Provost

Utica will have to sign players if there is a season there. The NHL won’t give a second thought whether a bunch of lower league players have to fill rosters in the AHL. Nor would there be any rationale for them to have the sort of minimum player loan agreement that you “imagine” to be the case as your argument. It is literally the opposite... there are rules about having too many NHL players clogging up the AHL a big chunk of the ECHL has opted out of playing next season so there are a ton of players available for AHL rosters.

The details will come out in the next day or two, but with travel restrictions it is almost certain we will have a taxi squad/extended roster. This is good news for us as it likely means we can shave some cap off by only carrying a 20 man official roster that counts towards the cap and just call up guys same day if we need them due to injury. The really interesting conundrum is who you have on the taxi squad. It may not be some of our top prospects because we want them developing and not sitting in the press box for long stretches. To me that gives a leg up to the older guys with lower ceilings who will lose less by not playing. To me our prospects will end up as: At forward it is easier because we have too many vets. Hoglander is the most interesting decision because they may feel that being with the team under their control for strength training may be more beneficial than playing minutes. It is not like his skill is going to develop a lot more in Sweden... it is the transition to our game and skating that will be most important. I don’t see him staying in the AHL long term though. Hoglander - AHL for 2 weeks then Rogle Baertschi - Taxi Squad McEwan - Roster/Taxi Squad Graovac - AHL Lind -AHL Bailey - Taxi Squad Hawyrluk - Taxi Squad Lockwood - AHL Gadjovich - AHL Eriksson - I wish AHL, but Taxi Squad Defence. This is where I think age will make the most difference. It makes more sense for Rathbone and Woo to be playing huge minutes in the AHL as a top pairing than being with the big club in the press box. Juolevi - Roster Rathbone -AHL Rafferty - Taxi Squad Chatfield - Taxi Squad Brisebois - Taxi Squad Woo - AHL Sautner - Taxi Squad Teves - AHL

Translate that Canuck fans should be prepared to see Eriksson in the lineup this coming season. "little things" will keep doing his little things. Who knows, expectations are so low that maybe Green goes crazy in Toffoli's absence and gets put on a Petterson line as the defensive presence so it can do more head to head match ups. It would be very Canuck like for Eriksson to suddenly get a bunch of points that won't matter to our future except make our draft standing worse), and then we think he will repeat that the next year and he goes back to being terrible.

He can do both. If he is "medically retired" on LTIR we can spend the cap space on a replacement. Ferland still gets his money and we get to sigh Hamonic. We have to pay the actual cash for it either way since it is not an insured contract. I really see us having to fill the Stecher spot. A guy that can move up the lineup into the top 4 in case of injury. We don't have that and are one injury away from Juolevi/Benn/Rafferty/Rathbone playing 20 minutes a night on a 2nd pairing. Stecher's ability to eat minutes was drastically undervalued by many, and apparently even the organization. There were nights he played 30 minutes and had really solid underlying stats while doing it.

I literally said he will have to make changes because of the compressed schedule and injuries. Last season was a massive outlier in terms of D health where we only used 8 guys with the truncated regular season. The season before we used 14, the year before that 10 D, the year before that 10. Before that it was 10-13 on average. Those are years with a less compressed schedule where guys could rest more and be less subject to injury. Count down our D depth to 10-12? Hughes-Myers Edler-Schmidt Juolevi-Benn Rathbone-Rafferty Brisebois-Chatfield Sautner-Teves Assuming at least 1-2 of those guys is going to be in Utica for development purposes (to get big minutes rather than sitting in the press box) and we won't have an unlimited taxi squad size ... we can expect most or all of our taxi squad to get playing time this season based even on historical injury rates.

I disagree with your premise entirely, you have no idea what kind of coach he is in these unique circumstances. He has shown himself to be willing to give kids a chance in ways other coachs wouldn't. Who would have started a 165lb Swedish teenager who had just come off a remarkable SHL season as a winger as a centre in the Pacific division facing off against monster sized competition? Aside from that, he isn't going to have a choice. Compressed schedule and injuries are going to mean that we will need lots of D. We historically go through 11-13 different ones in a season. Knowing that is the case and you will likely need all of them at some point, he isn't going to leave them in the press box for months at a time and then expect them to come in sharp. Assuming we aren't unusually healthy on the back end this season, all the taxi squad guys are going to see games this year.

With an (assumed) expanded taxi squad, we have to figure these slightly older guys are going to be the ones that stick with the club. Some of the younger kids just badly need to play more for development and will get sent down even if they are likely better. They can't spend a season not getting minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if our team was carrying Sautner, Chatfield, Juolevi, Rafferty and maybe even Teves up here practicing and being rotated into the lineup while Rathbone and Woo play big minutes down in Utica (if there ends being a Utica).

