Here’s an odd thing: the Vancouver Canucks have gone two full seasons without a right-shot centre in their lineup, with one very brief exception.
Last season, all of the Canucks’ centres were sinister in the classic sense: they all shot left-handed. Elias Pettersson, Filip Chytil, Marco Rossi, Teddy Blueger, Max Sasson, Aatu Räty, and David Kämpf all shoot left. Centres who only played a few games like Lukas Reichel, Ty Mueller, and Nils Åman, shoot left. Even Drew O’Connor, who filled in at centre once in a while, shoots left.
The season before that, you can add J.T. Miller and Pius Suter to the left-shooting centre pile.
To find the last time the Canucks had a right-shot centre in the lineup, you have to go back to the 2023-24 season, when the Canucks had Sam Lafferty to start the year, then added Elias Lindholm later in the season to give the team a comparative plethora of right-shot centres.
That’s a bit unusual, as teams typically like to have a mix of left and right-shot centres in the lineup. There are debatable benefits to having that type of mix, but one benefit that is undeniable is on faceoffs, especially in the defensive zone and particularly on the penalty kill. That’s where strong-side and weak-side faceoffs can be crucial.
A right-shot centre has his strong side on the right side of the ice and vice versa for a left-shot centre. This is partly because a right-shot centre trying to win a defensive zone faceoff on his backhand on the right side is going to naturally pull the puck toward the boards, away from his own net.
It’s even been pointed out that the side of the faceoff dot from which a linesman drops the puck — nearest to the boards — gives a centre on his strong side more room to maneuver.
The nearest thing the Canucks have had to a right-shot centre the past two seasons is Aatu Räty, who flips over his stick to take faceoffs right-handed when he would otherwise be on his weak side. This actually proves the point that strong and weak-side faceoffs matter, because otherwise, why would he bother?
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