The point is, you're cherrypicking the stats. I don't know how anybody can say the team defense sucked when they led the league in fewest goals against by a WIDE margin.
Because goalies exist.
The job of the team defense is the limit the volume and quality of shots and chances faced by the goalie. The job of the goalie is to stop the shots and chances that do get through, because every team makes mistakes and no game ever has zero shots or chances against.
The Vancouver Canucks did a poor job of limiting the volume of shots and chances against, both at 5v5 and on the PK.
Hence, they were a poor defensive team bailed out by elite goaltending.
You claim Luongo and Schneider carried that, yet did either of them win a Vezina? No. Luongo didn't even finish top 2. In fact, 2 of those goalies above him they faced in the playoffs.
Wow, an NHL award was inaccurate? Crazy! That never happens! I, for one, cannot believe that NHL GMs, who routinely vote on the Vezina based on WINS and repeatedly demonstrate their inability to properly evaluate goalies based on the contracts and trades made involving them, would fail to accurately assess the best goalie performances. Really, I'm shocked. Lol
For the record, I never claimed Luongo was the best goalie in the league that season. Tim Thomas was. He had the highest even-strength SV% in the leaguer AND the highest GSAx. Luongo certainly deserved to be nominated, however. The correct nominees would have been Thomas, Lundqvist and Luongo, as they had the highest 5v5 SV% and GSAx.
You can look at all of the advanced stats, but the metrics on what a good defensive team that trumps everything is going to be goals allowed and the metric for how good goal scoring is is goals for. Both, in which, the Canucks led.
Good for them. If the Stanley Cup were awarded based on the most goals scored and/or fewest allowed, they'd have been a shoe-in.
NHL history is littered with President's Trophy winners that ultimately accomplished nothing, not only failing to win a cup, but failing to contend, and disappearing into irrelevance soon after.
If we're interested in what defines a great team, shouldn't we look at the teams that not only contend, but win and then continue to contend and even win again?
And shouldn't we look at the stats that predict sustained success rather than stats that merely reflect a flash-in-the-pan single season where everything lined up, but ultimately a flawed team was exposed?
Winning as power-play merchants that are mediocre at driving play 5v5, poor are suppressing shots and chances both 5v5 and on the PK, and leaning almost entirely on elite goaltending to keep the goals allowed down, is a provably unreliable formula for winning championships. Once the playoffs start, pretty much every team has at least a 'good' goalie, so that advantage is immediately mitigated to some degree. Likewise, the average PK competency goes up, mitigating PP efficacy, if you're even lucky enough to get PPs called.
It is not a surprise then that the 2011 Canucks almost lost in the first round, ultimately were defeated, and never made it out of the first round again with the same core. Because the formula behind their flash-in-the-pan season was inherently weak, fragile, and difficult to replicate. Whereas cup winners like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, returned to the final 4, finals and championships again during extended runs of excellence, Vancouver was a sad little one-off, a team that had a spike of luck, but whose success was ultimately unreplicable by the same players.
You can look at a whole bunch of irrelevant stats, but they dominated the regular season, they ran through Nashville and San Jose and by the time they got to Boston had the majority of their team accrue significant injuries. There's a reason why a lot of sports analysts refer to the team as one of the top teams to never win the cup. They had high end offense at forward with the Sedins, Burrows, Kesler (selke winner), great two-way defenders in their primes in Bieksa and Edler and Salo and Ehrhoff, elite high end defensive players in Hamhuis and Tanev, and Ballard was a #4 playing in a #6/7 spot. Goaltending was good. The team had very few holes.
It's cute that you conveniently ignore them getting pushed to 7 in the first round by Chicago, another team that their goaltending faltered against and their PP struggled against. It's almost like a team with such a weak foundation has some clear weaknesses to be exploited.
Also, then what happened? Let's pretend the Canucks were some juggernaut that lost because of injury (they didn't). What happened the next year? And the year after that? Were these injuries 3-years long? Surely a team as 'great' as the 2011 Vancouver Canucks didn't simply forget how to play hockey? While the Kings and Blackhawks went through 3 final-4s in a row each (plus 2 cups), and Boston won went back the finals two years later and won the apparently all-important Presidents trophy the year after, etc... surely this elite team would challenge again, right?
