What I’m hearing about the Canucks’ positioning ahead of NHL Draft, free agency

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We’re approaching that most dreaded moment of the NHL calendar. That moment when the industry’s entire world turns upside down.

Call it the “silly season,” call it the “frenzy,” call it the most dangerous time of year. As the offseason gets underway, mistakes will be made, ambitions will be dashed and Stanley Cups will be won — even if we won’t know the outcome of all of the moves that are made until it plays out on the ice.

This offseason promises to be especially topsy-turvy. The salary cap is set to rise by a historic amount, both proportionally and in terms of raw dollar value, and there’s a reasonable expectation — and a fixed agreement — for similarly sized lifts that will work their way through the cap system over the next three league years.

Having weathered the long winter of flat cap austerity, NHL general managers have the flexibility to spend. And trade. And fix their mistakes, improve their teams and revamp their lineups.

Beyond the flexibility, the desire to spend cap space and the willingness to get aggressive are about to shape this offseason. This is currently a league where absolutely no hockey operations executive is comfortable with the idea that they could get left behind and fall into an eternal rebuild in a fashion like the Chicago Blackhawks or the San Jose Sharks.

There are very few sellers as the market clicks into gear, with the possible reported exception of the Pittsburgh Penguins, though perhaps another team or two will surprise us and enter that market. There are at least 25, maybe as many as 30, motivated buyers.

That level of competitiveness is shaping up to be a complicating factor that Vancouver Canucks hockey operations leadership is sifting through this week.

As preparations continue for a formative offseason in which the Canucks have an existential short-term goal in mind — bounce back from a nightmare season, get back to winning and competing atop the Pacific Division and appeal to Quinn Hughes to commit long-term in 12 months when he becomes extension eligible — and a precarious overall position from which to achieve that goal.

Vancouver’s needs up front are significant. And the path to adding the sort of pieces the club is hopeful for is fraught and getting narrower by the day.

At this point, the Canucks expect pending unrestricted free agent forwards Brock Boeser and Pius Suter to make it to July 1, further weakening their forward group.

Meanwhile, an already shallow unrestricted free agent market is getting thinner seemingly hour by hour. On Thurday, Matt Duchene became the latest example of a potential Canucks target signing with their current team well in advance of July 1. Duchene’s sudden absence from the free-agent frenzy means that only Toronto Maple Leafs star Mitch Marner, who isn’t expected to consider signing with teams based in Canada, is likely to be both available when the market opens and be coming off a season in which he recorded 80 points or more.

The Canucks, who entered the offseason hoping to add a “top two-line centre” and two or three impact forwards to their group this offseason, are increasingly pessimistic about their ability to accomplish as much as that as they begin to get a better sense of what the offseason free agent and trade markets look like.

It won’t be for a lack of trying. General manager Patrik Allvin is working the phones as the offseason begins to kick into high gear, and the Canucks are open-minded about the possibilities of adding to their group on the trade market.

It’s becoming apparent as the meat of the NHL offseason approaches, however, just how difficult the challenges that Vancouver faces this summer are.

The Canucks have some cap flexibility, after all, but not nearly as much cap flexibility as about 20 of their NHL rivals.

They have some good prospects, but not nearly as many or as high-quality prospects as about 20 of their NHL rivals.

And they’re willing to part with their first-round pick, but so is nearly everybody else in the middle of the first round.

It’s in this environment that the Canucks will attempt to chart a path forward, and get back to being at least a playoff team and ideally a playoff team that can realistically aspire to making a run.

It won’t be straightforward, however, and contingency plans may be needed. That’s something that’s becoming increasingly evident to Canucks leadership with each passing day in the early stages of the offseason.

Here’s some of what I’m hearing about their overall goals and positioning heading into the offseason.

The Matt Duchene thing, and what it means for Filip Chytil

Duchene’s decision to re-sign with the Dallas Stars on a four-year, $18 million extension is something of a blow to Vancouver’s hopes of completing the intended renovation of the forward group this offseason.

Duchene will turn 35 during next season, which makes a deal with significant term something of a risk. His age, however, was also an angle that could’ve reasonably caused him to shake loose if the Stars hadn’t found the will to sign him to a deal with term attached to it.

Once a player turns 35, their standard player contracts are governed by different rules designed to prevent cap circumvention shenanigans. A “35-plus” contract is trickier to hold over a multiyear horizon because of those associated risks. After signing consecutive one-year contracts with the Stars following his surprising Nashville Predators buyout, this summer was Duchene’s final opportunity to sign a deal with term at fair market value. It was an opportunity the player couldn’t afford to miss.

If he’d made it to July 1, Vancouver would’ve been eager to get to the front of the line to pitch Duchene on signing in British Columbia. According to a team source, the Canucks would’ve been willing to offer both term and at a higher per year dollar amount than what Duchene ultimately signed for in Texas, which, of course, is a no-state tax jurisdiction.

