LOUI STAYING POSITIVE
Eriksson wants to be key sniper again
He sits now as the Vancouver Canucks’ highest-paid player — and the NHL club’s most baffling.
Loui Eriksson, 32, is the Canucks’ would-be star. He’s paid like one, having earned $16 million in two seasons with Vancouver.
He just can’t seem to score like one. And that’s where things get confusing.
Because despite all the talk about his two-way play, and it’s fine, and this idea he’s still a “good third liner,” something important too often gets lost. Eriksson is a goal scorer.
At least, he was before he signed a massive $36-million contract to come to Vancouver.
In his last season in Boston, he put up 30 goals. Ten were on the power play, the same number Sidney Crosby scored that year. How poorly have things gone since?
The last time Eriksson scored a power play goal was February of 2017. And in two seasons, he has 21 goals for the Canucks.
“It hasn’t been easy since I came here,” Eriksson said. “I just haven’t found a role. I’ve been playing on different lines a lot.
“It’s always hard when it doesn’t happen. I want to score goals. I want to put up points for the team. When it’s not happening it’s ... All I can do is work my way out of it.”
There have been moments of light, and with those a slice of hope the future can be different. The Canucks believe it will be different if his offensive role expands. And it will need to be if Vancouver has any chance of filling the offensive void left behind by the Sedins.
When Eriksson returned from a knee injury in November, he went on a run of 10 points in 10 games and for maybe the first time in Vancouver looked like a player you’d open a war chest for.
“I was feeling really good about myself,” Eriksson said. “And then I had a tough stretch.”
He may be, but he did not have a good season. even if you account for the fact he only played 50 games because of injuries.
At five-on-five his 1.52 points-perhour ranked 206th among players with at least 500 minutes. It’s less than Jannik Hansen (1.56) and if you know anything about Hansen’s season in San Jose it made the word disastrous an understatement.
Opponents scored 55.55 per cent of the goals when Eriksson was playing five-on-five, and his play in controlling possession when he wasn’t with the Sedins was suspect.
On any line other than Henrik’s at five-on-five, Eriksson and the Canucks controlled just 42.68 per cent of scoring chances and 46.15 per cent of shot attempts.
Part of this, without question, is because one-quarter of his season was spent playing with Brandon Sutter, all of it tough minutes as a matchup winger.
“If you’re in a shutdown role, you’re probably not going to produce as much compared to when you’re playing on a first line and spending a lot of time on the power play,” Eriksson explained.
“I don’t know if people see the stats and understand that if you’re in a matchup role you’re probably not going to produce as much.
“But it’s definitely frustrating for me. Throughout my career, I was producing and putting a lot of points up for the team.”
He needs to find that player inside him, the one who earned the contract. The Canucks may have been the only team willing to go to six years when they signed him but weren’t the only team offering him an average of $6 million per season.
In other words, his salary wasn’t out of line for a player who averaged 24 goals a year for about nine seasons of NHL experience.
He’s been a top-six goal scorer his entire career, and the Canucks aren’t in a position to give up on rehabilitating that part of his game.
“Being a top goal scorer has been part of my game for many years,” Eriksson said. “I still think I can get there. I feel like I’m in good shape.
“It’s a matter of finding someone to play with too and be consistent with that. All I can do is try to stay positive and get something going.”
The Canucks have all summer to figure out how they can make that happen.