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Jake DeBrusk has handed Adam Foote a real Canucks decision as Vancouver tries to explain one of the strangest scoring splits in the league.
Sportsnet framed it around DeBrusk’s frustration, and that part lands. But the bigger story is what his even-strength drought says about the way Vancouver is creating offense around him.
DeBrusk has 19 goals, yet 16 have come on the power play. That 84.2 per cent share trails only Yvan Cournoyer’s 88.9 among NHL players with at least 15 goals in a season.
That number jumps off the page because this isn’t who DeBrusk has been. Sportsnet noted that before this season, he had been a five-on-five scorer for most of his career and had never finished with fewer than 11 even-strength goals in a full season.
This year, he has 3 at five-on-five. His even-strength shooting rate sits at 2.75 per cent, while Sportsnet listed his career five-on-five scoring rate at 11.5 per cent.
DeBrusk didn’t hide from it. He called it a “perfect storm of events” and pointed to the biggest problem: at five-on-five, the pucks just aren’t arriving where he can finish around the net.
That’s where Foote gets pulled into the conversation. When a winger keeps producing on the power play but dries up at even strength, the issue stops being just finishing luck and starts becoming a line-construction problem.
Vancouver’s bigger problem sits behind the stat
DeBrusk basically said it himself. On the power play, he’s in the right spots and the puck gets there. At five-on-five, he feels like he’s going to the crease without enough shots or touches arriving.
That should worry the Canucks more than the weird history note. Special teams can carry a player for stretches, but middle-six wingers get judged by what they drive when the benches are rolling and the game opens up.
The team context makes it sting more. Sportsnet reported Vancouver had just 22 wins in 76 games, including 8 in 39 at Rogers Arena, and had dropped 8 of its last 9 in regulation.
So this isn’t about chirping a cold streak. It’s about a season-gone-wrong where one of Vancouver’s known scorers is producing in only one lane, while the rest of the lineup has not given him enough five-on-five support.
Foote also has other fires to manage. Kevin Lankinen was day to day with an upper-body injury, Evander Kane was managing an undisclosed issue, and Filip Chytil was still working toward practices instead of games.
That matters because roster instability can wreck line chemistry, and line chemistry is exactly what DeBrusk sounds like he’s missing. You can hear it in the way he keeps going back to puck arrival and shot volume.
This leaves Patrik Allvin and Foote with a plain question for the stretch run and beyond. Is Jake DeBrusk’s five-on-five slump just rotten percentage luck, or is it exposing a Canucks forward group that still can’t feed its net-front scorer the way it should?
Previously on Vancouver Hockey Daily
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