-AJ-

Really needs to work on his face-offs. He makes Pettersson look like Horvat.

His last contract was fair, but do recall that he did hold out until the pre-season before signing. If he's the same as last time, I would expect him to hold out as long as it takes to get the contract he wants.

Honestly, if I could be convinced that Miller could keep his passion, but also retain a bit more composure/control, I'd 100% be on the Miller for captain train. Maybe he's learned and things like the Delia situation won't happen anymore. I love passion, but it needs to be controlled. @Citizen Erased's mention of Iginla is the perfect example of a passionate player that knew his limits.

I believe he had a mask with a native-style design that wasn't actually made by a native artist. There was a bit of a fallout and he had it redone by a native artist and the people were appeased.

Ex-Canuck-turned-analyst, Garry Valk.

Too expensive, but would be cool. Buble has more interesting creative opportunities than anthem singing I imagine.

His dad looks oddly a bit like Garry Valk.

Given his two-way deal, he might not be in Vancouver, so that could be why. Personally, I expect he's already a near lock for the #7 guy on the team, though he could earn his way into the bottom pairing if he plays well enough. He fits well at the #7 though--young guys will either get ice time on the bottom pairing or play big minutes in Abbotsford.

Yeah, I expect him to play the role of a discount Tanev.

Extremely underrated player. Amazing defensively. This is a steal IMO.

A mainstay on the 2nd PP unit at least. I think saying he's not on the powerplay at all is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, something we probably agree on is that he improved this year and that's promising for his future powerplay time.

Garland has been a regular on PP2 ever since joining the team. This year, he played 1:33 per game of PP time, which ranks him 7th on the team. Last year, he played 1:36 per game, also 7th. Given the average of four forwards per PP, he's obviously a mainstay on the 2nd PP unit. Saying he does not play the PP is straight up false. Refer to the Garland thread where we took the conversation in further detail and I posted the stats.

Yep, it was Horvat until he was traded, so Boeser is the next longest, starting from 2017-18. Crazy to think that he just finished his sixth NHL season.

Prepare to be very angry when he signs because you are in the vast minority thinking he's not worth that. Most think he's worth at least $10M and I personally think the range is $11-12M.

Yeah, I liked Beauvillier when he first came, but just form watching, it seemed pretty clear to me that luck was going his way. On top of that, his offense completely vanished once he wasn't playing with top players. He's an adequate 3rd liner who can be a 2nd line guy when hot, but I would say guys like Garland and Boeser are far more likely to be good 2nd line wingers than Beauvillier is.

I use it from time to time as well, though I find NHL.com is a lot more easy to organize and filter the information. Still, Natural Stat Trick has info that NHL.com doesn't so they complement each other nicely.

Here are the stats of PP time for Vancouver this year. Based on the TOI % numbers, you can estimate that Garland's main linemates were probably guys like Pederson, Pearson, and Kravtsov (for the short time they were here) and Dries and Mikheyev for more of the season. I think Beauvillier might've taken some time on that 2nd PP unit once he arrived. Notice the stat PP GF/60, which tells how many PP goals your line scored while you were on the PP. I focused on only Beauvillier through Kravtsov and calculated the weighted average PP GF/60 of all seven of those players was about 7.20 PP GF/60. Garland does rise above the average (on our 2nd PP anyway) at 7.65, but he's not far and away better than all those players, even though I'd contend he might be the most talented. Beauvillier significantly drags the numbers down, as does Mikheyev. On the other had, Dries actually has better results than Garland, though if I recall, he may have had some spot duty on the PP1 as well. Small samples from Kravtsov and Pearson are intriguing, but the size of the sample leads me not to put too much stock into them, even though they have strong results. It's worthy of note that last year (2021-22), Garland was at a shockingly low 2.93 PP GF/60, so this year, although still not great for him, was a huge improvement as far as his PP play.

A good video from THG that takes into context cap inflation and compares a lot of big contracts over the years:

If he keeps it up, this is a fair price. If this year was a flash in the pan, this one will hurt.

Love this guy in Abbotsford. High end skill in the AHL, though I'm not sure it would translate to the NHL.

If Matthews can get back to 60 goals and perform in the playoffs, he's probably worth 13.5M. Strong defense plus his offense is worth huge money. Comparisons to McDavid contract make the rookie mistake of ignoring inflation.

Last time I looked at the data, he's the worst performing regular 2PP forward. It's bizarre, but it seems to consistently be the case.

Why do you think Garland struggles so much on the powerplay? I think he's been this way for a while. Is it worth taking him off the powerplay? A lot of people talk about how great he is in 5v5 situations but never address the issue of his terrible PP play.

Admittedly, though I'm a huge fan of Boeser's, at this point, I'm in the "I believe he can do it, but he probably won't" camp. I think he can score 70 points, but if I was a betting man, I'm betting he wouldn't expect more than 60. He's just disappointed me too many times to expect great things out of him. Really hoping he proves me wrong though and actually does it.

It's interesting though, because Petey struggled (although was injured) and Miller also wasn't as good and was supplanted by Boeser as our best forward that year. Even though it was only against 6 other teams, we seemed to struggle even more against those six teams, but oddly enough, Boeser thrived, contrary to the performance of the rest of the team. It's also interesting that when he was given the opportunity to be our best player at that time, he took the role and became our best player (at least our best skater, as Markstrom won the Cyclone Taylor). Interestingly, during his rookie years, Boeser was also "the guy" and took over from Daniel as our best goal scorer. Seems like he thrives when he's leaned on as our primary offense, but seems to struggle more in a supportive role. I'm not sure if there's any sort of lesson to learn from that, as he's also been given minutes with Petey and Miller quite a bit in the last two years and not really done that well with that time. I wonder if all three of Kuzmenko, Petey, and Miller were injured if Boeser would have another great year or not. Would be a weird situation for sure.