There’s literally more than 3. But the point went over your head.
The Canucks have been a dog shit bottom 10 team for nearly a decade. The 19/20 season they were 15th and plummeting the standings. Like usual.
I don’t really see it as underachieving. It’s what they’re used to achieving.
The bubble and Bruce bounce look like clear anomalies at this point. You seem to have fallen hard for those 60 games.
No, there are literally 3. Horvat, Pettersson, Boeser. Demko/Pearson/Hughes joined late in the season with the team already miles out of the playoffs and had zero impact on their record that year.
Of course they've been bad for a decade. But what happened in 2015 has literally zilch to do with what's happening with this team now and evaluation of that team. To even suggest that to be the case is ... bizarre.
This team was in an (accidental) tank from 2015-2019.
We started coming out of it in 19-20 and had a solid season as the high picks taken in those poor years matured and hit their strides.
If the team had been properly managed, we should have had $20+ million in cap space for 20-21 to augment that promising team and take it to the next level. Instead, we ended up in comical cap crunch and had to cull multiple quality veterans. The dressing room collapsed, morale collapsed. Further veterans wanted out. Most of the key remaining players (Pettersson, Miller, Myers, Pearson, Hughes) saw their play regress badly.
This period lasted 80 games and 11 months.
This core has basically been together for ~220 games since the summer of 2019. You're taking that 80 game period as the 'real Canucks' and trying to argue a 140-game period for the same core before/after is a fraud. It's ridiculous.
I'm not basing anything on 'Bruce bump'. I based my expectations by looking at this roster on paper, and based on Pettersson's return to form. This team should have one of the best 1-2-3 punches in the NHL at C and everyone expected elite goaltending. Instead, 2 of the team's best 3 players are playing by far the worst hockey of their careers and they've had small-sample terrible luck.