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At one point the Canucks were the home of some of the NHL's biggest stars. Daniel and Henrik Sedin won back-to-back Art Ross trophies, Roberto Luongo was consistently one of the best goaltenders in the league and Ryan Kesler won the Selke as the league's best defensive forward.

These days, however, the Canucks are a bit lacking in star power. That鈥檚 not unexpected: they鈥檙e in a rebuild, after all. But they do still have the Sedins and rising star Bo Horvat led the team in scoring and represented them at the All-Star Game.

But what if I told you that the Canucks were the only team in the NHL to play a game last season without a single star player? You might get upset.

Dom Luszczyszyn wrote an article for the Hockey News about , using his Game Score statistic to rank the NHL鈥檚 top players into tiers.

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Examining NHL Star Power: Which teams have it, which teams don't, and how much does it matter.

鈥� dom 鈽�锔� (@domluszczyszyn)

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The Canucks ended up without a single player as even a 鈥淭ier 5鈥� star. Meanwhile, some odd players ended up ranked as stars. Would you rank Blake Wheeler in the same tier as Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid? Maybe you should.

Is Anthony Mantha a star player with his 36 points last season? Tomas Tatar? Michael Frolik? It鈥檚 pretty understandable to be upset to see those players ranked as Tier 5 stars ahead of Horvat and the Sedins.

But the important thing to understand is that this isn鈥檛 a subjective ranking. Luszczyszyn didn鈥檛 arbitrarily decide that Mantha is a star and Horvat isn鈥檛. He used an objective measure 鈥� his Game Score statistic 鈥� and put them into tiers based on percentiles.

If a player had an average Game Score better than 98.5% of the rest of the NHL, they were in Tier 1. Better than 96.5%? Tier 2. And etcetera.

That may be a different definition of a 鈥渟tar player鈥� than you might use, but it鈥檚 an intriguing measure nonetheless.

The reason the Canucks were said to not have any star players is that they didn鈥檛 have any players with an average Game Score better than 87.5% of the rest of the NHL, the limit for Tier 5.

When a statistical model comes up with a result you don't like, there two ways you can respond: you can dismiss it as wrong or you can look into it and figure out how and why it came up with that result. You can, of course, then dismiss it, but at least you'll have a better idea why you are doing so.

Odd results can actually be enlightening and further your understanding of the game. It may help you appreciate the contributions of an underrated player or question why another player is so highly regarded. So, what is Game Score?

Game Score is an attempt to . It does this by combining some pretty uncontroversial statistics: goals, assists, shots, blocked shots, penalty differential, faceoffs, corsi, and goal differential, each weighted by its frequency to goals. You can get .

The important thing is none of this is arbitrary. He didn鈥檛 land on these statistics and weights by accident and he didn鈥檛 do it to make certain players look good or bad.

For his article, Luszczyszyn used the last three seasons, with the most recent season weighted highest. None of the Canucks forwards ended up with an average Game Score above 0.71 per game, the lowest mark for a 鈥淭ier 5鈥� star forward, and none of the Canucks defence had an average Game Score above 0.56, the lowest mark for a 鈥淭ier 5鈥� star defenceman.

The closest Canuck to star status is Horvat, who had a 0.57 Game Score last season, though if you include Brock Boeser and his small sample of 9 games, he鈥檚 the closest at 0.68. None of the Canucks defence come even close, with Alex Edler the highest at 0.35.

Here are the Game Score results pulled from Luszczyszyn鈥檚 data for all the Canucks skaters that played at least 5 games last season.

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Game Score has its flaws, as Luszczyszyn would readily admit. It seriously underrates defensive defencemen like Chris Tanev, who don鈥檛 put up points, for example, and it can be hard to separate a star from a good player who plays with stars. But it also draws attention to aspects of the game that people might miss, like the ability to draw penalties without taking any of your own.

Even using a subjective definition of 鈥渟tar player,鈥� you would be hard-pressed to say the Canucks had any legitimate stars. It seems clear that Horvat is on his way, but isn鈥檛 there yet. Boeser has potential, but a lot could go wrong in his rookie season. And no one else on the Canucks seems even close at this point.

But the Canucks are in a rebuild and have added players that they hope will be stars in a few years鈥� time: Olli Juolevi, Elias Pettersson, and Thatcher Demko. 听