Canucks Army Monday Mailbag: July 31st – Part Deux

I can’t say with any certainty whether the Canucks will pursue Will Butcher when he fits unrestricted free agency. They should consider putting the full court press on Butcher, but that’s not my call to make. One could imagine the Canucks looking at their blue line and the inherent lack of size and snarl — to say nothing of the lack of openings — therein and wondering if there’s room for an undersized left-shot offensive defenceman in the group.

As for whether the Canucks should be put off by Butcher’s decision to invoke his CBA rights to hit unrestricted free agency at the end of his collegiate career, the answer is a firm no. It’s common practice for a team to draft a player, before eventually opting not to sign them, and one needn’t look any further for a Canucks example than Tate Olson and Carl Neill as examples. Teams walk away from players all the time, and nobody thinks twice of it. That one would demonize the player who just wants to choose where he plays rather than the team who so often decides on a whim whether a player has what it takes or not is a peculiar phenomenon.

As a general rule, one should usually take the player’s side in these matters.

Jared Bednar of the Colorado Avalanche.

Perhaps Ken Hitchcock’s defensive systems are the yin to the Dallas Stars unfettered offensive yang? I don’t hate that marriage. There’s no denying that the Stars needed to improve drastically on the back end, and I think Hitchcock is as sound a bet for improvement in that department as any coach on the market. I expect the group of young defensive prospects in Dallas to benefit tremendously from Hitchcock’s tutelage, and that’s going to help with transitioning play to the high-end offensive stars that have carried Dallas these last few years.

Well, let’s be fair to Canucks general manager Jim Benning. If there’s one thing we shouldn’t take issue with, it’s the volume approach he took to this off-season. I’m a huge believer in internal competition pushing the cream of one’s organization to the top, and if you go through the history of sport, you’ll find all the most successful teams share that commonality in approach. I don’t agree with a lot of what the Canucks have done — and haven’t done — this off-season, but I don’t think one should question the amount of low-risk flyers they took on players in free agency. It’s a win-win for the Canucks. If their prospects can’t beat out retreads like Alexander Burmistrov and Patrick Wiercioch, well, they were never worth the time of day on an NHL roster anyway, and it likely means you’re getting more than you might have initially expected out of those players. Alternatively, their prospects rise to the occasion, and the Canucks suddenly possess one of the deepest farm teams in the league.

Another thing to consider is that the Canucks have a handful of quality young players set to his restricted or unrestricted free agency, and almost all of them require new contracts. Oh, and the Sedin twins. That cap space might evaporate before the Canucks have the opportunity to drop a dime on the open market.

That season has a pGPS of 69% and Exp. Points per 82 of 42.0