Chris Tanev's Next Contract
Thomas Drance
May 16 2013 12:08PM
Tanev must've forgot his cigarettes.
Photo by John Russell NHLI/Getty
With the salary cap declining for the first time ever the Vancouver Canucks are facing a pretty crunchy salary cap situation heading into this summer. A lot of Vancouver's flexibility here will be determined by a Roberto Luongo trade, and whether or not the Canucks can clear his deal off the books without retaining salary. For what it's worth, I think they probably can and worst case scenario they can place him on waivers where he'd probably be claimed.
Assuming Luongo's salary is cleared and Keith Ballard is bought out, and I thought that was a foregone conclusion even before he didn't dress for a single game this postseason, the Canucks will have roughly 10.5 million left over to sign eight players (including one top-9 forward)*. That's not a lot of spare change.
(*) These figures are per capgeek and assume that Eddie Lack and Frank Corrado are on Vancouver's roster next season.
One situation that will be particularly fascinating to watch is the team's negotiations with restricted free-agent, fancy-stats darling and third-pairing defenceman Chris Tanev. Tanev isn't the type of player one typically associates with an exorbitant contract, but he may well have more leverage this summer than your typical restricted free-agent. We'll get into it after the jump.
Henrik Sedin on Mike Smith "He's extremely big, and good at playing the puck. He also dives a lot."
Thomas Drance
May 15 2013 08:26AM
Henrik Sedin (top left) is probably thinking "don't you dare so much as breathe on Mike Smith, Zack."
(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
On Thursday morning (Pacific Time) team Sweden, who are being led by the Sedin twins, will face team Canada in the quarter final of the consolation prize tournament known as the World Championships. Team Canada is led by Steven Stamkos and Claude GIroux, but their team also features Canucks defenceman Dan Hamhuis as well as former Mike Gillis client and jerkpuck all-star team starting goaltender Mike Smith. The Canucks and Mike Smith, of course, had their moments (several moments actually) this past hockey season.
Henrik and Daniel debuted for the Tre Kronor on Tuesday against Denmark. After the game, in giving a rather colourful scouting report of team Canada to the Swedish press, Henrik Sedin really went out of his way to describe Mike Smith as a "diver." Read past the jump.
@PlayNowSports Presents: This Week Straight Up May 13-19
Thomas Drance
May 13 2013 01:54PM
We at CanucksArmy are big supporters of sports betting, in part because we buy into the Nate Silver theory that putting your money where your prediction is will help improve the aggregate accuracy of forecasting. And after we predicted the Canucks to win their first round series against the Sharks in seven games, we'll take any additional forecasting accuracy we can get!
Always remember to gamble for fun (or for bragging rights), not to make money. From all of us at CanucksArmy and PlayNow: a gentle reminder to use your game sense!
Read past the jump for special offers to CanucksArmy.com readers from PlayNow Sports, and for a preview of this upcoming week of NHL playoff hockey!
Report: Canucks "Likely" to go without AHL affiliate this season
Thomas Drance
May 13 2013 09:17AM
Here's some bad news from the Peoria Journal Star's Dave Eminian:
The Vancouver Canucks have notified Peoria Civic Center they will not be operating their AHL team here. So Rivermen officially gone.
— Dave Eminian (@icetimecleve) May 13, 2013
Sources say Vancouver likely to keep former Rivermen team dormant next season and loan prospects to other AHL teams.
— Dave Eminian (@icetimecleve) May 13, 2013
The possibility that Vancouver wouldn't be able to find a spot to park their newly acquired AHL affiliate has been broached previously by Mike Gillis, but still, this comes as a bit of a surprise. Read past the jump.
The Canucks Didn't Lose Because the Twins Are in Decline
Thomas Drance
May 10 2013 12:11PM
Image generated at somekindofninja.com
The image above is a "player usage chart," which is a way of looking at players and evaluating how they're being deployed. We've used these charts on several occassions previously. Here's how the chart works: the higher a player's bubble is located on the y-axis the tougher the competition they faced was. The further to the left that player's bubble is on the x-axis the more often you started in the defensive zone. If a player's circle is red it means they were a negative possession player, and if their circle was blue, they were coming out ahead.
There are four blue bubbles on Vancouver's forward usage chart for the 2013 seasons and one of them is Derek Roy, who only played a small portion of the season with the Canucks and disappeared in time for the postseason. The other three positive bubbles are Alex Burrows, Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin. Yes, those are also the three players who started most often in the offensive zone among all Canucks forwards (though they started a much lower proportion of their shifts there than they have in the previous two seasons), but they also battled the toughest competition. In fact, I think it's abundantly clear that the twins had their best two-way campaign in the behindthenet era...
Read past the jump.
