The Canucks are not liked by the bookies of the sports betting world. In more than one site, the Canucks are not predicted to make the playoffs this year. Most have the Canucks around 88 points. Both Canucks Army and the Daily Hive have articles that cover this. You should go read them…Google it. I agree with the bookies and won’t reiterate the arguments made in the two other Canuck sites. Instead, I will go directly to the reason the Canucks have had trouble getting out of the western conference basement teams. It’s very simple….the Canucks can’t beat the east.

The Canucks record last year against teams from the Eastern Conference was 10-20-2.

Read that again….10-20-2. That’s terrible. Some would point to the early season losing streak and say that it skewed the numbers, but the Canucks also lost several games to eastern teams in the middle of their schedule. The interesting part of this is that Bruce was the coach for most of the losses…well most of the games against eastern teams (5-15-1). Tocchet’s record against the east was 5-5-1.

So maybe that’s the solution! Tocchet saves the team, because he can lead the team to a .500 record against the east. Of course, in 5 of those games the Canucks allowed 5+ goals. And in his limited games as a coach against east teams, he was unable to find a penalty kill system that worked against eastern teams. (67.7%)

I would love to say that I have solutions for this major problem, but it would be great if the Nucks could at least see the issues they have. I haven’t heard anyone in the organization mention how bad this team was against that conference. There is always talk about being better against divisional teams and conference teams, but the Canucks have done well against them. In fact, the Canucks were 28-17-5 against the West. If the Canucks could actually get to the playoffs, they might have a fighting chance.

In head to head match-ups against Eastern Conference teams, the Canucks only had winning records against Columbus and Ottawa. The Canucks never beat Washington, Tampa, the Rangers, New Jersey, Florida, Detroit or Boston. Brutal

I have the stats below for the Canucks games against last year. Take a gander and look at how bad this team was against the East.

If you get over to the Twitter, (I will never call it X...fucking stupid), you should ask the organization if they have a game plan for playing those teams this year.

I know I will.