AHL Signings and Veteran Limits Could Make it Trickier to Dump Veterans in Utica This Year

7 years ago

The regular season is fast approaching, and the final roster is starting to take shape. As more players get the axe from the big club, the Comets roster begins to fill out. For those of you who are as deeply entrenched in hockey nerddom as I am, this is a joyous time of year.

With all the new acquisitions for the Comets this coming season, it occurred to me to take another look at the AHL’s veterans rules and how they may apply to the Comets. What I found is mildly interesting, and it will likely have some bearing on Canucks roster decisions at some point in the season, as it looks like the Comets could begin the season already at their veteran limit.

I took a look at this rule not once, but twice last season. The first time was in an article regarding the typical construction of an American League roster, while the second time was in response to Vancouver management’s decisions to banish older players like Chris Higgins, Brandon Prust, and Yannick Weber to the minor leagues.

This time around, we are predicting the opening roster, but also looking ahead to the possibility of dumping more unwanted vets – and more specifically, the problems that might arise.

First, let’s review the AHL’s veteran rules. And what better way to do that than to copy and paste what I wrote last year? Have a look:

The AHL being a development league, there is a limit to the number of veterans that a team can dress for any given game. Veterans are determined by the number of professional games they have played, and are further split into two categories: veterans, and veteran exempts.
Veteran Exempts are players that have played in 261-320 professional games. NHL, AHL and European Elite league games count towards this number (note that ECHL games do not). Veterans are players that have played 321 or more professional games.
Only regular season games count towards this number. The number is assessed at the beginning of the season and veteran status is assigned at that point. Even if a player is sitting at 259 games prior to the start of the season, their status will not change when they cross the threshold.
While there is no limit to the amount of veterans a team can have on its roster, only six veterans can dress for any given game. Furthermore at least one of these veterans must be a veteran exempt. In order words, no more than six players in an AHL lineup may have played more than 260 professional games, and no more than five players in said lineup may have played more than 320 professional games.
So another way to look at the veteran limit is this: team must dress at least 12 skaters that have played 260 or less professional games.

At the beginning of last season, when the opening roster was set, the Comets have five players that fit into either the veteran or veteran exempt category: Blair Jones, John Kurtz, Linden Vey, Carter Bancks, and Alex Biega. As the season wore on, Vey was promoted the Comets instead took on seasoned NHL veterans in Higgins and Prust. At the time Yannick Weber, he would have put them against the veteran limit, which would have forbade them from adding any more senior players (like Danny Syvret, who had recently finished a PTO there, or waiving any more veterans).

However, Weber never played in Utica. On top of that, Blair Jones spent much of the season injured, and John Kurtz would be an easy choice to come out of the lineup – in fact, he was released soon after that article. So, as it turned out, there was nothing to be concerned about at all.

This coming season may pose a slightly more complicated issue, with the players meeting the veteran threshold being considerably for important to the success of the team. Consider the following chart of players and their accrued professional games.

As you can see, the list includes two of the Comets top offseason acquisitions: Michael Chaput and Jayson Megna. Both are natural centres and offensively talented players. They are also both on NHL contracts, getting paid six figures to toil in the minor leagues ($225,000 for Chaput, and $600,000 for Megna, who is on a one-way contract, according to CapFriendly.com). This isn’t a John Kurtz-type situation – these aren’t the types of players that you scratch on a regular basis, or even at all really. They’ve been brought in to carry a Comets offense that has lost some of its potency.

Carter Bancks and Wacey Hamilton, the latter of which reached the threshold during the last season, are central cogs in Travis Green’s machine. Despite being on AHL deals, they are consistently shown loyalty, as that as what they give in return. They Green’s defensive zone specialists, with Hamilton taking a higher percentage of defensive zone draws than any other Comets centre (source: my eyes), and they are the defacto first penalty kill unit. Though they may be eventual choices to sit if absolutely necessary, it won’t be an easy decision on Green, who has already shown a propensity for dressing these reliable forwards over high level prospects (see Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann in the 2015 Calder Cup playoffs).

That leaves Darren Archibald, a former Gillis signing and fan favourite in Utica. Archy is an absolute joy to watch because he is such a menace on the ice – and he knocks in his fair share of goals as well, usually at the most opportune of moments. Archibald began last season in ECHL Kalamazoo, before making a triumphant return to Utica early in the year following a few injuries and call ups. He did have the occasional healthy scratch later in the season, which means he’s probably the most likely candidate to take a seat if a couple more veterans join the fold.

And why would any more veterans join the fold, you ask?

Burying Veteran Contracts

As I’ve already mentioned in this very article, the Canucks’ brass took it upon themselves last season to weed out the older, slower veterans on the NHL roster in favour of younger, faster models. Now at this point in the year, there’s no reason to assume that the Canucks will do that again this season, but it’s worth taking a look at anyways, as they have a few players that could fit the bill.

Perhaps the most likely candidate is Emerson Etem. Penciled into the bottom six before the start of the season, Etem was thought to be a possible provider of secondary offence. After scoring four goals in the final five games of last season, it was hoped that Etem could improve upon an otherwise disappointing seven goal campaign.

