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser) and a few key trades pulled off by general manager Jim Benning over the past year and a bit, the Canucks deployed a team this season proven to be thick with scoring power. The additions of three top-six forwards in the likes of J.T. Miller, Tanner Pearson, and Tyler Toffoli have given the Canucks scoring depth that supports a young core already loaded with elite goal-scoring talent.

If the 82-game season was completed (Vancouver played 69 games) the Canucks possessed seven players who were pacing for a minimum of 20 goals and 11 players who tallied at least half a point per game or higher. No matter how you look at it, that’s depth! Serious depth.

The Canucks top-six (probably top-nine) is the most lethal in their division, and no other Pacific team can match up in terms of scoring depth. Their first power play unit can run with the best in the league, and their PP2 packs a surprisingly powerful punch too. Tack on a Vezina caliber goalie in the return of a healthy Jacob Markstrom, and who knows what this team is capable of.

The Canucks still have holes and still have a few things to learn, but if things go the right way, Vancouver has the right pieces in place to shock the NHL and go for a deep run in the 2020 playoffs.