Half of Canucks roster have never played in front of a playoff crowd before

When the puck drops in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the Vancouver Canucks, it’ll be a brand new experience for half their roster.

While they haven’t mathematically clinched a playoff spot yet, given the Canucks have a Western Conference-leading 92 points with 14 games left, it’s safe to say that postseason hockey returning to Vancouver is an inevitability.

And when that happens, it’ll be the first time in nine years that Canucks playoff hockey will be seen in Vancouver.

The Canucks have made the playoffs once since 2015, but all their 2020 postseason hockey took place in the pandemic bubble in Edmonton.

That means a player like Brock Boeser, who has played 466 regular season games, has never experienced playoff hockey with fans in the stands. All 17 of his postseason games came in 2020.

The same is true for Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, and Thatcher Demko, who made their playoff debut with the Canucks in an empty arena. Conor Garland and Phil Di Giuseppe have also tasted the postseason just once in their careers but with different teams in 2020. Di Giuseppe didn’t even make it to the first round, though, as his New York Rangers were eliminated in the best-of-five qualifying round.

Then there’s Filip Hronek, a veteran of 377 NHL games, who has never played in a playoff game, bubble or not. Nils Höglander, Pius Suter, Noah Juulsen, Nils Åman, and Vasily Podkolzin have also never experienced the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

In total, Canucks players have 402 games of playoff experience, with nearly half of that coming from two players: Ian Cole (116) and J.T. Miller (78). Of the 23 players on their active roster — plus the injured Dakota Joshua — 12 Canucks have never played a playoff game with fans in the crowd.

Cole won back-to-back Stanley Cups, in 2016 and 2017, and has been on teams that made the second round on three other occasions (twice with Colorado and once with Carolina).

Miller went to the Eastern Conference Final twice, once with the New York Rangers (2015) and once with Tampa Bay (2018). He also made it to the second round with the Rangers in 2017.

Not a lot of playoff experience on the Canucks roster (* denotes all experience came in the bubble)

The question is, will it matter? Playoff experience is not a prerequisite to having playoff success, but it sure can help. When the pressure gets turned up, and fans are going wild at home or away, we’ll see how this team will respond.

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