This preseason, however, Etem has been one of the team’s greatest disappointments. He seems to always be in a hurry, though he never seems to quite know where he’s going – many a play has died on Etem’s stick in the early going here. With a Corsi-for percentage of 42.6, he’s been one of the worst possession players on the roster so far (with a Corsi-for relative percentage of -16.6%), and the worst of anyone remaining on the roster to this point. This is in spite of the fact that he has started 75 percent of his even strength faceoffs in the offensive zone, and spent his last game with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi.

The Long Beach native may have a pretty decent excuse – he became a father about a week ago and probably hasn’t gotten much sleep – unfortunately that sort of excuse doesn’t fly in the big leagues, and coach Willie Desjardins won’t allow that to affect whether he feels Etem deserves to start the year on the team.

The next name that I’ll throw in there is Alex Burrows. Once a world class pest and elite knocker-in of Sedin passes, Burrows is beginning to look more like his age, which is 35 by the way. Nobody should begrudge Burrows for not being able to produce at the same rate as he did five years ago. It’s simply the circle of life.

I’ll state off the hop that Burrows is the last person on the list that I would want to be sent to the minors, and I’m certainly not endorsing it personally. But it has been a topic of conversation this off season. Burrows could be the new Higgins, especially if he gets off to a slow start.

In my opinion though, Burrows has too much to give in terms of leadership, and despite the fact that he’s not what he once was, he can still be a very credible bottom six producer and presence at this point.

Next up is Derek Dorsett. Last season was not a particularly good one for Dorsett, as he fell below expectations in nearly every category. He was one of the worst possession players on a bad possession team (46.1 Corsi-for percentage), and one of the worst offensive players on a bad offensive team (0.88 ES Points per 60).

Now, many would postulate that offense isn’t the reason that he’s out on the ice, to which I would say, give your head a shake. This is hockey, where the goal of the game is outscoring your opponent (Dorsett had a goals-for percentage of 37.3 percent last year), whereas facepunching, while occasionally entertaining, is simply a health-jeopardizing sideshow that is slowly removing itself from the game. Even if there were any evidence that fighting brought some sort of quantifiable value to the game, it doesn’t appear that Dorsett is particularly good at it, having won just two of his 11 fights last year, according the HockeyFights.com.

Furthermore, he had too many fights that were of the staged variety, and too few (if there is such a thing) that involved defending younger players, which is what his role was supposed to be, as archaic as that is. While he wasn’t the one that said that young players have to stick up for themselves, he did just as little as the man who did, during a series of games out in California where opponents were permitted to rag doll the Canucks’ teenaged players.

Lest we forget that Dorsett also takes more minor penalties than anybody else in the league, and there is a building case for why he could be this year’s Brandon Prust – if Canucks management has the stomach to do it. Although, if the rumours that he they were looking to move him in the offseason are true, then maybe it’s not as unlikely as we think.

Some other possibilities on the forward ranks are Anton Rodin and Markus Granlund, if they were to absolutely bomb the start of the year. Given how they’ve looked in the preseason though, that seems pretty unlikely. It’s also likely that they’d have plenty of rope in the NHL, but the names are worth mentioning anyways. Jake Virtanen and/or Brendan Gaunce being sent down is also not out of the question, but neither meets the professional games played threshold, and thus they aren’t relevant to this discussion.

Vancouver’s situation on defence could present some interesting options this year as well. Canucks GM Jim Benning has stated just recently that he envisions the team starting the year with eight defencemen on the roster – something that many followers in Vancouver had penciled in themselves. While the top four are set (despite what MIKE thinks), there is significantly more wiggle room with the bottom pairing and spares. Philip Larsen has been tagged as a power play guy, and the Canucks will be hesitant to sit $3.6 million World Cup participant Luca Sbisa. Beyond them is towering Russian Nikita Tryamkin, whom the Canucks will have trouble shuttling to Utica due to a contract out-clause, and Alex Biega, who should have been on his way to Utica already.

At this point, it seems like Larsen and Sbisa will start the year together, while Tryamkin and Biega start the year in the press box. But what if Larsen, who hasn’t played in the NHL in a few years, struggles to meet expectations (as he has so far in the preseason), or if Sbisa fails to take a step forward? Could there be some possibility that Larsen or Sbisa hits the waiver wire, possibly in favour of calling up Troy Stecher, Andrey Pedan or Jordan Subban?

Any of these eight names that I’ve mentioned would be considered veterans in the American League and could give Travis Green some minor inconvenience when it comes to roster construction this year. Additionally, call ups heading the NHL to replace players are likely to be younger players, rather than a Linden Vey or Alex Biega, like last year, so relief from the veteran rule is unlikely. This will further force Utica’s management to be a little pickier with PTO’s this time around if injuries hit and call ups come, as they may not be able to bring in veteran help.

Again, this is far from a serious issue, but it does represent one change from last season: the Canucks won’t be able to dump veterans this year as easily as they were able to last year – at least if they expect them to continue playing down in Utica.

AHL Signings and Veteran Limits Could Make it Trickier to Dump Veterans in Utica This Year

Burying Veteran Contracts

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