Yep... pretty much this. I don't need him to be a top pairing guy to be happy with him. A high end 3rd pairing D that brings something unique, and can play occasionally up the lineup would be just fine for our team. Really, I just see the value of having a guy with that toolkit during a playoff series. He is skilled enough to play (if he can keep up with how much faster the NHL is since he played last), and over a few games leaning on opposing forwards it could be a huge advantage for us. You saw him knock players out of games hurt almost offhandedly just out of board battles.

I have been on the Tryamkin bandwagon for a long time. This is the first time I say we don't want to sign him now even if by some chance the NHL doesn't restrict RFAs signed after Dec 1st (or whatever equivalent date in the new schedule). He currently isn't eligible to be selected in expansion and doesn't take up an protection slot. If he signs for even the last part of this season he will get exposed for expansion. We are in an amazing spot to completely re-tool our defence during expansion because we virtually have no one we need to protect. We could just protect Schmidt, and pick up two players in trade for cheap that another team would risk losing for nothing to expansion. It is pretty likely there would be players available who would be upgrades on Myers and Juolevi if they were exposed (and if Seattle actually picked them up).

I had posted way back right at the end of our playoff run that we needed to try to exit Eriksson right away before the market was set... expecting that this crunch was going to come. Some teams got rid of money then, before the trade market completely froze. Eriksson is untradeable now, but it was almost certainly possible back then, especially with how little actual cash he was owed compared with his cap hit. We just came out the gate saying we wouldn't trade any 1st or 2nd round picks instead, Now it seems like we just want to roll the dice for the season and see how it turns out. It may work OK and we find another kid who can legitimately play... or we could end up with a nightmare if one of our top 4 D or top two centres get hurt long term... or if our goaltending isn't up to rescuing us from a poor defence. If you want to get your hopes up, dream about Eriksson opting out of playing this season because he won't get paid much in real dollars.

Every bit of news that passes, the more I wish we had bitten the bullet early and traded our 1st to get rid of Eriksson (and/or other dead weight). That cap space could return you players worth more than a 1st round pick now. We could easily get Cirelli or Cernak plus a decent pick if we were willing to take on one of Killorn/Palat/Johnson. Either one of those young guys perfectly fits a hole we have. We could get Pacioretty probably with salary retained for virtually nothing. Any number of players who would be in the top half of our roster for just taking on their salary.

I have no idea what they will really be in for, we won't really have much more money next offseason than this one. I don't think Sergachev is a direct comparable, but it gives a neighbourhood. If MaCavoy and Sergachev got bridge deals that start with a four, then maybe Hughes can get one that starts with a five. The fact he is better than Sergachev is also mitigated by the fact that he doesn't have arb rights and isn't subject to an offer sheet. Of course the Makar and Heiskenen contracts are going to be the biggest benchmarks.

Ummm... Sergachev played over 20 minutes a game and was one of their top minute guys on the entire team. He was not a 3rd pairing guy. Quinn also did not play the “tough matchups”, that was Edler. The daylight between Sergachev and Hughes isn’t anywhere near what you are saying.

That is a pretty shallow way to look at it. Sergachev is a much better all around defenceman who can't just be measured by his offensive numbers. He brings more in all the areas Hughes brings less. It should really be quite a good comparable to use. If we could actually get Hughes at a $5-5.5 million bridge deal and Petterson at a $6.5-7 million bridge deal, we would be in pretty good shape to ride out our veteran contracts expiring.

Eriksson’s contract is the one that I think we can argue the least about. Virtually everyone thought it was OK or good at the time it was signed. It is unfair to criticize it with hindsight. It is the Beagle, Roussel, and Ferland contracts that most fans and hockey people thought were a bad idea right from the start. Tom much term and dollars for bottom of the roster players when there are always cheap veterans available for less. Schaller was a good signing as an example, he performed the same “protecting the kids” role but didn’t cost us signing better players. It is OK to criticize not being able to fix those mistakes as well. It is his job. Some GMs were able to move bad money... heck Gudbranson got traded. We should have bit the bullet and pressured Eriksson last season by putting him in the minors then.

https://www.tsn.ca/detroit-red-wings-sign-winger-anthony-mantha-to-four-year-deal-1.1547334 Edit: $5.7 million AAV as per Friedman https://twitter.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/1323664666736893954?s=20

He has an NHL coach and the ice size in the KHL has been gradually getting to normal North American standards rather than Euro sizes. It is all leading into his skill set, so he will have a great year. Hopefully not so much that he decides to stay there after this season. If we can sign him to a 2-3 year deal at $2 million per, that would give us a chance to see what he brings and not have to give him up to free agency after a year.

