Not sure why you responded with most of this to me. I'm "not on the ledge". I'm just clear-eyed about this issue. You're mostly addressing things I wasn't arguing. Yeah, I know the goaltending is worse, especially with CDS. Yes, I know they're not finishing as much - they couldn't possibly keep converting at the rate they were earlier in the season and I literally said as much in the post you are replying to. I also never mentioned special teams, but again, yes, I know the PP has declined. It's an area I've been harping on for quite some time. I'm not sure what you're arguing against here.
The issue is, if they can't keep converting at an elevated rate (they never were going to sustain their first-half shooting percentage)....then they need to create more chances and diversify how they create chances.
I do have an issue with NST's HDC metric. I don't think it's actually that representative. They classify anything near the crease/low slot as a "high-danger" chance, even if it's jabbing a rebound into a pad. To me, that is not a high-danger chance (because it isn't one). The Canes were notorious for "juicing" these numbers because they take a ton of shots and jab at rebounds, but that style never really panned out for them.
NST also doesn't capture pre-shot movement. A private xG model, like SportLogic, tries to do that, as they have a lot more puck and player location data. Now, we don't have access to it, but JFresh compared xG models and found EH's most similar to SL:
View attachment 845565
Since the All-Star break, the Canucks are 21st in xGF/60 at 5v5. This is decidedly mediocre. They are not creating enough offense. Worse than that, how they generate offense is not varied. They rely a ton on forechecking, cycling to the point, and getting tips/deflections. The JFresh chart below summarizes this with some manually tracked data from Corey Sznajder:
View attachment 845567
Basically non-existent rush chance creation, or east-west passing plays. Their differentials are still solid because they've been good defensively. But when you are fundamentally a low-event team, as the Canucks are, you are very subject to the whims of variance (shooting percentage and save percentage, as you mentioned).
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.