Schedule

June 29, 2023

Willander might not have been my BPA, but I like this pick. He was my 3rd highest rated Dman, and the two I had ahead of him were already gone. And as far as his profile/projection, he’s tracking to become exactly the type of player this team needs added to the roster. Add in the intangibles of his Canucks fandom, character and determination, motivation and drive to get better, late bloomer/late riser status, and him going to an excellent program at BU to continue to develop, and I can easily get on board with taking Willander at 11th overall.

June 28, 2023

1 hour ago, kloubek said:

I would absolutely sign him if that was the ask. No question. How the Oilers are gonna let him walk is beyond me when his improvement has been steady and he's a bigger body.

Yeah, $1.5M is definitely worth it, if that’s indeed the price.

I’m wondering if he’s seeking more? Holland was recently quoted saying they’re “quite a ways apart” in negotiations. And he seemed to suggest it was more about the salary than the term.

But 10 goals and 150+ hits while playing roughly 10 minutes a game (and just 57 games) is impressive. And his 6.7 GAR and 4.9 xGAR are really solid underlying numbers, especially given the limited TOI. Kostin brings a tantalizing combination of size, strength, speed, grit, and natural talent, and at just 24 years old, he probably still has some development runway remaining to hone and improve his game. But even if he’s just able to repeat and maintain his performance from last season (although I might expect some regression in shooting percentage), he’d be a nice piece to have in any lineup.

June 26, 2023

1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

I wonder if he's asking for too much.

Seems pretty likely, given the NHL has a minimum salary.

June 26, 2023

Just now, Outsiders said:

I could see Dumba signing a short term 1 or 2 year deal with us at like 3 million to see if he can rebound his career by playing next to Hughes. Then once the cap rises substantially in 1 or 2 years he can secure the bag again but not with us (if he pans out). Everyone saying he's gonna get another 6x6 or 4.5x5 are out to lunch.

If that type of deal is an option for Dumba, I’d certainly consider it.

I think his career analytics chart is terrifying and should ring serious “buyer beware” alarm bells, if we’re looking at a typical UFA signing for a 28 year old, RH shot defenceman who’s averaged around 22-23 minutes per game for the last six seasons and is coming off a $6M AAV. Generally, that’s a setup for a long-term deal with a high salary. And given Dumba’s career trend lines, and age curves in general, that’s the type of deal that probably goes bad very quickly and inevitably leads to a cap dump (requiring “sweetener” assets spent) or buyout.

But short-term and at a significantly reduced salary?

That’s a whole other animal and I’d actually have a fair amount of time for the idea of bringing in Dumba under those conditions.

Not sure that’s the current market for this player, however.

June 26, 2023

Dumba has a pretty scary looking WAR chart, if you put any stock into age curves or predictive analytics.

Here’s his career WAR progression (season-by-season, from 13-14 to 22-23):

-1.4, 13.3, 6.8, 13.2, 13.8, 4.3, 4.2, 2.8, -0.4, -5.5

I’m too lazy to plot and post a proper chart, but those numbers suggest an age curve with an early peak and early decline. He was a great player from around age 20-24, but he’s dropped significantly since then. He’s never returned value equal to his recent 5yr X $6.0M AAV deal. And his last two seasons have been negative value.

Unless it’s at a significant bargain AAV, a Dumba signing looks like, well… a dumb(a) signing.

June 23, 2023

On 6/13/2023 at 1:43 PM, 6of1_halfdozenofother said:

Wait, didn't they already sign him?

This post was from earlier in the spring:

Haha, you’re right. I totally forgot that happened. I must be getting old. :lol:

The rest of the post is correct, though. Due the transfer agreement rules, there’s a decent chance D-Petey spends that entire contract loaned back to the SHL, since the Canucks can’t send him to the AHL until he’s 24.

They must be really high on him to think he’s already close enough to make it worthwhile to sign him this early. Which is exciting. I hope they’re right and we see him challenging for a NHL roster spot in the next year or two, while he’s still on this ELC.

June 22, 2023

41 minutes ago, MeanSeanBean said:

Has Soucy ever played any significant stretch of top 4 minutes? Not saying he can't, but I wouldn't be expecting it at 28 if he hasn't before.

If you scroll through his game logs, he has had some significant stretches of games where he’s played 19-21 TOI, which would typically be top-4 minutes. Especially his 2021-22 season (games in November/December and also March/April) and also a long stretch of games in December of the 2019-20 season.

https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/s/soucyca01/gamelog/2022

https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/s/soucyca01/gamelog/2020

June 21, 2023

18 hours ago, NUCKER67 said:

Latvian Locomotive? Isn't that Ronalds Kenins?

And shouldn’t it be Latvians Locomotives?

