3 Canucks players who surprised us this season

Dakota Joshua proved to be an excellent secondary asset

If Dakota Joshua played in 79 games as opposed to 61, his points total would have likely encroached the 40-point barrier, but fans should be happy with the 31 he put up, along with 17 goals and a 21.3 shooting percentage. Joshua looked more like a pure fourth-liner before the season began, and his average total ice time of 10:31 and 32 career points in 121 games further justified that. 

But this year, Joshua surprised us by proving he could play middle-six minutes, even with the hard-hitting mentality of a fourth-liner. He also scored a shocking five game-winners, so he’s yet another member of this intriguing Canucks team to come up big when this team needed the go-ahead goal. 

Thanks to how high-scoring a unit Vancouver can be, it’s hard to imagine Joshua continuing this upward trend in points, even if it wouldn't be so surprising if he kept it up next season. He’s earned the right for us to at least expect a serviceable level of production in 2024-25 and beyond if he remains part of this organization.

We saw no shortage of surprises throughout the 2023-24 season in Vancouver, and those listed both here and in the previous slides played major roles in seeing the Canucks take one of the higher seeds in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)