Canucks: How they match up against the St. Louis Blues

The eye test

The Blues are the better team on paper. They have a superb top six and excellent forward depth to complement one of the league’s top blue lines.

But hockey isn’t played on paper. The Canucks match up well against the Blues; their lone loss in the regular season series came in overtime.

Vancouver’s top six matches up well against the Blues’. Though having Tyler Toffoli back would provide a nice boost up front, but we still don’t know much about his injury and status for the series.

The Lotto Line — consisting of Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and J.T. Miller — will go head to head with the Blues top line of Jaden Schwartz, Brayden Schenn and Vladimir Tarasenko (possibly even O’Reilly as well.)

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Zach Sanford and David Perron form a strong second line with O’Reilly. Vancouver’s second line of Bo Horvat and Tanner Pearson (maybe even Loui Eriksson) should match up well against this line.

That said, St Louis has the advantage in both the bottom six and on defence. In goal, it’s more of a toss-up. Both Jacob Markstrom and Binnington have had excellent 2019-20 seasons. The series could very come down to which goalie plays better.

Markstrom was voted the team MVP for a reason. He stole several games in the regular season, and if he continues to play at a high level, the Canucks will seriously challenge the defending champions.

The Canucks vs Blues Match Up: Analytics

Ty Pardy, who co-hosts The Avid Discussers Podcast with me, helped out with the analytics for this article.

So, how do the two sides compare on from an analytics standpoint? Ty and I looked at some statistics from EvolvingHockey.Com

I used Wins Above Replacement to compare the two teams. For those that don’t understand, WAR is a stat that originated in baseball and eventually made its way to hockey. Some argue that it works better in baseball than it does for hockey.

WAR is a metric that attempts to combine a player’s contributions in offensive, defensive and other aspects of the game into the number of wWins’ they contribute to the team over a replacement level player. A replacement level player would be equivalent to 13th forward or 7th defenseman. You can read more about WAR here.

To put it in the simplest terms. if the number is higher than zero the better and if it’s below it, the worse.

Here is a comparison of the Vancouver and St. Louis forwards and defencemen using Total War and Even Strength Offence and Defence.

Vancouver’s forward core offensively is superior, but St. Louis is better defensively. Craig Berube’s team, as you can see, has the advantage defensively.

The numbers show that the Canuck forwards match up better than the defende at even strength. The series will show if the Blues are the better team defensively, and if Vancouver can prove that their forwards are better offensively.

Conclusion

I expect this to be a close and intense series. This could go to six or seven games. The Canucks match up against the Blues a lot better than I initially thought.

Either way, this series will provide a great experience for the Canucks core, and if they beat the defending champions, it would be a major step in the right direction.