No?
Oh wait, I think I know the difference.... Let's take a look at the next 3 years....
LAK 2012: 55.16 CF% (2nd), 54.26 SF% (4th), 52.55 xGF% (6th)*
BOS 2012: 54.36 CF% (4th), 52.84 SF% (6th), 53.71 xGF% (5th)
CHI 2012: 52.93 CF% (7th), 52.79 SF% (7th), 52.22 xGF% (7th)
VAN 2012: 53.62 CF% (6th), 50.66 SF% (11th), 48.65 xGF% (18th)
LAK 2013: 56.83 CF% (1st), 55.40 SF% (2nd), 55.63 xGF% (1st)
CHI 2013: 55.68 CF% (2nd), 56.17 SF% (1st), 54.39 xGF% (4th)
BOS 2013: 55.40 CF% (3rd), 54.48 SF% (3rd), 53.55 xGF% (6th)
VAN 2013: 52.14 CF% (9th), 49.57 SF% (17th), 50.03 xGF% (14th)
LAK 2014: 57.39 CF% (1st), 56.01 SF% (2nd), 55.40 xGF% (4th)
CHI 2014: 56.15 CF% (2nd), 56.04 SF% (1st), 55.90 xGF% (2nd)
BOS 2014: 55.25 CF% (3rd), 53.97 SF% (4th), 54.76 xGF% (5th)
VAN 2014: 51.00 CF% (11th), 51.34 SF% (12th), 49.40 xGF% (18th)
*And this was for the full season. Isolated to just games after the coaching change they were tops in the league.
Psssssssst..... I think I know which 'irrelevant stats' are a better indicatory of legit great teams that are legit threats for the cup year after year year, vs flash-in-the-pan, one-and-done nobody teams that need everything to come together once in a blue moon to have a shot.
You're the type to argue PDO without any context or watching of the games to understand reasoning behind the numbers. Making the argument that the team defense was mediocre because their goaltending was good is hilarious to me.
I never made the argument that their team defense was bad BECAUSE their goaltending was good. I made the opposite argument. Their goaltending was obviously elite BECASE their team defense and PK was obviously, measurably bad.
You simply can't get closer to a .930 save percentage if the team in front of you can't defend.
Dominik Hasek disproved this in the 90s, and others disproved it before him and since. It is absolutely possible for a goalie to cover for a poor defensive team, be it for a single period, a single game, a single series, and sometimes, VERY rarely, even a whole playoff run. What is true is that it's not particularly reliable. Generally speaking, a goalie can't consistently put up those SV% numbers in front of an incompetent defensive team year over year over year. The goalies that routinely, year after year, bail out bad defensive teams belong in the hall of fame.
And of course your powerplay and pk stats will tank when all of the players that are your standouts on them are injured. It's hilarious you claim you take into account injuries, but try having a good powerplay when 4 out of 5 players out of your top unit are injured (and 4 out of 5 on the 2nd unit as well). How is your PK gonna perform well in the playoffs when it's almost an entirely different unit altogether (no Malhotra, no Hamhuis, Kesler can hardly move)?
Again, their PK stats in the regular season were almost entirely goalie-driven.
Let's pretend the skaters on the ice were unchanged and completely uninjured. We'll use the regular season numbers and compare them to the numbers the other 15 teams put up in the 2011 playoffs.
By their RS numbers, the Vancouver Canucks would have been 8th out of 16 teams in Shots Against per 60 short-handed (50.87 SA/60), they would have been 7th out of 16 teams in Expected Goals Against per 60 short handed (6.48 xGA/60). So, by your estimation, had they performed as well as they had in the RS with a fully healthy lineup, they would have been...*gasp*...my god.... middle of the pack of the playoff teams.
Truly, what force could hope to contend with such
excellence?!
Their regular season PP numbers as far as shots and chances generated would have made a difference in the playoffs. But then, that's why teams that rely on their PP tend to fail. Even if you were to take injuries out of it, your PP is simply going to do worse against a run of teams that have better-than-average to great PKs than they did against a bunch of tomato cans in your weak division.
