The Vancouver Canucks return to action this evening in Las Vegas.
We’re in for a high-leverage stretch run for Vancouver, one which opens on the other side of a thrilling 4 Nations Face-Off on Saturday night, with the Canucks heavily favoured to secure a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
When we last saw Vancouver play two weeks ago against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the hockey club looked rejuvenated in the wake of the J.T. Miller trade. The Canucks were getting saves, controlling play at five-on-five and winning games, with their newest contributors making a wholly positive first impression.
Will the Canucks be able to maintain that form on the other side of the break, even in the absence of Thatcher Demko and, potentially, Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson as well?
It’s a big question and one that will have significant ramifications for what the Canucks decide to do at the NHL trade deadline.
Vancouver’s overall positioning is nothing short of fascinating as the NHL regular season resumes. A playoff-caliber team that has recently altered its direction, becoming a team in transition due to internal strife and squabbles that proved irreconcilable and led to Miller’s departure.
They’re a team with exceptional goaltending, but a star-level netminder who has dealt with a myriad of concerning durability concerns across the past 12 months. A high-end defensive team, but one with a popgun offensive game that generates very little.
And, of course, their captain, Hughes, is flat-out performing like one of the best individual skaters in the sport this season. Whether he can sustain that form given the mounting injuries he’s working through is a major factor. More than anything else, it’s Hughes’ capacity that’s likely to determine how Vancouver performs over the balance of the campaign.
There are only seven games remaining until the NHL trade deadline, and the Canucks are on the clock and facing some difficult decisions before noon Pacific Time on March 7.
The headliner here, of course, is Brock Boeser. Boeser will turn 28 years old next week and is a reliable 30-goal per 82-game goal scorer capable of holding down a top-line role and contributing in a number of different ways on the power play.
He’s played his entire career in Vancouver and is open to staying, but there’s a material disagreement, it seems, between his camp and the Canucks on what his next contract should look like.
Goal scorers are always in demand in unrestricted free agency, and Boeser’s profile — still in his 20s, history of clutch playoff performances, a big frame, reliable goal scorer — is likely to place him near the top of the market among NHL forwards on July 1. He should be able to demand a max-term deal with a significant cap hit, but the Canucks, it seems, haven’t been willing to go there in conversation with his representative Ben Hankinson of Octagon Sports.
So Boeser waits, even as the team has inked recently acquired players, and fellow pending unrestricted free agents, such as Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor, and goaltender Kevin Lankinen this month.
The Canucks have a number in mind — both in terms of years and cap hit — to keep Boeser, it just isn’t the number that Boeser may be able to demand in the open market. Either that gap gets bridged in the days ahead, or Vancouver will have to make a gut-wrenching decision: further weaken a playoff-caliber roster, or incur the significant opportunity cost of keeping Boeser beyond the deadline with the risk that the long-tenured Canucks walks without returning any compensation on July 1.
The club is seriously weighing the latter possibility. And in determining a path forward, the club’s performance across this upcoming five-game road trip and in their seven remaining games before the deadline looms large.
If Vancouver falls out of it or fails to maintain the promising form they flashed before the break, the decision for Canucks management on Boeser, and on their other pending free agents such as Pius Suter and Derek Forbort, will be more straightforward.
If the club handles their business and impresses over the next two weeks, however, the Canucks could yet be inclined to chart a very different, and less patient path through the NHL’s traditional silly season.
The Kevin Lankinen deal
Over the course of a marathon day of negotiations on Thursday, the Canucks agreed to a five-year, $4.5 million extension with Lankinen, who they’re about to lean on heavily during Demko’s latest absence.
Although negotiations picked up late this past week, after Demko was ruled out for the Canucks’ upcoming five-game road trip, Canucks sources insist that Demko’s health status was not directly related to contract talks with Lankinen.
This is a player Canucks management believes in, and who is trusted by the coaching staff. A player the team wanted to prioritize extending prior to the conclusion of the 4 Nations break.
Now given that Jim Rutherford-led teams have never spent significantly on backup goaltending during the cap era, it’s probably worth noting that Demko’s struggles to be available this season probably contributed to the Canucks’ decision to prioritize depth in goal. Who could it not? A team source, however, insists that their calculation on Lankinen is less about Demko’s future with the organization and more about the salary cap environment, rewarding Lankinen’s performance and a decision to prioritize goaltending depth on an organizational level.
