Vancouver Canucks Roll Call: The Tyler Myers Effect

Canucks Roll Call is assessing every player who held a significant place in the fortunes of the 2021-22 Vancouver Canucks season. We’ll be looking at the highs and lows they experienced during the recent campaign, as well as what the future holds for them in Vancouver. Today we feature veteran right-shot defenceman Tyler Myers.

Position: Right Defenceman

2021-’22 totals (GP-G-A-P): 82-1-17-18, 66 PIM

Contract Status: Two seasons remaining with a salary cap hit of $6-million per and a modified no-trade clause that allows him to submit a list of 10 no-no teams.

Season Synopsis

For some Vancouver Canucks fans Tyler Myers is a guy they love to not-like. (Hate is such a strong word). It’s the awkwardness at times and some of the clearing attempts that stand out, to put it in its simplest form. More specifically, 45 defensive zone turnovers. Oh yeah, and that price tag.

But to keep it simple from the other side of things, for a management group with limited depth on the right side of the D-corps, here’s a guy who munched minutes, worked his arse off on the penalty kill and showed up for all 82 occasions. The team’s largest player, at 6-foot-8 and 230 pounds, proved to be its healthiest and most durable.

HIghlights

Myers improved noticeably under head coach Bruce Boudreau. We’ll get to the analytics in a minute, but purely from the eye-test, some of the horribly gratuitous turnovers that came while not under duress seemed to vanish during the middle part of the season. Under duress is a different story and at times understandable, given how poor the penalty kill was much of the season and the fact that he’s drawing the most difficult assignments.

Myers doesn’t score like he used to. Some are surprised to learn that as a young player in the NHL, the big guy had an 11 goal season, a 10, and three 9’s. Last year he fell short of his expected goal and point totals. His lone goal came at an exciting time, a 5-2 Vancouver Canucks victory at Madison Square Garden against the New York Rangers on February 27th. It was his first goal since the next-to-last game of the previous season.

Myers blocked 148 shots, almost double the next closest player on the team.

Big’un delivered the third most hits (145) on the team behind Luke Schenn and JT Miller. He dropped the mitts twice, once in the season opener at Edmonton (Colton Sceviour) and again on January 18th at Nashville (Michael McCarron).

Lowlights

Scoring is not really his job, but he did fall well short. The possession numbers, shots for/against and offensive positivity, Corsi and the like, not good.

Sometimes it’s an adventure head-manning the puck.

What the future holds

Again, depth becomes the focus. This is a very effective player if slotted correctly for a smaller paycheck. On a Cup contender he’s a bruising third pair defender and second-unit PK guy. It’s not a perfect world, so the big man will continue to show up, work hard, and give it everything he has.

He has a tough contract to move and the team’s not planning any buy-outs. Given the regime is still in transition, this is a player they’ll likely lean on for at least another season before making a decision based on the 2023 roster.

Regardless of the team around him, Myers is a workhorse, a no one can fault anyone for that.