Vancouver Canucks Loui Eriksson Is Being Done Wrong

Loui Eriksson's track record is one of consistency, but the Vancouver Canucks are refusing to play him

Let’s get this out of the way; Loui Eriksson is a meme. I already went over one meme player on here, Greg Pateryn, which got some good attention. It’s going to be another one of those articles. It’s the same case with Eriksson, too—a guy who hasn’t gotten enough playing time despite being extremely good when he gets it. The Canucks are basically eliminated from the playoffs, having played 48 of 56 games in the shortened season to date. However, Eriksson has only appeared in seven of those.

It’s not like Eriksson has done anything spectacular in those games, seeing as he’s only notched one assist over that period. However, his career numbers are not that bad. He hit 36 goals in 2008-09, and in the year before signing with Vancouver, he hit 30 goals even. He’s been a 25-goal-scorer five times in his career as well. For some reason, though, he has started to fall off in the counting number stats. In his time with Vancouver, Eriksson hasn’t hit the 30 point mark and hasn’t been above 12 goals either. It’s a brutal fall from grace for the now 35-year-old forward.

Some members of the Canucks fandom refuse to believe that Eriksson is as bad as some make him out to be. So the question is, are they in the right to think that? Or do the stats back up the other side?

Advanced Numbers

As I already spoke about, his counting numbers have been in decline since joining the Canucks. However, his advanced numbers still show that he’s a great depth option for a team struggling in their own zone. From 2018-21, Eriksson is sporting a 2.3 expected defense goals above replacement (xDef), which mostly comes from the penalty kill. However, if we want a larger sample, we can look at 2017-20 and see that his numbers defensively are still very good at a 4.9 xDef. Most of his value, again, coming from the penalty kill in this instance. Among Canucks players, that total ranks as the seventh-best, which does help Eriksson’s case to be in the lineup in some capacity. However, it doesn’t stop there. From 2017-20, Eriksson’s expected goals above replacement (xGAR) is 10th among all Canucks. The standard goals above replacement (GAR) stat has him ranked as the 24th best Canuck in that span, though, so it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.

The one thing about Eriksson’s game is that he is willing to get into high-danger areas and create havoc while he might not be the most formidable scoring threat. His expected numbers on the offensive end are so good because of it. His RAPM numbers tell much of the same story: great expected numbers offensively and defensively, but not much conversion.

What Happened?

There are most definitely some contributing factors as to why Eriksson has fallen off, the first one being that his ice time has gone down considerably. When he was scoring 20-30 goals a year, he played around 19 minutes a game. The guy plays better when given more ice time with better players, as most would. However, when he transitioned to Vancouver, things did not go swimmingly. His first year, he played 18:41, which isn’t bad by any means. However, most of his ice time was spent with not-so-good teammates, as indicated by this chart, thanks to HockeyViz.

The following season, it dropped considerably, from 18:41 to 16:16. The linemates he was put with were about the same skill level, too, as Eriksson was being forced into a role that he wasn’t going to succeed in. The next season, more of the same, as 16:16 turned to 14:04. At that point, it was reasonably clear that Eriksson wasn’t going to be moved up to the top of the lineup sheet. The saga continued the next two years, as 14:04 moved to 12:22 and then to 9:35 in the current season. All this to say, playing Eriksson limited minutes with subpar linemates isn’t going to help his overall numbers. It would be unfair to complain about Eriksson without acknowledging that the guy is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to playing time and linemates.

Another factor that isn’t helping Eriksson’s case is his finishing. As I previously mentioned, his expected offensive numbers are good. He drives to the hard areas and manages to get a fair bit of high-danger shots away. The problem is he can’t finish them off. Since his debut in the blue and green, Eriksson has yet to have an above-average finishing impact on unblocked shots, a stat courtesy of HockeyViz once again. He was putting up great goal numbers backed by better shooting numbers in the years he didn't play in Vancouver. The year he scored 36, he shot 20.2%. A percentage like that is unsustainable, but it doesn't mean that a drop off to 8.3% is imminent. Low and behold, in Eriksson's first year in Vancouver, his shooting percentage dropped to 8.3%. It has hovered around that mark ever since that point.

Another interesting thing to note is the amount of times he shoots the puck in a given year has declined as well. With Boston and Dallas, he was shooting the puck almost 2.2 times per game. With Vancouver, though, he's shooting the puck 1.6 times per game in a smaller sample, mind you. This could be a side-effect of being put in a depth role, as I mentioned earlier, which takes a toll on a player's numbers.

The Canucks are practically eliminated from the playoffs at this point in time, and a lot of their bottom-six forward group are facing injuries. However, the Canucks organization still refuses to slot Eriksson into the lineup, electing to play seemingly anyone else. Even if they put up similar offensive numbers with a worse defensive game, Canucks management and the coaching staff appear to prefer those guys over Eriksson. The Canucks have a point percentage of .448% in total this season. With Loui Eriksson in the lineup, the percentage shoots up to .643 (4-2-1), which would be good for 11th in the league. It would also be good for second in the Scotiabank North division. Add in the fact that the guy is only 23 games away from hitting the 1,000 plateau; it's confusing that they wouldn't play him in at least a couple more games.

The Canucks aren't going to be competing for anything, and it's clear that Eriksson can provide some semblance of defensive value to the team, so why not play him? Sadly, we might not ever know.