And other teams' shaky in-zone defence and puck management oopsies is the thing that Vancouver has feasted the most on all year. That's the reason they were able to maintain such a superlative, tremendously enviable, sky high PDO.
Canucks aren't a monster transition team with a ton of great neutral zone puck carriers and trap breakers. They don't have much standout speed there at all. They have to really "climb the ladder" through the neutral zone with a lot of east-west passing to be effective that way. Which tightly structure defensive teams like Nashville played in the playoffs, Los Angeles plays, etc. absolutely stifle by clogging the middle of the ice and denying any east-west play.
They rely on other teams making mistakes coming the other way aggressively and particularly breaking out of their own zone ambitiously, to generate a lot of their prime scoring opportunities off turnovers and defensive posture. That's a huge part of their primary mode of generating offense at even strength. Counterattacking against sloppy neutral zone puck management, and forechecking to generate quick turnaround offensive plays off turnovers. The other part is just cycling the puck around and grinding down low until they eventually mash it into the net.
Both of which are postured much better as a matchup vs Edmonton who are not particularly strong or overly disciplined in. But didn't really serve them super well offensively vs a very disciplined and responsible Preds team playing with a ton of structure and repeatedly taking the "safe out". Playing the same "chip it in, chip it out" game the Canucks do.
Where again...the backchecking is far less of a factor against a Canucks team that don't really attack that way in the first place. But caused tons of problems for the Kings who rely a lot on collapsing into their shell and then trying to skate it up and attack as a unit that way. It's just a totally different sort of matchup between very different systems and how they all interact.