The Canucks are still well aware of Demko’s capabilities as a difference-maker, and believe strongly in his upside and ability to bounce back from the injuries that have limited him this season.
Once the team decided to extend Lankinen, the price itself — which understandably caused some sticker shock around Vancouver and within the industry — was relatively paint-by-numbers. Logan Thompson, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Joey Daccord have largely set the quality 1B goaltending market over the past several months, and Lankinen’s deal is in line with those comparables.
The term is what’s diciest, frankly, about the Canucks’ bet on Lankinen. We know that goaltending performance is extraordinarily volatile year-over-year, and committing five years to a netminder who is about to turn 30 and who has never appeared in 40 games or more in a season is a significant leap of faith.
From the Canucks’ perspective, however, they believe that the new cap environment can support a pricier approach in the blue paint. And they strongly feel that Lankinen is the right goaltender and person to bring some depth and stability to the crease at the moment.
Revisiting the Where in the World is Quinn Hughes story
There’s been a Carmen Sandiego-like feel to Quinn Hughes’ past week, and a lot of questions about why, exactly, he didn’t go to the 4 Nations Face-Off after head coach Mike Sullivan announced that he “was coming” this week.
From what I can gather, there was a direct conversation between Hughes and Rutherford on the matter this week. Hughes practised in a non-contact sweater on Tuesday, and was a full participant at practice on Wednesday, but never cleared the organization’s standard return-to-play procedure to get clearance.
Hughes wouldn’t have been eligible to play in Thursday’s thrilling final due to the NHL’s tournament rules regardless, but he also wouldn’t have cleared medically.
In fact, it now seems that he won’t be cleared in time to play on Saturday either. On Friday in Vegas, Hughes slayed prior to Canucks practice, but didn’t join his teammates for the full session. Rick Tocchet implied after the team’s skate in Las Vegas, meanwhile, that Hughes’ status on Saturday versus the Vegas Golden Knights was in doubt according to Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre.
This adds a fair bit of context to the discussion of whether the Canucks stood in Hughes’ way, in terms of joining Team USA for the final on Thursday. And the wider discussion surrounding the topic is one that a team source pushed back firmly on when asked about it on Friday morning, citing the fact that he hadn’t been medically cleared and that dialogue between team executives and the Canucks captain has been ongoing throughout this process.
The Canucks think the world of Hughes. Highly enough, frankly, that the trio of former Penguins coaches and executives that make up the Canucks’ key hockey operations leadership triumvirate of Tocchet, Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin, have legitimately dropped Sidney Crosby comparisons internally to discuss the quality of Hughes’ play, commitment and leadership.
With all of that in mind, and what we know of Hughes’ health status now, the entire “Where in the World is Quinn Hughes” saga takes on a totally different texture.
Carson Soucy’s rebound
After a rock-steady first season with the Canucks, defenseman Carson Soucy has been wildly inconsistent this season and has found himself on the trade block.
Earlier this month, following the acquisition of Marcus Pettersson, the club informed rival NHL member clubs that Soucy could be available in a trade — despite his full no-trade clause.
Since then, however, the team has been impressed with how Soucy’s form has rebounded. The Canucks still believe in the player and value his versatility, size and defensive game.
I wouldn’t go so far as to describe Soucy as being off of the trade block at the moment, but the heat and urgency to move him and reallocate the $3.25 million in cap space that his contest represents appears to have cooled somewhat.
The latest on the murky Elias Pettersson situation
The Canucks seem to be as miffed as everybody else when it comes to Elias Pettersson’s continued struggles. Players of his caliber, historically speaking, just don’t tend to have stretches this unproductive and maddening that last for this length of time.
Obviously there’s some injury context to be mindful of here. We know about the knee tendinitis that he dealt with last season, which may have impacted his offseason preparations, but the star centre is now day-to-day as a result of an additional injury sustained at the 4 Nations tournament. We’ll have to wait and see if he’s back in the lineup on Saturday.
More than the injury context, the Canucks, according to a team source, believe that poor preparation this past offseason is primarily what put Pettersson behind the eight ball. And the club, while being fully aware of the risks at this stage, is willing to be patient with the high-scoring centre as he attempts to get caught up.
Pettersson remains off the trade block ahead of the NHL trade deadline, but — and this is just the sense I get — that’s not entirely ironclad. If a rival team called with an enticing idea, I’m confident the Canucks would listen.
(Top photo of Kevin Lankinen: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
