"We've got good penalty killers": Boudreau has faith in Canucks' PK
It was the biggest reason why the Vancouver Canucks had such a putrid record in the first two months of last season, leading to the firings of Jim Benning and Travis Green.
The penalty kill.
It wasn’t just bad, it was at a historically-bad level when Francesco Aquilini finally shook up his team’s front office on December 5.
The Canucks, who had the fourth-worst record in the league, winning just eight of their first 25 games, were dead-last in the NHL in penalty-kill percentage (64.6%). The team went on to finish tied with Seattle for second-last in the league, with a 74.9% PK success rate.
New Canucks GM Patrik Allvin had a relatively quiet first offseason in Vancouver, failing to remodel his roster in a dramatic way as many expected.
But he did add a pair of capable penalty killers in free agency, in the form of forwards Ilya Mikheyev and Curtis Lazar.
Bruce Boudreau is optimistic they’ll make a difference.
“It certainly gives you depth,” Boudreau said in an interview with Jamie Dodd and Israel Fehr on Sportsnet 650 this morning. “Especially in Mikheyev’s case, the fact that you can think a little bit of offence when you’re supposed to be totally on defence.”
Mikheyev finished tied for third in the NHL in shorthanded goals last season, scoring four times while killing penalties for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Canucks coach added that he “definitely” generated the most chances in the NHL while shorthanded last season, because of his great speed.
Mikheyev was fourth among Leafs forwards in average time-on-ice while shorthanded last season, receiving 1:24 shorthanded minutes per game. Lazar, similarly, played 1:36 per game on the penalty kill for the Boston Bruins, which was not far behind the shorthanded minutes Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand each received.
Mikheyev and Lazar won’t turn around the Canucks’ PK alone, but Boudreau doesn’t believe they have to.
“People make a lot about our penalty killing,” Boudreau said, before pointing to his team’s shorthanded success after the coaching change. The Canucks did have a respectable penalty kill under Boudreau, posting the 11th-best PK percentage (80.5%) in the NHL after December 6.
“I think we were just starting to get really good at it,” Boudreau said. “So I think we’ve got good penalty killers, but now we’ve got really good depth in the penalty killing department.”
Barring a late-summer shakeup, expect the Canucks to start with the same group of defencemen as last season. They will be missing often-used penalty-killing forwards from last year, in Tyler Motte, Juho Lammikko, and Matthew Highmore though.
Training camp begins in less than one month, on September 23 in Whistler, and Vancouver’s preseason schedule kicks off two days later.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work,” Boudreau said of training camp. “I think it’s going to be competitive. Most of the stuff I do is game-situational stuff. We want to see the compete level right from the start… I think we’ll be a really good conditioned team, and a real competitive team, knowing exactly what we want to do right from the get go.”
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