The Vancouver Canucks trounced the Calgary Flames 8-1 in their second-to-last preseason contest. It’s a mighty confidence booster this close to the season opener and a chance for a big chunk of the roster to gel, as well as any last-minute auditions for those spots in the opening night lineup. Plenty of players turned in strong performances, and there’s really not much to dislike any time you win by 7 goals.

As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

A very odd heat map

One of the things that stood out right off the bat was the heat map from last night’s contest. Take a look at this:

That doesn’t exactly look like the results one might expect from an 8-1 win on the Canucks side. The numbers tracked a 24-14 Calgary lead in total scoring chances and a 13-3 margin in high-danger chances. Those numbers are very much reflected in the hot spots for both teams on this chart, but also demonstrate the difference between the two teams when it came to capitalizing on the chances as well as the goaltending. Ivan Prosvetov gave up 3 5v5 goals off 0.72 expected goals against, while Devin Cooley conceded 1 5v5 goal off 0.28 expected goals against.

This also highlights another bit we’ve been seeing in the preseason, and something that a near “full-strength” roster was able to pull off quite well – the aggressive style of play especially from the defencemen. With so many defenders jumping in on rushes, there were plenty more odd-man rushes to stop. Now, that’s hopefully not going to happen too often, and with some time to practice the Canucks can limit the potential increase in those situations. But, if anyone gets through, they have more than solid netminders to act as the last line of defence.

Hopefully this team won’t be depending on Kevin Lankinen and Thatcher Demko too much, but there’s probably not many better tandems in the league.

Where Forbort-Mancini weren’t a dumpsterfire

The Canucks iced pretty much their full top 4 defencemen, with Hughes-Hronek and Pettersson-Myers all lining up in their usual spots. That left Victor Mancini and Derek Forbort to line up with each other, and given how poorly the preseason has gone for latter, it would’ve been reasonable to think that this game wouldn’t have gone well for the pairing.

But, they actually held their ground against a near full-strength Flames squad. Mancini’s presence was a boon, making solid, risk-free plays while also being able to move the puck out of his own end. That paired with Forbort’s stay-at-home tendencies ended up working out really well as the pair were thrown out against the likes of Jonathan Huberdeau for the majority of the night. Only giving up 1 high-danger chance against is very tidy work from the 3rd pair, especially considering the quality of competition.

Big guns playing like big guns

A big reason why the Canucks were able to blow the absolute doors off the Flames was because their best players played like their best players. Led by none other than Quinn Hughes, the goal and two assists were just the tip of the iceberg as he once more led the Canucks in total expected goals.

That helped Brock Boeser get going, who potted away a breakaway goal to get the scoring started. And, thanks to another one of Quinn Hughes’ patented power play passes, Elias Pettersson got a chance to show off the one timer that had gone missing for so long.

As a team

CF% – 48.76% HDCF% – 28.57% xGF% – 34.92%

The Canucks were able to dominate the Flames even if their advanced stats didn’t seem to like their game that much. But that’s just one aspect to the game, and the final score is a lot more telling of the product than just the numbers. Vancouver made sure to capitalize when they could and where they could, taking advantage of Calgary’s lackadaisical goaltending. A big thing will be to shave down those high-danger chances against, but other than that, it was a great performance.

Vancouver returns home to host the Edmonton Oilers tomorrow for their last preseason matchup.

Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com