Brendan Gaunce returned to the Canucks lineup on Tuesday night against the Calgary Flames, his first NHL action since his shoulder surgery in April. It looked like the Canucks might have a tough time finding a spot for him in the lineup, but an upper body injury to Markus Granlund created an opening on the shutdown line with Brandon Sutter and Derek Dorsett.
The Canucks have two other players nearing return from injury: both Alex Edler and Loui Eriksson have been skating with the Canucks at practice and are travelling with the team on their current road trip.
The question is, where do those two players fit into the Canucks’ current lineup?
It’s a question complicated by how well the Canucks have played with both Edler and Eriksson out of the lineup. The Canucks are 6-3-1 since both players hit the IR and, while they should be a better team once Edler and Eriksson return, it still isn’t easy to figure out who should come out.
Let’s take a look at each player and the most likely candidates to move to the press box.
Alex Edler
With Edler out of the lineup, the Canucks have turned to Ben Hutton to play with Chris Tanev on the top pairing. It’s worked out remarkably well (which I’ll explore a bit more in Saturday’s print paper feature) and it’s a pairing that the Canucks might want to keep together even after Edler returns.
The complication here is Travis Green’s commitment to using left-shooting and right-shooting defencemen on their strong side. Edler returning would mean taking out one of the three left-side defencemen if the Canucks are strict about their sides.
The easiest option would be taking out the defenceman that replaced him when he was injured: Derrick Pouliot. The issue is that Pouliot has been excellent in Edler’s absence and plays a key role on the Canucks’ top power play unit with Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser, Sven Baertschi, and Ben Hutton.
Pouliot leads all Canucks defencemen in corsi percentage. That’s partly because of his sheltered usage on the third pairing, but it would be a shame to take him out of the lineup when he’s contributing so effectively.
Would Green and defence coach Nolan Baumgartner be willing to play one of his left-shooting defencemen on their off-side? If so, that opens up the possibility of scratching Alex Biega, who has also performed admirably in Edler’s absence but has faltered over the last couple games.
Then there’s the Canucks defenceman who has struggled the most: Erik Gudbranson. The Canucks have been badly out-shot with Gudbranson on the ice at even-strength, mainly because he’s the Canucks’ worst puck-mover, leading to long shifts in the defensive zone when he can’t clear the puck with possession.
Gudbranson does bring an element that the Canucks’ defence otherwise lacks — physicality — but at the expense of their ability to effectively transition to offence when he is on the ice. He also craters his teammates’ puck possession numbers: every Canuck that has spent at least 10 minutes with Gudbranson has significantly worse corsi with him than they do without him. Corsi isn’t everything and lacks context, but it’s not a good sign when the Canucks give up way more shot attempts when you’re on the ice.
Would the Canucks be willing to scratch Gudbranson? Would a pairing of Michael Del Zotto and Edler make sense? Honestly, I don’t know. Travis Green has caught me off-guard with some of his personnel decisions, so it’s hard to predict what he might do with Edler’s return.
Loui Eriksson
The Canucks have kept largely the same line combinations of late, only really changing them in-game according to how the game is progressing. That makes Eriksson’s return a bit complicated. Where exactly does he fit?
Eriksson started the season with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi, but he clearly won’t be taking Brock Boeser’s spot on the top line. He could be a fit on any of the other three lines, however.
Since he was originally acquired as a potential Sedin linemate, he could return to their line, taking Jake Virtanen’s spot. That won’t go over well with many Canucks fans, who are eager to see more Virtanen, not less. Green seems less sure about the young winger, as his ice time has slipped below ten minutes of three of the last five games.
It really seems like Virtanen deserves to stay with the Sedins, however. While he has some consistency issues from shift to shift, he creates offensive opportunities a way that few other Sedin linemates can match.
With his strong two-way game, he could fit on the shutdown line, but is Travis Green likely to take Derek Dorsett out of the lineup when he’s not only the Canucks’ leading goalscorer, but also a go-to shutdown forward and penalty killer? It’s more likely that he would take out Gaunce, but if Granlund returns from his injury, I would hazard a guess that Granlund stays in the lineup
That leaves one final line: Thomas Vanek, Alex Burmistrov, and Sam Gagner. It doesn’t make much sense to take Vanek’s pop-gun offence out of the lineup, as he can contribute goals completely out of the blue and is fifth on the team in scoring. Gagner, meanwhile, seems on the verge of breaking out of his early-season slump, with 16 shots in his last five games.
Burmistrov, then, is the obvious name to take out of the lineup, but he’s quietly been quietly quite good so far this season. Still, it would make sense to sit Burmistrov, move Gagner to center, and get Eriksson back on the ice.
Is it ideal that it’s so hard to figure out where the Canucks’ third-highest paid forward, who is being paid $6 million per year through 2022, fits in the lineup? No. No it is not.
My money is on Virtanen or Burmistrov heading to the press box for a couple games once Eriksson is ready to return. To be honest, what might be more likely than either of those players becoming a healthy scratch, is another Canucks forward heading to the long-term injured reserve.
