Canucks: Can Oliver Ekman-Larsson bounce back in Vancouver?

The biggest piece acquired by the Vancouver Canucks this offseason was Oliver Ekman-Larsson in a big trade with the Arizona Coyotes hours before the 2021 NHL Entry Draft. Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel, Loui Eriksson, Vancouver’s first-round pick in 2021, second in 2022, and seventh in 2023 were all sent to Arizona to acquire the Swedish defenceman along with forward Conor Garland.

The Canucks basically moved out a bunch of bloated contracts for a contract that is even more bloated. The Coyotes retained $990,000 of Ekman-Larsson’s 8.250 million dollar contract which has six years left. (That is 12% so his cap hit with the Canucks is 7.26 million.)

Jim Benning made quite the gamble taking on Ekman-Larsson and his huge contract.

“He’s a smart two-way player,” said Benning to the media after the trade. “He’s a guy who can carry the puck up ice, he’s got a great shot from the blue line, but he’s competitive in his own end excited to get him because he plays against the best players in the league.”

Benning also believes that Ekman-Larsson will be the Canucks number one defenceman next season.

“We think he’s going to be our number one defenceman,” said Benning. “Quinn (Hughes) will be better for us acquiring Ekman-Larsson, because he can play now in a different kind of role. He doesn’t have to play against the other team’s top lines. So, I just think it puts everybody in their place where they should be playing and it makes our team better.”

Ekman-Larsson is excited to come to Vancouver and believes he can help the Canucks win.

“I think they have a young group of guys that are unbelievable players that are ready to be superstars and win in this league, and that’s what I want to do,” said Ekman-Larsson after the trade. ” I want to be able to help young guys and I want to be on a winning team. I haven’t been doing a lot of winning, and it’s unfortunate, but hopefully, I will change that here in Vancouver and be part of a winning culture.”

Recent years have not been kind to the man that is called OEL. Can he bounce back in a new environment in Vancouver? Before getting into that let’s take a look at what happened to him.

Why did Ekman-Larsson’s play decline?

The 2015-16 season was a pretty good year for Ekman-Larsson. He led the Coyotes in scoring for the second straight year with 21 goals and 34 assists for a career-high 55 points. He was making a name for himself as a top-pairing defenceman who can score goals, move the puck up the ice with ease, and could be reliable defensively.

Ekman-Larsson scored some great goals off the rush including this one against the Canucks.

Surely there was nowhere to go for the then 25-year-old right? Turns out the opposite happened.

OEL has not been the same player he was since the 2015-16 season. Since then the closest he has got to 55 points was 44 points in the 2018-19 season.

He also dealt with injuries since then including a lower-body injury that required knee surgery in 2019 which cause him to play the 2019-20 season in lingering pain.

Another factor in Ekman-Larsson’s decline in play is the fact that he has been playing on a mediocre Coyotes team the last few years. For instance last season he was oaired with Ilya Lubushkin who is mainly a depth defenceman. The Coyotes have only made the playoffs once since 2012, and that was in the 2020 bubble where they beat the Nashville Predators in the qualifying rounds and lost in the actual playoffs in five games to the Colorado Avalanche. Ekman-Larsson was put on the second pairing last season as Jakob Chychurun took the top pairing role and had a breakout season.

Using a chart from analytics guru JFresh, I decided to take a look at OEL’s quality of competition and quality of teammates and the results were just as I thought.

Sure, his teammates and the fact he didn’t face quality competition were factors but it also seems age and the injuries were too.

Benning spoke about how OEL was a good skater. In recent years, his skating hasn’t been the same. Take a look at the clip below shows that he looks slower and has a tough time defending against the Avalanche and looks like a lagging video game character when going up the ice.

OEL has been prone to coughing up the puck in the offensive zone leading to a rush for the opponents. Below, he tries to do a drag move and gives it away to Connor McDavid (who is the last person you would want to give the puck away too.) who goes the other way and scores.

Last season Ekman-Larsson had a career-worst expected goals percentage of 42% which was also worst among Coyotes defencemen per NaturalStatTrick. His 47.91 Corsi For percentage last season was also the second-worst of his career. Per HockeyReference, his 3.2 on-ice goals per 60 in 2020-21 was the second-worst of his career. (3.3 was his worst in 2017-18.)

The rest of the analytics of Ekman-Larsson in recent years has not been pretty.

So the factors in Ekman-Larsson’s decline since 2016 are aging, quality of teammates and injuries, and probably the pressure of being captain. His rocky relationship with former coach Rick Tocchet (who apparently hit him in practice once and Ekman-Larsson was angry about it.) and the Coyotes’ off-ice dysfunction probably also played a role.