June 21, 2023

1 hour ago, N7Nucks said:

It's scary how much hype people are putting in Seattle's number 5 guy. It's our constant signing of these kind of guys that is killing our team. 3x3m is the max I'd do. And even then. He's only top 4 on our team cause our blueline is cheeks.

Yeah, that sounds about right. He’s a good player, but he’s never even averaged over 18 minutes/game in a season. He was arguably overpaid on his last contract ($2.75M is pretty rich for a guy who had 66 career NHL games and averaged around 15 minutes per game). I’d be surprised to see him command very much of a raise. His average minutes actually went down last season and he’s still yet to become more than a third pairing guy at age 28.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the player. I think he’d be a welcome addition to the Canucks. Big, strong, 2-way Dman who can skate, hits, blocks shots, has solid analytics (other than his penalty differential) and moves the puck pretty well. He’d be a solid piece to add. Just as long as the contract isn’t anything crazy.

I do think he has potential to be a consistent 20 minute/game 2nd pairing defenceman. And not just on a bad team.

But you don’t rush out and pay guys top dollar for what you think they might be able to do for you. You pay them for what they’ve proven they can do. And with Soucy, that’s been a good 3rd pairing D. He should be paid accordingly. With some luck, he easily outperforms that type of contract and becomes a bargain for his team. But he definitely shouldn’t be getting handed top-4 D level money (which I’ve seen proposed in some posts), given what he’s proven (and failed to prove) so far in his career, (and at an age where, on average, players begin exiting their primes).

June 19, 2023

21 minutes ago, EastCoastNucks said:

Can we replace the 10 million OEL with a 900k OEL with a new contract? I mean, OEL was ok, especially when paired with Bear. He played like a 2 million player at least. so with the buyout cap hit and salary hit over the next 8 years, can we just re-hire him at a minimal contract when he and his agent both know what he is worth?

I think you have to wait one season before you can sign a player you’ve bought out. But it would be interesting. Maybe the Sedins can use their Swedish charms to sweet talk OEL back on a $1M deal for 2024-25? :lol:

June 19, 2023

4 minutes ago, ilduce39 said:

I agree with you 100% - but as a joke (but not joking) we should ALSO try and pry Girard out of Colorado.

Push the tipping point between “big” and simply “good” defenceman. Who needs to clear the crease when we have the puck the whole time?

You’d have to think a D of

Hughes-Makar

Girard-Fox

Grzylcek-Krug

would still flat-out dominate.

It would be so fun to watch what a team with a highly skilled Smurf defence could actually accomplish, regular season and playoffs.

Imagine if they dominated? Would completely reverse the current narrative around what it takes to build a team that can compete for the Cup.

June 19, 2023

1 hour ago, ilduce39 said:

I agree we need to hunt value deals but this cap space presents an opportunity to add a high value player with less teams in the bidding. We’d be silly not to look at Hanifin, Carlo, Pesce types. Not saying force the move, but that’s where we’ll gain ground.

Not with Grzelcyk - even if he’d be a nice add *in addition to* a bigger piece.

Even though Grzelcyk, at 5’10” (which is probably generous) and 175ish lbs looks like a very poor fit for the direction the Canucks’ D corps needs to build towards (we need to get bigger, not smaller, on the back end, especially for the playoffs), I’d still happily take him on if (as the previous poster suggested) he was available for “almost free.”

Grizzy is highly underrated. He’s far more valuable than his $3.7M contract IMO. Analytically, he’s a gem (provided 4.2 WAR the past two seasons for an estimated value around $12M per season, by Evolving Hockey’s model, and a market value of $9.3M per Dom at the Athletic).

I’d take him for the remaining year on his contract, maybe showcase him on the second pairing, and then try to flip him for assets as a rental when his deal’s expiring. I think there’s some profit to be made, if the Bruins are actually forced to cap dump him for next to nothing.

June 17, 2023

3 minutes ago, VancouverHabitant said:

What was his value in 2021-22?

That's the value that we should be comparing him to and seeing if it's worth it.

He broke his foot in IIHF championships leading into next season.

If Bear comes back in six months and struggles, are we gonna pretend that he's done and washed up or acknowledge the fact that he just had a shoulder surgery?

I won't be shocked at all to see OEL sign with Boston and go on to win a cup.

We locked in OEL's value at his absolute lowest. He had nowhere to go but up with a healthy summer.

2021-22 was also his best year in recent memory, with an estimated $5M value. But while I agree that it’s not fair to evaluate him on just last season (2022-23), it’s also not really appropriate to take his best year (2021-22) and use that as a projection for his expected value for age 32-36. There’s bound to be some decline in those years. And cherry picking one good year is sort of ignoring the overall trend.

