'Nucks IceMan

Written by: Larry “The Nucks IceMan” Johnson

The 2009-10 season saw a plethora of Vancouver Canuck players reach milestones in scoring. No less than eight players had career years in goals and points and they were: Henrik (29G, 112) & Daniel (29G, 85) Sedin, Ryan Kesler (25G, 75), Alex Burrows (25G, 67), Mikael Samuelsson (30G, 53), Mason Raymond (25G, 53), Christian Ehrhoff (14G, 44) and Alex Edler (5G, 42).

At the start of the season I wrote about who among them might exceed those totals this season.

Now after 28 games I think I was overly optimistic. Today I perused everyone’s stats and I saw only two players – Alex Edler and Daniel Sedin, that are on track to exceed their point totals from last season. Nope, not Henrik, Kesler, Burrows, Raymond, Samuelsson or Ehrhoff.

Alex Burrows we can understand because he missed the first ten games of the season. Now with Raymond’s wrist injury expected to keep him out for three to four weeks, you can add him to that excuse me list too.

Kesler, who for my money has been the best Canuck to date, has had a merry-go-round of line-mates, so I don’t see him topping those 75 points. Mikael Samuelsson with six goals will be hard pressed to get 20 never mind the 30 he potted last season.

Henrik Sedin is back to sharing his points with his brother Daniel, so don’t expect Henrik to top the 112, more like the mid to high 90’s. Brother Daniel is the beneficiary of Henrik’s passing, and he should play more than the 63 games he did last season due to injury, so he will beat his 85.

Ehrhoff has not looked like the same dangerous point man he was last season and now that he is out with a concussion and no word for how long, I don’t see him beating his 44.

Canucks - Edler checking Oilers - Hall

Alex Edler has been having a very sound year so far, playing the best defense since he broke in and looks like he may have finally arrived offensively also.  His current 18 points have him on pace to hit 52, which would be a career high.

If everyone one of those I first mentioned above has goal deficits of 25-30 percent, who is going to make up the difference?  Now you’re asking players like Manny Malhotra, Raffi Torres, Jeff Tambellini, Tanner Glass, Dan Hamhuis and Keith Ballard to fill in the gaps and have career years. Now that would be a whole lot of wishful thinking.

Tanner Glass already has three goals but his career high was four, nah that won’t help. Malhotra’s 14 goals was his career best but that was last season. Not too many third line centres top those numbers on back-to-back years. Likewise with Torres, all 19 goals came with Columbus, and after the trade to Buffalo – zilch. Previous to that Torres’ best year was 2005-06. Given his history of injuries, don’t count on him.

Hamhuis, who has three goals, has never been a large point producer, with seven goals topping the charts for him in 2005-06. So seven would more than double the three he had last year. Ballard has similar numbers as Hamhuis with eight goals which he reached last season with the Panthers and in 2005-06 with Phoenix.

Canucks - Tambellini taking out Oilers - Foster

Last but not least is Tambellini, and unfortunately his highest goal production in the NHL has been seven while with the Islanders.

Those are not numbers that are going to replace 58 fewer goals from the main producers unless all of the above collectively reach their highs again.

Last season the Canucks were neck and neck with the Washington Capitals as the two teams scoring the most goals. This season the Canucks are still near the top sitting at fourth but 16 goals separate them from first place Colorado.

Let’s hope that the players that need to fill the gap rise up to meet the challenge.

To catch all the news, updates and new articles as they occur, along with the Canucks farm team the Manitoba Moose, you can follow me @twitter.com/nucksiceman.com and @communities.canada.com/VANCOUVERSUN/blogs/fanattic/default.aspx

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