Minimal movement for Canucks in latest NHL power rankings

It's been an eventful few days for the Vancouver Canucks and yes, we appreciate this can be construed as a bit of an understatement. There was the controversial hit on and injury to Brock Boeser, Daniel Sprong's unexpected trade to Seattle and Nils Aman being recalled for the one-thousandth time.

Throughout it all though, the Canucks rebounded from a 6-0 beat-down by the New Jersey Devils, to rack up three consecutive wins in their road trip down to California. After beginning the season with no wins in their opening three games, they've since gone an impressive 7-1-1.

The question is, what does this mean for the Canucks in the latest round of NHL power rankings? Let's find out now, with four of the major North American sports media outlets.

A minor jump

We begin with ESPN, who this week have only moved the Canucks up one spot, from 12th to 11th. They do make reference to the minor goal difference advantage -- more than fair given that it is just +3 -- but do also add that the team is tracking ahead of projections in the standings.

It's slightly better for the Canucks over at The Athletic, with them being moved up from 13th place to 10th. Interestingly (well to us anyway), Vancouver's team were also 10th two weeks ago, but fans will be hoping Sean Gentille and Dom Luszczyszyn don't have cause to move them back down to 13th this time next week.

This week's theme for The Athletic, was to find a reason for optimism for each of the 32 NHL teams. For the Canucks, they referenced Quinn Hughes and how he's playing liking someone on course to win a second straight Norris Trophy, something which we're certainly not going to disagree with.

Let's put SOME effort in!

Turning to NHL.com, instead of a standard power rankings, they offer a weekly 'Super 16', decided on by a panel of 15 voters. We have an unproven theory that they do this, purely because they're too lazy to write about all 32 teams every week.

Now, this laziness has expanded to not even being bothered to move the Canucks in the rankings, keeping them in 11th place for the second consecutive week. All (attempted) joking aside, we are genuinely surprised that there was no movement, even taking into account that the rankings were prepared before the team's most recent win, in Los Angeles.

On an individual basis, Mike Zeisberger gave the Canucks the most love in placing them fifth in his Super 16 rankings, which we'll actually say is too high. At the same time, Mike G. Morreale has them all the way down in 15th place, which is bordering on ludicrous.

Finally, we offer you a new addition to our weekly sports media outlet power rankings sources, in the form of Sportsnet. As with ESPN and NHL.com, Ryan Dixon has placed the Canucks in 11th place, while also noting that the belief a summer to reset would help Elias Pettersson has clearly not panned out.

Overall, we do believe the main sports media outlets have got the Canucks ranked about right in 10th and/or 11th place. What must be exciting for fans though, is that even with the recent run of consistent form, the team can still be even better.

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