CANUCKS: Can Boeser carry the team with his linemates injured?
With two other key Canucks scorers injured, talented rookie can expect other teams to focus on him
JWINNIPEG ust when you think Brock Boeser can’t score all the goals, he goes out and does something and you can’t help but wonder. Maybe he can. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to overestimate what Boeser can do this season. He is still only months into his NHL career and right now he is the Canucks’ most important player.
He is not only their best goal scorer, he represents their best hope to survive a lengthy stretch of games in which the Canucks will be without Bo Horvat, and, it now seems, Sven Baertschi.
Horvat, as everyone knows, is lost for six weeks with a foot fracture. The news is less clear on Baertschi, but he left the team and returned to Vancouver after taking a puck to the face Saturday night in Calgary. That doesn’t suggest good things and leaves the Canucks without their No. 2 and No. 3 goal scorers.
But No. 1 is still here, and what a No. 1 he is.
In 27 games, Boeser has scored 15 goals, leading all rookies. For com- parison, in his rookie season last year, Auston Matthews had 12 goals in his first 27 games. Patrick Laine, 16.
It puts Boeser on pace — if somehow he could keep this up despite the injuries — for 44 goals. Let’s be real, 30 would be amazing. Heck, Horvat led the Canucks last year with 20.
The most encouraging development is he has done it on multiple lines and in multiple ways.
“That’s the key for any goal scorer in this league,” head coach Travis Green said. “Unless you have an absolute laser beam which only a few guys in the league have, you have to find ways to score around the net.
“Especially, as the season goes on, it gets tougher and tougher and time and space gets taken away from guys who can shoot to score. The good goal scorers, they find other ways to score.”
What happens next will be Boeser’s biggest challenge. More than ever, teams are going to game plan for him. More than ever, stopping the Canucks’ offence will be about stopping Boeser.
To this point, he has met every challenge. And then some. He was parachuted onto a power play that for five seasons was the second worst in hockey.
Last week it hit the top 10. On Sunday, it was ranked eighth. How much credit does Boeser get for that? A ton. His 12 power-play points tied him for 13th in the NHL.
The Canucks didn’t even think he’d be on the team in the summer. And then, as everyone knows, he sat the first two games.
Thing is, and this will be Nikolay Goldobin’s challenge, it wasn’t his goal scoring that won over Green.
“I don’t know if I’m surprised,” Green said. “I’m really pleased with his game, I think that’s a better (way of putting it).
“We knew he had a real goal-scoring touch. I know I keep saying it, but his play away from the puck is the part that probably impresses me more than his actual goal scoring. It gives him an opportunity to play more.”
The real question here is can Boeser keep this up? There are certainly some signs that he can’t.
This weekend a chart of players essentially leading the league in overachieving was making the rounds. The stat was comparing goals scored to expected goals. Boeser was third in the NHL, having scored seven more even-strength goals than expected.
Essentially, expected goals factor in shot locations and shot types. It can’t fully account for individual shooting skill, however, and in that category Boeser is not average. Far from it, actually.
Boeser said he makes alterations to his game depending on which centre he’s playing with.
“But mostly, I try to keep it the same,” he said. “Move my feet. Work hard. Produce anyway I can.”
Is he surprising himself with the start he’s had to his rookie season?
“I didn’t know how this year was going to go,” Boeser said. “I had a nice bit at the end of last year (during which time he scored four goals in nine games).
“Everyone was asking ‘Could I keep that up this year?’ I set my expectations high. I like to score goals. And I think I just have a nose for the net.
“Keeping it up is just a matter of continuing to compete hard and stay within the structure.”
In other words, keep making the coach happy. And no one is making Green happier than Boeser these days.