Tyler Myers wanted to be loyal to the Vancouver Canucks.
Coming off a career year, the 34-year-old blueliner was intent on remaining in Vancouver. He was genuinely touched by the market’s reaction to the team’s success this season. Over his Canucks tenure, his family had settled happily in the city and make their offseason home in the interior of British Columbia.
Ultimately, however, Vancouver had to get its foot in the door to get this deal done. The Dylan Demelo contract — four years at nearly $20 million with the Winnipeg Jets — was a real comparable for what Myers might’ve been able to net if he’d explored the open market on Monday. This is, after all, a hardworking veteran, a popular teammate and a 6-foot-8 right-handed defender who put up 30 points for a 50-win team last season, played top-four minutes and drew the primary matchup against Connor McDavid in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The result is a three-year deal worth $3 million per season. It’s a haircut on the $6 million annual average value of Myers’ last contract and it’s a bit of a hometown discount relative to what Myers could’ve netted in free agency from another club. Still, it’s ultimately a deal that reflects Myers’ market value coming off his best Canucks season.
Myers’ new pact with the Canucks carries a no-movement clause through the first two years of the deal, with some limited no-trade protection in the final year.
Covering off three seasons in which Myers will turn 35, 36 and 37 years old, it’s a deal that comes attached to some meaningful risk, as any deal with meaningful term for a player already in their mid-30s does. It’s worth noting, however, that Myers is a physical specimen known for putting in a ton of work to prepare his body and prevent injuries. To this point, he’s aged exceptionally well into his mid-30s and is coming off the most durable three-year stretch of his career.
Now that the Canucks extended Myers and Dakota Joshua on Thursday, they’ve spent all of the savings from trading Ilya Mikheyev (plus an additional $2 million). Nikita Zadorov remains among the club’s high-profile pending free agents but the Canucks still have meaningful flexibility with roughly $15.5 million in cap space available with which to sign four additional skaters and a backup netminder.
Required reading
• Canucks offseason primer: Cap space, trade chips, UFA and draft targets and more
• Canucks re-sign Dakota Joshua to 4-year, $13 million contract: How the deal got done
(Photo: Bob Frid / USA Today)
