When Quinn Hughes is on the ice, the Vancouver Canucks are downright dominant.

In all situations, the Canucks outscored their opponents 13-4 with Hughes on the ice. Considering the New York Islanders and San Jose Sharks have scored 13 total goals this season – and the Edmonton Oilers and Nashville Predators have scored 14 – that’s pretty good.

Of course, it helps that Hughes leads the Canucks in power play ice time, which is clicking at 26.3% to start the season. But even at 5-on-5, Hughes crushes the competition.

In six games, shot attempts are 163 to 92 for the Canucks when Hughes is on the ice at 5 vs. 5. Shots on goal are 81 to 42; goals are 7 to 2. Hughes leads the Canucks in Corsi percentage (63.9%), shots on goal percentage (65.9%) and expected goals percentage (65.8%), all with a wide margin.

While it’s obviously still early in the season and we’re working with small sample sizes, this is all an improvement over last season for Hughes, which was the best season of his career in each of these categories.

All of this is to say that last season’s Norris winner as the best defenseman in the NHL is arguably even better to start this season.

The problems for the Canucks begin when Hughes leaves the ice.

The Canucks are two different teams with and without Hughes

When Hughes is on the ice at 5-on-5, the Canucks have outshot their opponents 81-42, which is a nearly 2-to-1 margin. That’s a plus-39 shot differential with Hughes on the ice – a huge advantage for the Canucks.

However, when Hughes is not on the ice, the Canucks give that advantage back immediately. Without Hughes, the Canucks were outshot 96-58 – a minus-38 shot differential.

As a result, despite Hughes’ outright dominance, the Canucks have just one more shot than their opponents at 5-on-5.

The difference with and without Hughes is stark in all categories: shot attempts (corsi), shots on goal, expected goals and goals.

The problem for the Canucks is that there’s little point for Hughes to dominate if every advantage he creates is immediately negated when he leaves the ice. The Canucks are essentially breaking even as a 5-on-5 team – a team with Quinn Hughes shouldn’t break even at 5-on-5.

Canucks can’t survive with just one defensive pair

The Canucks’ main problem is their second pairing.

The four defensemen who played on the team’s third pairing had their ups and downs as they fine-tuned their game, but there’s a lot that can go wrong in their limited minutes. If one of the defenders on their third pair is in trouble, it’s relatively easy to shelter them, bench them, or scrape them.

Tyler Myers and Carson Soucy, however, average about 20 minutes per game and should face tough competition every night. If they struggle, there is nowhere to hide.

And boy, did they have a hard time.

Every Canucks defenseman not named Hughes or Hronek has an expected goals percentage below 50%, meaning their opponents have outscored them at 5-on-5, but Myers and Soucy have the worst stats of the lot.

The biggest problem was Soucy. Beyond the numbers, Soucy visibly struggled to get the puck out of the defensive zone and was caught taking a nap in his defensive coverage. It’s a marked difference from the calming presence he was last season.

With Soucy on the ice at 5-on-5, the Canucks have a minus-34 shot differential – the worst in the entire NHL.

To be fair to Soucy and Myers, they have a tough job. They start the majority of their shifts in the defensive zone and regularly face tough opponents, but not as many as Hughes and Filip Hronek.

But the fact that they are experiencing difficult minutes does not cancel out the fact that they are getting crushed during those minutes.

At the very least, the Canucks need a second defensive duo capable of holding serve. They don’t need to earn their minutes, but they can’t waste them either.

Canucks’ options for better pairings behind Quinn Hughes

The question for the Canucks is: what can they do about it?

To some extent, the Canucks made their own bed when they spent their limited cap space to re-sign Tyler Myers and add Vincent Desharnais in free agency instead of looking to add a legitimate top-four defenseman. The Canucks made a smart move acquisition of Erik Brännström to improve their depth, but he’s also not a top-four defender.

Their first option is to wait and see if Soucy and Myers get back on track. They were reasonably good at playing low-scoring minutes against elite competition last season – maybe they’ll realize that again this season.

A second option is to reverse the pairs and see if Filip Hronek can make a second pair on his own. This is far from an ideal option, as it could blunt Hughes’ dominance, which is aided by having a powerful puck-thrower like Hronek on the ice with him. But if it can help the team as a whole, it might be worth it.

Moving Soucy to the third pairing and moving Brännström to the second pairing with Myers is the third option, but it’s probably not a departure. As much as Rick Tocchet praised Brännström after his game against the Chicago Blackhawks, there were some nervous moments in the defensive zone with Brännström.

The fourth option, of course, is to acquire another defender.

The Canucks added Nikita Zadorov last season in a trade with the Calgary Flames. While he was far from a low-intensity, shutdown defenseman, he provided an element on the back end that the Canucks lacked: a defenseman who could play a physical game, but also move the puck effectively .

In the playoffs, Zadorov finished third among Canucks defensemen in ice time behind Hughes and Hronek.

Can Patrik Allvin once again find a defenseman on the trade market to keep the Canucks from being a one-duo team? If so, when will Allvin pull the trigger on a deal? He didn’t wait long last year, acquiring Zadorov in late November, just over a month into the season.

So, Canucks: what is it going to be?