Edmonton OilersFour games into the season, Vancouver has scored 19 goals, more than any team in the NHL. The Canucks won 6-5 in Edmonton on opening night, lost a 9-7 rematch at home, beat Calgary 4-1 and lost 3-2 to Vegas. Paul Cotter, signed on 1 July for one year at $2.15 million, has four goals and two assists, was named the NHL's third star of the week, and has moved onto a top line with Brock Boeser while Jake DeBrusk is out.
For a team that finished 32nd last season, this is a lot of fun. It is also almost exactly what the underlying numbers said would happen, and the same numbers say it does not mean what it looks like.
How lucky has Vancouver been?
More than any team in the league. The 19 Vancouver goals came from 10.0 expected goals, a gap of nine, the biggest in the NHL. At five-on-five the Canucks have scored 12 times on 6.4 expected.
The finishing is spread across the lineup, which makes it look like depth. Look closer and it is mostly shooting.
| Canucks scorer, 2026-27 | Goals | Expected goals | Shots on goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cotter | 4 | 1.03 | 7 |
| Marco Rossi | 3 | 1.12 | 7 |
| Elias Pettersson | 2 | 0.59 | 7 |
| Jonathan Lekkerimki | 2 | 0.20 | 4 |
| Liam Ohgren | 1 | 0.89 | 7 |
| Drew O'Connor | 1 | 0.94 | 8 |
Cotter has scored on four of his seven shots, 57.1 per cent. His career high is 16 goals, set with New Jersey in 2024-25, and last season he scored nine on 61 shots. He is a useful, hard-working depth forward having the week of his life.
Has anything underneath actually improved?
Not yet. At five-on-five Vancouver has taken 42.8 per cent of the expected goals, 29th in the league. Last season the figure was 44 per cent and 31st. The Canucks are still being outchanced, by a margin close to last season's.
The other half of last season's problem has not been fixed either. Vancouver has allowed 18 goals on 13.2 expected, 4.8 more than an average goaltending performance would have conceded, 29th in the league. Kevin Lankinen has given up 16 goals on 10.4 expected in three games. Leevi Merilinen has allowed two on 2.8.
So the scoring has bounced back hard and the goaltending has not. That is why a team with the league's best attack is 2-2.
Was some of this predictable?
Some of it. In September we looked at how Vancouver's last-place finish was exaggerated by bad luck. The Canucks scored 20.7 goals fewer than expected at five-on-five last season, and their goaltending cost another 18.2. The argument was that a correction toward average would make them look better without making them better, and push them toward 70 points rather than 58.
What nobody expected was the correction arriving all at once and overshooting. Shooting luck this extreme does not last a month, never mind a season.
The case for the Canucks, stated fairly
The optimist reads it like this. Vancouver has a new coach, a new front office and a younger lineup, with Rossi, Ohgren, Tom Willander and Lekkerimki all playing real minutes. Young teams often improve through a season, four games is too few to judge anyone's chances, and two of those four were against Edmonton, among the best attacking teams in hockey. Cotter may also be a better shooter than his career numbers show, since he converted 17.8 per cent of his shots in 2024-25.
The other side has the bigger sample behind it. Last season's 44 per cent share was built over 82 games, this season's 42.8 per cent at five-on-five says nothing has changed, and nine goals above expected in four games is the kind of number that disappears by November. The goaltending is already costing goals again.
Vancouver is a 70-point team having a 90-point week. The front office should keep building for the draft, not for a playoff push.
What to watch
Two numbers will tell you when the run is ending. The team's five-on-five expected goals share, which needs to climb toward 48 per cent before any of this is real, and Cotter's shots per game, which at under two a night cannot keep producing a goal a game. Both are on the team stats page and the league stats board. We also wrote in August about the Rossi trade nobody graded, and three goals in four games is a decent start to that case.