While Duchene struggled to produce in the playoffs, he was really one of the only credible top-of-the-lineup centre-capable forward options that were poised to be available on July 1. That he signed beforehand is a genuine blow for Vancouver. It takes a possible solution to the forward needs off the table.

The Canucks are already beginning to consider pivot options and work out contingency plans with the way the market is shaping up. Though trades could still provide the sorts of upgrades required, they’re also prepared to make peace with the notion of utilizing Filip Chytil as their second-line centre next season.

New Canucks bench boss Adam Foote sees a path to making that work next season. That path, however, is understood to require the more robust centre depth further down the lineup.

The key surplus

The Canucks are open to trading the No. 15 pick, and will aggressively explore their options to do so in order to acquire win-now talent.

If the right piece is available for a package built around that pick, however, the Canucks are almost certain to have to add more pieces to it in order to close the deal.

If you look through the long history of Jim Rutherford team’s trades — the Elias Lindholm, Phil Kessel and Doug Weight trades are all good examples of this — you’ll notice that this is a pattern. Rutherford’s teams will often add additional pieces in volume — sometimes significant pieces — to their trade packages in order to land their target.

After years of rebuilding Vancouver’s blue line, it’s that surplus that we’ll be keeping a close eye on this summer.

Impressive first-year defender Elias Pettersson, referred internally as “Petey Junior” by Canucks brass and coaches, is an untouchable on this score. The club values his character and skill set too highly for him to be an option. I believe that Vancouver is similarly attached to 2023 first-round pick Tom Willander, although he belongs in a different category, somewhat, especially in the wake of the tense negotiations that preceded him agreeing to his entry-level contract.

In terms of marketable assets on the back end, that leaves Victor Mancini and Sawyer Mynio as key add-ons that we should be conscious of as trade chips. The organization is outright excited about both players and would prefer to find less painful answers to its forward needs, but there’s a recognition that some level of pain must be tolerated if the Canucks are going to land the required difference-makers up front.

We should also note in this space that Kirill Kudryavtsev has really impressed Canucks brass during Abbotsford’s run to the Calder Cup Final. He’s unlikely to factor into NHL plans this summer, but there’s a growing sense of confidence internally that he’s got the hockey IQ, work ethic and jam to carve out an everyday NHL job down the line.

Odds and ends

Some other scattered notes that I’m hearing around the Canucks as the offseason begins:

• Another under-the-radar Abbotsford player that’s impressed during this run is Ty Mueller. Mueller, who made his NHL debut at the end of the regular season, is somewhat undersized but is viewed as a gritty, creative forward with legitimate NHL potential.

• Arshdeep Bains, Linus Karlsson and Max Sasson — all of whom have performed exceptionally well in the Calder Cup playoffs — have certainly increased their chances of landing full-time NHL jobs next fall. In all of their cases, and for Aatu Räty, who’s dealt with injury, the Canucks aren’t going to view them as players that they need to leave a spot open for in the NHL lineup this fall, though. As a matter of developmental philosophy, they will have to earn it at training camp.

• I still expect the Canucks to find a way to get an extension done with goaltender Thatcher Demko this summer. Despite the commitment they made to Kevin Lankinen in-season, Vancouver’s strong preference is to have a strong goaltending tandem. Locking up both goaltenders at an expensive clip over a six-month stretch is certainly an eyebrow-raising investment of cap resources, but I don’t get the sense that the Canucks are risk-averse on this score, especially in light of anticipated salary cap growth over the next several seasons.

• In seeking to upgrade their forward quality, there’s a variety of young players that are rumour mill headliners going into this offseason, including Minnesota Wild centre Marco Rossi, Buffalo Sabres forward JJ Peterka and Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras, for the Canucks to consider. For various reasons like size (Rossi), defensive commitment (Peterka) and hardness and speed (Zegras), this is a class of player that, while exceptionally talented and productive, will come attached to some level of question marks. It’s going to be a player-by-player determination for Canucks brass in considering their options on the trade market, but the sense I get is that they’re willing to swing on some riskier player profiles this summer. There are no perfect players, after all, and the Canucks need to add creativity, upside and offensive talent to their roster.

• Over the past few years the Canucks have carved out a path that they’ve followed closely in negotiating second contracts with young players at the fringes of their NHL lineup. Including Jack Rathbone, Nils Höglander, Akito Hirose, Artūrs Šilovs and Vasili Podkolzin, Vancouver has repeatedly signed its promising but not-quite-full-time-NHL-level young players to two-year, one-way deals. The cap growth era, however, could necessitate something of an augmented approach, and Vancouver is considering becoming somewhat more flexible in working through the optimal strategy in agreeing to second contracts with its young players. The Canucks already found a compromise this summer with Willander, jettisoning their below-market preferences on entry-level contracts and Schedule A bonuses. It’s a new world in the NHL, it seems, and in adjusting to it, Vancouver could be open-minded in revisiting its preferred approach to second contracts as well.

(Photo of Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)

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What I’m hearing about the Canucks’ positioning ahead of NHL Draft, free agency

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