His past five years, the values (per Evolving Hockey) were -3.1M, 2.6M, -0.8M, 5M, and -1.4M. So that’s an average on-ice player value of $460K per season.

Like you, I also expected him to rebound this season. Perhaps even return to something around his 2021-22 performance. But that’s likely the best case scenario and high point for his remaining career. His career trend lines suggest he’s in decline and will continue to decline. When everything goes well, he can return decent value on the ice (albeit still significantly below value for his salary), but when things go poorly, he can (and has) put up several negative value seasons. That’s why I picked $2.25M as an average value for projecting the next four seasons (and felt it was actually generous). He might have a couple good years where he provides around 5M on the ice, but he’s also likely to have a couple replacement/negative value years, especially considering age curves, his five year trend line, and also his injury history and the mileage on his body.

June 17, 2023

1 hour ago, BC_Hawk said:

Boeser and Mikheyev are the real head scratchers. Had he not signed both, we’d be looking at 11.65m in open cap this offseason without having to complete costly buyouts.

I agree. They definitely failed to find ways to address the cap situation, which was one of this management’s stated goals from day one. And their decision to continue to spend significant money on “luxury” acquisitions (like Mikheyev) was curious, given that this pattern of spending kept the team in perpetual “cap hell,” which is a very difficult spot to operate from, especially as pertains to leverage in any trade negotiations.

That all said, it’s still possible that they’d have determined it was the right move to buyout OEL even without any cap pressure. He’s on such an inefficient contract. By GAR-type player value, OEL has been “negative value” for three of his past five seasons. His best season in those five years, he returned an estimated (by Evolving Hockey’s metrics) $5M value on ice. His worst season in those five years was valued at -$3.6M. Over his two seasons in Vancouver, his net player value was $3.6M (on $14.5M salary). I think a charitable value projection (especially given age related decline) for OEL would be $2.25M average value on ice per season for the next 4 years, which would represent around $20M in “dead cap,” just by keeping him and paying him his salary. So it’s sort of a wash, whether he was kept here or bought out, as far as wasted money goes. But the buyout has the benefit of creating immediate savings in the short term (especially this coming season, where it’s really needed), spreading out the wasted money, and delaying some of that “dead cap” into later years, when the salary cap will be a lot higher, so the wasted money becomes a lower percentage of the total cap.

June 17, 2023

I’m surprised by the buyout, but only because I didn’t expect Frankie to actually sign off on it.

But when Benning traded to acquire OEL’s contract, it was a lose-lose-lose scenario, pretty much from day one.

At some point we were going to be forced to either (a) carry an overpaid, declining player on a really bad contract, (b) sacrifice assets as sweeteners to unload that contract, or (c) buyout the contract.

However you slice it, it’s lose-lose-lose.

There was never really a winning option with OEL on that contract.

Keeping him on the roster was just the more familiar version of pain. But it was still pain.

Trading him very likely would have hurt even worse (given the level sweeteners it probably would have required).

So while this buyout really stings, maybe it’s actually the lesser evil? Or the least of three evils?

June 15, 2023

22 hours ago, Fred65 said:

Ask Dale

Jurmos future is going to be a measure of Vcrs development scheme. Obviously has the physical accumens and skates well, so step up Mr Collinton and do your magic. He can be just what we're looking for

You got the Tallon reference, haha. I still can’t believe an NHL GM actually forgot to file qualifying offers on 8 RFAs. Or that any NHL team could run a hockey ops department where something like that can even happen and doesn’t get caught (by some staff member) before the deadline passed. Crazy stuff. Glad Tallon is just scouting/advising and not involved in the day-to-day business here.

Agreed on Jurmo. I have high hopes for what Colliton and staff can accomplish with him (assuming he’s signed to an ELC next May). Kid has all the tools to be an NHL player. Hopefully he’ll prove to be a big success for our development staff and coaches (and also a feather in the cap for the scouts).

June 13, 2023

27 minutes ago, Fred65 said:

He has to be signed prior to1stJune 2024

Should be fine. Liiga playoffs are usually done by the end of April. The transfer window for players like Jurmo is from the end of the Liiga schedule until June 15th, so they’ll have plenty of time to get a deal done. Even with draft rights expiring a couple weeks before the signing window officially ends, they’ll still have all of May to sign him to an ELC.

Benning/Weisbrod are gone and Dale Tallon is just doing scouting/advising, so there’s little chance Canucks management messes up the dates.

June 13, 2023

Like others have said, the Canucks are not anywhere close to being in the cap position where they could consider trades for either of these players.

(Which is a good thing.)

The handful of teams sitting on $30M+ in cap space can definitely afford to make deals to take on salaries for Kuznetsov and Mantha, receiving some very tasty sweeteners in the process.

