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Canucks holding their own despite slow start to the season for Jake DeBrusk

Originally posted on Canucksarmy | By Jeff Paterson | Last updated Oct 31, 2025 2:07 PM ET

Lost in the many storylines that have emerged a dozen games into an eventful new Vancouver Canucks season is the fact that the injury-riddled hockey club is somehow 6-6 despite just two goals from last year’s leading goal-scorer, Jake DeBrusk.

With players leaving the lineup on a nightly basis and the club needing others to fill the void, it’s remarkable in many ways that the team has managed to tread water with very little in the way of offensive contributions from one of the guys expected to deliver.

It’s easy to dismiss DeBrusk’s sluggish start and simply chalk it up to him being a slow starter and a streaky player. Some of that is fact, and surely his goals will come. But his funky start isn’t just about his goal production.

Twelve games into the season, DeBrusk has two goals and two assists. Both of his goals have come on the power play, and his two assists are both secondary helpers that came in the first two games of the season. He doesn’t yet have a 5-on-5 goal and has now gone 10 games without setting up a teammate. One of his assists was on the 5-1 goal late in the Canucks season opener against the Calgary Flames.

As the calendar flips to November, DeBrusk sits a point behind Evander Kane and a point ahead of Drew O’Connor in team scoring. Clearly, more was expected from a guy who netted a career-best 28 goals last season and finished with 48 points. Again, he’s not going to be a four-point guy every month.

But it’s wild that at a time when the Canucks could use production from the few healthy proven scorers they’ve got, DeBrusk has been so quiet. Too quiet, frankly.

Yet, with the game on his stick in St. Louis on Thursday night, it was DeBrusk who came through with the only goal of the shootout to seal a gutsy 4-3 victory. In the win, DeBrusk logged a career-high 22:59 of ice time and led all forwards with 18:44 at 5-on-5. He also posted the fastest speed burst by any Canuck this season, clocking 23.53 miles per hour in the first period – the fourth fastest speed registered by an NHL forward this season.

Jake DeBrusk not only posted fastest #Canucks speed burst of season last night, but one of the fastest by an #NHL forward so far this season pic.twitter.com/19E5BzWx4l

— Jeff Paterson (@patersonjeff) October 31, 2025

But all of this underscores the odd start to the season for DeBrusk. Despite playing as much and as hard as he did against the Blues, he didn’t manage a single shot on goal during the run of play and only had one attempt. This is the same guy who registered 10 shots on goal in a game against the Chicago Blackhawks two weeks ago.

DeBrusk leads the Canucks with 33 shots on goal this season and yet is carrying a 6.1% shooting percentage. That won’t last. It can’t last. He’s due to get on one of his streaks any day now, and the Canucks will welcome it when it arrives.

But more than the goals, DeBrusk needs to find a way to spend more time in the offensive zone. A veteran counted on to be dependable at both ends, the underlying numbers paint a bleak picture of DeBrusk’s start to the season. The Canucks are controlling just 39.5% of all shot attempts with DeBrusk on the ice at 5-on-5. They’ve been outshot 79-56 and outchanced 71-55 so far. And yet through all of that, the team has managed to outscore opponents 5-2 in DeBrusk’s 5-on-5 minutes thanks in large part to a PDO of 106.4. The team’s on-ice save percentage during DeBrusk’s shifts so far this season is an outrageous .975%.

It’s only 12 games, and almost all of DeBrusk’s personal statistics will normalize. He will score more goals and produce more offence than he has in the first 12 games. But he’s also not going to benefit all season from near-perfect netminding every time he steps on the ice.

The bottom line is that DeBrusk needs to do more to have a positive impact on the hockey club. And it has to start happening sooner rather than later. The Canucks escaped the first month of the schedule with a reasonable record, with little in the way of impact from one of the guys they’re counting on.

Last season, in his first year with the Canucks, Jake DeBrusk didn’t score a single goal in October and then rattled off seven in November, starting with a three-game goal streak to begin the month. So he’s been down this road before. And maybe he’ll travel that path again. But this team can’t rely on Kiefer Sherwood to score all of its goals.

The Canucks could really use Jake DeBrusk to announce his arrival starting on Saturday in Minnesota and hope that the second month of the season is far more productive than the first.

This article first appeared on Canucksarmy and was syndicated with permission.

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