I've said this before recently, but it's what you always see when people project that they're expecting all the faults with the previous team to be fixed by the new moves while all the things that went surprisingly well stay constant. "The 19-20 Canucks were the #8 offense and they've added Garland and Hoglander, so top-5 offensive team!!!!!'
And this completely ignores a whole bunch of stuff :
- Tanner Pearson and JT Miller scored at a 138 points/82 GP clip with crazy outlier career years. 100 points between them this year would be a good result.
- Virtanen, Gaudette, and Leivo/Toffoli filled 3 roster spots all at a 45-55 point pace. All of those players are gone. When you look at Hoglander replacing Virtanen and Garland replacing Leivo/Toffoli ... there might be a gain there but it's minimal.
- Alex Edler had a career year offensively at ES that nobody on this team will duplicate.
- that team was incredibly healthy until right before COVID, when a couple injuries caused them to crash. We are unlikely to be that lucky with injuries again.
So yeah, if they finish 8th-10th in the NHL offensively this year, that would be a huge result.
OK, let's go through each player...
JT Miller got 46 points in 53 games last season, with Pettersson injured. That's a fairly consistent number factoring in EP's injury. You are getting 19/20 JT this year.
We are highly unlikely getting 19/20 Tanner Pearson.
Hoglander got very little PP time, and ended up with 26 even strength points in 56 games. Virtanen got power play time, which pumped up his numbers, but at even strength, Virtanen had 27 points in 69 games. And Hoglander does so many other things that create offensive chances for his linemates. He is a big upgrade on Virtanen. I'm not sure how you can say that there is only a minimal gain here.
Toffoli was here for only 10 regular season games, so not long enough to have made a difference through that season, so we are left with Leivo vs Garland, and that's no contest. Garland also played on a team last year that scored .6 less goals per game than the 19/20 Canucks, and he was there best point producer per game. Huge upgrade.
Last year Ekman Larsson scored at very close to the same rate as 19/20 Edler, though the Coyotes were a lower scoring team than 19/20 Canucks. Significantly lower by .6 goals per game.
Rathbone is a big offensive upgrade on the bottom 6.
And you have to factor in the teams maturity is 2 years greater, especially for someone like Pettersson.
It's not a stretch at all to see the Canucks improving by at least 3 spots over the 19/20 team.