Would not be surprised to see a team like Chicago get involved. They could demand a nice haul of sweeteners, adding even more draft picks to their already impressive war chest, while acquiring some short term, veteran forward talent to flesh out the lineup around Bedard.

June 13, 2023

14 hours ago, VancouverHabitant said:

D-Petey is two years away, and by that time we will be looking at a really cheap and short OEL buyout.

Summer of 2025

Hughes

Artist formerly known as OEL

Hirose

D-Petey as the 7th dman

Definitely no rush to sign him. Especially since he’s a 2022 pick, so falls under the new (2022) transfer agreement rules, where, until he turns 24, he has to be offered back to his SHL team on loan, before he can be assigned to the AHL. So basically, they need to let him cook in Sweden until he’s either NHL ready or 24 years old, whichever comes first (hopefully the former).

Obviously they’ll still need to sign him to a ELC before his draft rights run out. But they could wait until 2026 (when he’s 22). And it’s possible they’ll need to loan him back to Sweden even then.

I’m hopeful he’ll be ready to make the NHL team sooner than that (like the two year development timeline you’re suggesting, which would be age 21), but I doubt it’s going to be any earlier than 2025 (unless he has an absolutely massive 2023-24 season in the SHL).

June 13, 2023

3 hours ago, NuckLuck19 said:

They’ll sign him. Too much raw skill not to. Given contracts, future cap etc there’s no need to bring him now. let him play one more season in Europe then come over at the end of the season to Abby. Sounds like that’s the plan

Yeah, plus, like I said previously in the thread, if signed to an ELC for 2023-24, Jurmo would have to be offered back on loan to his Finnish club if he didn’t make the NHL Canucks out of training camp.

Under the transfer agreement, he can’t really be sent to Abbotsford until he’s 22.

Better to just wait a year and sign him when the Canucks can have full control over where he plays.

Also saves them a year of paying out his ELC signing bonus money.

And since it would be a 3 year ELC this year, but a 2 year ELC next year, it’s the same timeline until he’s RFA.

I have very little doubt they’ll sign him next year, when it makes more sense (for all the reasons above).

June 8, 2023

Jurmo isn’t AHL eligible until 2024-25 anyway.

If signed this year, he’d have to either make the NHL Canucks, or be offered back to his Finnish team.

Under the transfer agreement, IIHF member league players drafted outside the first round must be 22 years old (if they were drafted before the current agreement was ratified) or 24 years old (for all those drafted after the agreement was ratified) to be assigned to the AHL.

(EDIT: Just to clarify. They must be offered back to their Euro leagues. The team can waive their rights and/or refuse, which would free the NHL club to assign the player to the AHL. But if the Euro team wants him back, these age rules apply and would block AHL assignment.)

Jurmo just turned 21 this year, and he won’t be 22 until April 2024. He was drafted before the current transfer agreement, so the age 22 requirement is in effect for him, when it comes to his eligibility for AHL assignment.

If Jurmo was signed to a ELC this year, he’d have to be offered back to his Liiga team if he didn’t make the NHL Canucks right out of camp.

Next year, however, he can be signed and, since he’ll be age 22, the Canucks will be free to assign him to Abbotsford.

Here’s a copy of the MoA. I believe it’s article 4.1 that lays out the details:

https://www.ceskyhokej.cz/data/document/file/czech-republic-new-player-development-agreement-fully-executed-apr.-7-2022.pdf

June 7, 2023

Just now, PhillipBlunt said:

I read it as you're a highly practiced juggler.

Only when I unicycle

June 7, 2023

1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

You truly are a wealth of information, SID

You’re very kind but I’m mostly just a highly practiced googler. Without the Internet, I’d forget how to boil an egg.

June 7, 2023

8 minutes ago, Chickenspear said:

We should pick up Philippe Myers from T-bay.

There's a lot of great giraffe gifs out there.

Huh. I’d just read a National Geographic article that claimed giraffes can’t swim. But clearly from that gif, not only do giraffes swim, but they’re even highly accomplished divers! Typical fake news from National Geographic.

June 7, 2023

7 minutes ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Who constructed this and over what body of water was this ungulate transported?

I think that’s Lake Baringo in Kenya.

https://people.com/pets/giraffe-rescue-kenya-giraffes-floated-off-flooded-island/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/article/episode-5-giraffes-on-a-boat

9 giraffes found themselves stranded when the lake flooded and the peninsula the giraffes called home suddenly turned into an island.

Giraffes apparently can’t swim.

I think all of the giraffes were rescued and successfully relocated to a sanctuary.

Much happier story than the one out of South Africa a few years back where some giraffes were being trucked, blindfolded in a flatbed, to a new location and somebody forgot to check the height clearances for the route. At least one giraffe died after hitting its head into an overpass at highway speeds.

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