After 10 games, the Vancouver Canucks have shown a little bit of everything. There have been good news stories and troubling trends. The team has been tested by injuries and travel. They’ve touched every time zone in the National Hockey League, have been as far south as Dallas, as far east as Washington and have played only four of their first 10 games on home ice. While there is still plenty of season remaining, a 10-game sample begins to paint a clearer picture of who, exactly, this season’s Canucks are and how Adam Foote wants his team to play in his first year as head coach. The basic statistics show the Canucks have held their own with five wins and five losses. But there is much more to the story.

With that in mind, we have taken a look under the hood to see what NHL Edge player tracking data tells us about this hockey club.

Are the Canucks a fast team?

By the numbers, no. At least not at the top end of the scale. Newcomer Lukas Reichel has recorded the fastest speed burst by any Canucks skater this season. It came in the second period of his debut against Montreal on Saturday when he was clocked at 23.04 miles per hour. Now, as a top speed, the Canucks rank 17th in the league and they’re 18th in overall speed bursts above 22 miles per hour. So when it comes to guys that rocket around the ice, the Canucks are decidedly middle of the pack. The picture is a little more promising when top speeds are eliminated. In the 20-22 mile per hour category, the Canucks rank 11th and in the 18-20 mph bucket, the team is 12th in the league. So they may not have that extra gear that some teams have at the top of the line-up, but overall the numbers show that the Canucks are playing relatively quickly.

Who are the speediest Canucks?

As noted, Reichel leads the way at 23.04 mph. He’s followed by Drew O’Connor who registered a 22.64 mph burst in Washington, Max Sasson (22.60 at Chicago) and Quinn Hughes (22.51 vs Montreal). Conor Garland, Kiefer Sherwood, Jake DeBrusk and Filip Chytil have also clocked in top 10 speeds in the early going this season. Elias Pettersson has not registered a top speed in the team’s top 10, however he is showing signs of life. His fastest speed of the season (21.79 mph) came on Sunday night at the end of seven games in 11 nights. And four of his top five recorded speeds on the season have come in the past week.

Master blasters

Quinn Hughes has three of the four Canucks hardest shots recorded so far this season. The captain’s 95.04 mph laser in Dallas is the high-water mark followed by a 93.19 shot in Pittsburgh. Forward Elias Pettersson has the third hardest shot on record this season with a 91.81 blast in Nashville. Of note, his one-timer that found the back of the net against Edmonton on Sunday was clocked at 88.07 mph and was merely his third hardest shot of the season. As a team, the Canucks average shot speed of 58.77 mph ranks them 18th out of 32 teams in the NHL. Safe to say, they need to put a little more zip on the puck with regularity.

In the Zone

NHL Edge tells us the Canucks sit 14th in the league in offensive zone time. In all situations, they’ve spent a league average 41.1% of their 10 games on the attack. The flip side of that is that, as a team, they’ve spent 42.3% of their games in the defensive zone. That puts that 22nd in the league in that category. At even strength, that number D-zone percentage remains identical, but relative to other teams, the ranking plummets to 27th in the NHL.

Danger, Danger

The Canucks are slightly above average in terms of the shots they’re generating from high danger areas on the ice. NHL Edge has the Canucks 12th in that category, however they are second in the league in goals scored in those high danger locations. Jake DeBrusk leads the team in shots on goal (31) and high danger shots (15). He’s in the 95th percentile in the league for shots and 98th for high dangers. 

Aye, aye captain

While he’s not been at his most dynamic in the early stages, Quinn Hughes still ranks highly among his peers in almost every NHL Edge category. Hughes’ maximum skating speed is in the 94th percentile, his speed bursts over 20 mph place him in the 98th percentile, he’s in the 99th percentile of distance skated so far this season (35.62 miles), his top shot speed puts him in the 94th percentile and when it comes to offensive zone time, Hughes is in the 97th percentile relative to the rest of the league.

What does it all mean?

The Edge data provides a good snap shot of where the Canucks sit in several statistical categories. However, rather than drawing significant conclusions about the team just 10 games into the season, what the Edge data does is allow us to establish a baseline for this team moving forward. The real value in these statistics will be revealed as the season unfolds and we’re able to compare and contrast the team to these 10-game markers to see where they have improved or taken a step back.