Canucks Army Monday Mailbag: January 30th

We had Canucks Army alumnus Patrick Johnston on the Podcast last week, and we discussed this very topic. The further into the discussion we delved, the more we realized Bo Horvat’s skill set works best when paired with a player to help clear space and drive the net and another to play high and cover defensively.

If the situation I’m describing sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the exact kind of setup he’s running alongside Sven Baertschi and Alex Burrows. You can tell it’s the perfect setup, because their underlying metrics seem to indicate the three as a unit are far better than one would expect to get from the sum of their parts.

So if you were to take players made in a similar mould on a higher scale, that would seem like a good place to start. Without diving too deeply into this, I feel like a Patric Hornqvist, Horvat and Michael Frolik line would do some serious damage. 

The Canucks absolutely should be sellers at the deadline. There’s no way around it. I don’t want to get back into why they should be sellers. It’s fairly obvious at this point, and I figure we’ve covered that ground a hundred times over.

With the points they’ve stacked through an accommodating January, they’ve put themselves in a position to be competitive to the last barring something unforeseen. So, no, there’s almost zero chance they sell at the deadline.

I wouldn’t worry about the Canucks being buyers, though. They might pull off a trade in a similar vein to the Hunter Shinkaruk for Markus Granlund deal from last year’s deadline. Maybe Jordan Subban is this year’s Shinkaruk?

Per my last answer, I just don’t think they can accrue a record bad enough between now and the deadline to convince themselves to part with veterans that they might see as helpful to a late-season push.

I don’t have anything to add to the conversation that Canucks Army’s Associate Editor Ryan Biech didn’t already cover in this great article on that very same topic. If you haven’t already, you should give it a read.

Per my response to a similar question, I just don’t see the Canucks as movers at this year’s deadline. They’ve gone on record as not being wont to part with draft picks and they haven’t much else of value that they can part with, without digging into the crown jewels of their nominal rebuild.

I’d like to imagine a world where the Canucks are in the hunt for Matt Duchene, but even when national media broaches the Colorado Avalanche centre’s availability, the Canucks aren’t counted among the teams most interested. Probably a byproduct of the cost.

The Canucks blue line is a position of relative strength, but I’d hardly count them among the league’s most endowed with defensive talent. Let’s throw that out there to start.

I don’t want to give a definitive answer one way or the other for this question, because I think the answer could really go either way fairly easily. I’d want to — and maybe I should — do an article wherein I look at their contracts, age and all the available data before drawing a hardened conclusion.

I’ll say this much: I wouldn’t be upset with this trade if it went down. It’s certainly justifiable, at a glance.

Well, there’s just so much that can happen between this year and next. It’s really hard to say. You’d have to factor in expansion, the trade deadline and the draft to boot. I really can’t understate the potential for movement between now and then.

With that, I’ll give my best try. Here’s my lineup. Brandon Sutter is lost to the Expansion Draft. Jannik Hansen is dealt at the trade deadline.

Daniel Sedin – Henrik Sedin – Loui Eriksson

Sven Baertschi – Bo Horvat – Jiri Hudler

Markus Granlund – Patrik Berglund – Anton Rodin

Brendan Gaunce – Michael Chaput – Derek Dorsett

Jake Virtanen

Alexander Edler – Troy Stecher

Ben Hutton – Chris Tanev

Luca Sbisa – Nikita Tryamkin

Andrey Pedan – Philip Larsen

Jacob Markstrom/Thomas Greiss

Who knows how ‘realistic’ this lineup is. It’s just one that I wouldn’t mind the Canucks rolling out next season. 

I know you meant no offence, and this tweet was likely sent just for the sake of getting a good laugh in. I get that. I just don’t think we should be trivializing Donald Trump’s presidency, and the impact it’s having. This man is a monster. So I’d have much, much rather a five-year extension for Gudbranson.

I think they can begin making moves around early March.