Weekly Grades, February 13-19

A feature I am going to attempt to establish here on Nucks on the Pond is a weekly grading system. I am hoping to post one every Sunday that goes through how the forwards, defense, goalies, and coaching did throughout the prior week. This may suffer through weekend trips or if I have a busy work schedule, however, I think its more than possible. I spent a good chunk of time today setting up a spreadsheet with formulas and tables, so from here on out it shouldn't be all that time consuming. Here's what I have so far:

The Canucks had a busy week last week playing four games, with a back-to-back starting Monday in St. Louis with a 3-2 loss, and then to Minnesota Tuesday for a 4-1 win against the Wild. Alberts broke his wrist in St. Louis, which made the loss that much worse. On Thursday it was off to Nashville where the injuries continued to pile up as Bieksa fractured his foot when he was blocking a shot, with a 3-1 loss on top of it. However, the week ended well last night with a 5-2 victory of the Dallas Stars back home in Rogers Arena. In that span they scored 12 goals with 9 goals against, with the goalies playing fairly well combining for a 1.83 GAA and a .935 S%. They did average roughly 27 shots per game, with 8 PIM per game (minus Torres' Fighting Major).  

Forwards: B The Centers played well, with Henrik and Manny both in the 60% range in Face-off Wins, and had a combined 10 Points and a Plus 5 rating. Manny was probably the best winning key face-offs in the offensive zone and playing solid on the PK. Henrik was a bit soft on the back-check (see Goc's goal in the Nashville game), and Kesler was in the 40% range on Face-off Percentage. The Wingers combined for 15 points, a Plus 6 rating. Like usual Daniel was the best with 3 Goals and 1 Assist, but Torres chipped in with 2 Goals and 1 Assist, as did Hansen, making the Torres-Malhotra-Hansen line the best this week by far. Tambellini is still on a cold streak after his unexpected scoring to start the season.

Defense: C+ I considered giving them an Incomplete due to all the injuries, but thats the easy way out. Injuries are a part of the game, and you have to deal with them. The entire Defense posted 0 Goals with 6 Assists, a Plus 5 rating and 20 PIM. With the loss of Alberts and Bieksa, we were introduced to Yann Sauve and reintroduced to Evan Oberg. I thought Sauve looked pretty good, he played in 3 games, had 5 shots and had an even rating. He also had a goal-saving play in the Nashville game, robbing Steve Sullivan (I believe) of a rebound chance. Oberg had just one shot, but also posted an even rating. Neither posted any points. So they did not contribute all that much, but didn't hurt the team either.

Sami Salo also made his triumphant return from an ACL injury. Ideally his comeback would have been slow considering the type of injury he sustained, but with Defenseman dropping like flies, he was accelerated, and I thought he responded pretty well. He had a 2 Assists, a Plus 1 rating, and 4 PIM in 4 games. He will have to lead this unit until they can get some guys healthy, but he did average just over 20 Minutes per game this week.

Goalies: B Combined they went 2-2, with a 1.83 GAA, a .935 S%, 9 GA and made 104 Saves. Schneider played against the Wild, and was the main reason the GAA and S% were so low. He stopped 28 of 29 shots in the game, and looked very sharp. The only goal he let in was on a sharp angle from Buttercup (Clutterbuck) and he was caught not looking, so its something he can work on. 

Luongo posted a 2.67 GAA and .904 S%. I cut him some slack though for a all the new Defenseman and he was hung out to dry a couple times (Rome's "blown tire" in Nashville). He made some huge saves though (especially in traffic) that reminded of how great a goalie he can be. However, he did let in a couple soft ones.

Coaching: B- There were some good points. Having Malhotra taking offensive zone PP face-offs paid off in the Minnesota games, and they seemed to match up pretty well with other teams lines. However, the back-checking looked lazy, and there were two instances in the Dallas game where they had too many men on the ice, one time with about 8 guys out there. Now for whatever reason they weren't called for it, but sloppy line changes are on the coaching staff.

Hope this wasn't too long for you guys. A lot happened with the Defense this week, and I probably over-analysed the goalies, but I put in the work so I figured I would use all of it. I will learn how to consolidate the more I do this. What are your guys grades?