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Canucks: Liam Ohgren needs to find the net if he wants to avoid scratches

The coach wants to see his forwards crash the net far more than they have. We're looking at you, Liam Ohgren; you've not shot the puck enough

Published Oct 22, 2026  •  Last updated 1 day ago  •  2 minute read

Liam Ohgren has two goals so far this season, but needs to shoot more. Through 11 games, he has just 13 shots. Photo by Carmen Mandato /Getty Images

Even to be considered as a healthy scratch tells you how Liam Ohgren’s season is going.

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Vancouver Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra is wont to discuss lineup decisions before games because he knows things can happen between the morning skate and that night’s faceoff, but observers can still take a guess at his thinking just on how a morning skate goes.

And so we saw the 22-year-old Ohgren, who has two goals in 11 games this year, skating extra laps of the ice at the end of an optional morning skate Thursday, hours before his Canucks were to host the Detroit Red Wings at Rogers Arena.

This is not how things were supposed to be for Ohgren. This was the big year, the season where he got his opportunity and seized it.

It’s not like he hasn’t had ice time — he has been a consistent fixture on the Canucks’ second line. He has two goals, but he needs to shoot more. Through 11 games, he has just 13 shots.

That’s just not enough for a player who needs to score to stay in the NHL. We have all seen his shot, probably the heaviest on the team.

And this isn’t an old-school case of scouts being deceived by what a player looks like vs. what they actually do. Ohgren is a big, strong, fast-skating winger, no doubt — and he has scored at every other level. He had 19 goals and 18 assists in 41 games with the AHL’s Iowa Wild in 2024-25. He had 12 goals in 26 with Farjestads of the Swedish Hockey League as a fresh-faced 19 year old.

It’s only since he has arrived in the NHL that he’s struggled to find consistency. In Vancouver, he was finally given a role where he believed he could thrive, since in Minnesota minutes were hard to come by for him.

A simple diagnosis suggests he just needs to shoot more. Teammate Linus Karlsson, for instance, has fired nearly twice as many shots as Ohgren. He only has three goals, but if you have been thinking you’ve noticed Karlsson more than Ohgren, it is the shot rate that’s probably why.

He’s just been able to get on the puck more than Ohgren, despite not being as glorious a skater. And if you’re in the NHL to score, you have to find a way to shoot.

The solution to Ohgren’s woes may be the simplest one in the book — get to the net.

Malhotra admitted before Thursday’s game that his team isn’t finding a way to drive the net enough.

“Every heat map you look at, every team you talk about, the majority of goals are scored in front of the net,” he said. “So our ability and willingness to get there is going to be a big part of scoring more goals. The ability to just get pucks to the inside will help us drastically.”

He was speaking in general terms in his comments, but surely it was about the likes of Ohgren specifically. He is a big strong kid whose history suggests he has a nose for the net.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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