Apparently Chris Gear was mentioning on the radio that they are hoping for an expanded taxi squad, similar to the playoffs for the season. instead of moving the AHL team close, they will just keep their “call up” worthy players with the NHL club. Brisebois would be one of those for sure Hughes-Myers Edler-Schmidt Juolevi-Benn Rathbone-Rafferty Chatfield-Brisebois The only issue with that plan, is that you have to also feed some games to the young guys so they continue to develop. That may not be the worst thing in a compressed schedule anyways. You could literally swap out one of our top 6 every game for “load management”

The average doesn’t tell the story even slightly. He wasn’t playing, half his team got sick with covid so he played 25 minutes a game for a stretch because they didn’t have any bodies... now he is back to barely playing again. The rest of the team played fewer games because they were unavailable due to Covid. That is entirety different than getting a consistent 12 minutes a night developing.

His hometown is an amazing factory of NHL players as we well know! it is really stunning for a town smaller than Vernon to have had so many top flight NHLers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Örnsköldsvik

I haven’t heard any player volunteer his name when talking about veterans who have helped them. When asked directly, players aren’t going to publicly sewer their teammates. That is just PR101 generic media answers. If you really want to get inside what they are thinking, you have to just listen to who they prop up unsolicited. I have heard the younger players pump the tires of guys like Tanev, Sutter, Miller, and Schaller in terms of guys who have helped them and shown them how to be pro’s etc. I have never once heard one of them talk about Eriksson unprompted by a direct question. They know who the most overpaid guy in the room is. They know who is costing them chances to win. This year especially, they will know the good players and friends they lost off the roster because of carrying that anchor contract. I can’t even imagine walking into that dressing room as Eriksson this year, hopefully he doesn’t.

Well there is the very good chance the team will carry a taxi squad of “non roster” players who travel and practice with the team. We won’t likely have a normal AHL. Hoglander should be on that taxi squad and would probably see some NHL games with a compressed schedule.

I think it may be more of playing under 5 minutes a game doesn’t really keep you in game shape. It is probably better that he is in a LW or league actually getting ice time. It will also be really good for him to be on the national team soon. Apparently Larionov (GM of national team) went to the club a couple of weeks ago to talk about Podkolzin. I fully suspect that he said he wanted the kid ready to play significant minutes in the tourney (he is likely to be Captain of the team), and not playing more than a few shifts wouldn’t prep him for those demands very well. This demotion seems to be letting him get his game legs for a couple of weeks instead of being thrown to the wolves. It is well known that KHL teams are loathe to give ice time and development time to kids who aren’t going to be there long, and are headed to the NHL. I don’t particularly blame them, but on the other hand there should be easier “outs” for the player to come over if they aren’t being played on their club team.

That is an entirely different argument than what people are making. Saying he "may" become a legitimate top 6 guy is manifestly different from saying he is already one; or has never gotten a fair shake; and literally lying by saying that he has only ever gotten minimal time playing with our skilled players. It just simply isn't true. He has never stuck in the top 6 consistently, but has had plenty of ice time and tryouts there. There is a valid argument as to whether he will become a consistent top 6 guy or is as good as he will ever get. There is no valid argument that he has been one already. There is no argument to make that the entire Canucks front office is conspiring against the player by denying him any opportunity to succeed. As has been listed above, he has had plenty of ice time with our best players... they just haven't found him to be an effective fit there historically.

I think this is where the issue lies. Apparently saying Jake has been a 3rd liner is calling him a bust and "hating on him". It doesn't have to be pure rose coloured glasses optimism OR seething hate. Being a 3rd line NHL player still makes you one of the best 300-400 hockey players on the planet. Anyone drafted who plays significant NHL games isn't a bust. Maybe it makes him picked too high in the draft, but that is different than being a bust. If Jake was taken in the middle of the 1st round he would have been giving full value for his draft spot with his production. Being picked maybe 5-10 spots too early has nothing to do with him as a player now.. if anything it just says Benning reached to get him where he did and was a bit of a miss. I suspect NYI would want a do over as well since Dal Colle went a spot ahead of Jake and is nowhere near the player he is. Maybe he improves to be a legit top 6 fixture, maybe he doesn't. Nobody knows yet, not even Jake or the smartest hockey people on the planet. The same people saying he will bust out this season are the same ones that have been saying it every single season. Hasn't happened yet. From my perspective, I just go with the odds. The older a player is and more experience, the more likely they are what they are. I personally peg the odds of him becoming a consistent, play driving, 50-60 point top 6 guy as lower than him not becoming that. The Canucks brass (not just the coach) don't seem to have a ton of faith in him blossoming either. The Miller and Toffoli trades were getting players who play a style we were hoping Jake would. The short contracts are saying "Show me". We won't know until later if we missed the boat on extracting the most out of the asset in trading him. If we don't get another top 6 option, just by osmosis Virtanen will get more points with more playing time with (likely) Petterson and Miller. Maybe he is worth more then.. who knows.