There have been several underwhelming players on the Vancouver Canucks this season.
Elias Pettersson still doesn’t look like the superstar of old. Marcus Pettersson has struggled in an elevated role. Jake DeBrusk can’t score at even-strength, and Evander Kane is on the fourth line.
However, there might not be a more disappointing player in the Canucks lineup than Brock Boeser.
The Canucks’ highest-paid winger has just nine goals and 21 points in 44 games this season. He’s currently on pace for 16 goals and 38 points, and the 28-year-old is also a league-worst -26.
It’s easy to forget that Boeser actually got off to a good start offensively. After 18 games, the Burnsville, Minnesota, native had eight goals and 14 points. At the time, he looked like a decent bet to outperform his $7.25 million cap hit.
However, since the end of his five-game point streak on Nov. 16, his play has completely cratered.
In Boeser’s last 26 games, he has just one goal and seven points.
Even Kane, who’s on the fourth line right now, has four goals and 12 points over the same stretch.
Even David Kampf has more goals than Boeser since joining the Canucks on Nov. 17, scoring twice in 25 games.
It’s arguably been the roughest stretch of Boeser’s 10-year NHL career, and Jim Rutherford has a theory as to why.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Boeser’s struggles began as the Canucks were in the midst of trying to trade captain Quinn Hughes. Rutherford believes that the Hughes saga and his departure have impacted the winger’s play.
“They were very, very good friends, and I’m sure that was part of that,” Rutherford told Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail.
“You know, [Brock] is just a terrific person, and he can be sensitive sometimes to situations like this. So, I’m sure it has. Yeah, no doubt.”
Well, that’s not the first time Boeser has been called sensitive. We wonder how he feels about the Canucks’ president of hockey operations admitting as much?
Boeser has bounced around the Canucks lineup all season long, but he hasn’t had much success with any of Vancouver’s forwards.
The only regular Canucks player with whom Boeser has a positive shot-attempt differential is Pettersson. In 119 five-on-five minutes together this season, the Canucks have controlled 51.6 per cent of shot attempts.
With the Canucks season in the toilet anyway, perhaps it’s time to saddle the Canucks highest-paid forwards together and see if the two longest-tenured forwards on this team can rediscover some of their magic from long, long ago.
At this point, there’s not much to lose.
