Canucks Qualify Five; Decline Offers on Weber, Stanton

The Canucks announced Monday afternoon that they had tendered qualifying offers to five players, including Sven Baertschi, Adam Clendening, and Frank Corrado, while declining to tender offers to seven more would-be RFAs, including Yannick Weber.

Let’s look at what this means after the jump.

In all, aside from re-signing Linden Vey, the Canucks elected not to tender qualifying offers to all players who hadn’t already received one. We knew going into today that Sven Baertschi, Adam Clendening, Frank Corrado, Alex Grenier, and Jacob Markstrom had all been qualified, and they remain the only qualified players after the 2:00 PM QO deadline.

This means that the Canucks will relinquish their rights to first refusal and compensation to Peter Andersson (signed in Europe), Cory Conacher (signed in Europe), Joacim Eriksson (signed in Europe), Brandon McMillan, Ryan Stanton, Mike Zalewski, and Yannick Weber.

I’m not surprised to see the European-bound players leave, nor am I shocked to see Stanton and McMillan walk. Both performed like sub-replacement level players in 2014-15, and if the goal is to get younger, then there’s really no sense in bringing either player back. Either Clendening or Corrado should be able to replace what Stanton brought, and nearly anyone in the organization should be an upgrade on McMillan, especially offensively.

I am moderately surprised to see Zalewski go since he always appeared to be an effective forechecking and defensive presence to my eye, but his offensive totals weren’t really there in his AHL rookie season. I was a fan of Zalewski’s, but it’s not a huge loss to the organization.

Of course, the big one here is Yannick Weber. I wouldn’t have been shocked if the Canucks were simply not in a cap situation to give Weber what he wanted and were forced to let him walk. But it sounds like the team and player ate still working towards a deal:

This seems like a move designed to avoid arbitration more than anything. If the Canucks really want to get Weber signed, they will get it done in the coming days before free agency. On the other hand:

Not qualifying Weber opens up the risk to losing him for nothing in just a couple of days, and the player has zero incentive not to play the market. It’s a risky move for sure, and not one that necessarily reflects well on Vancouver’s desire to commit to keeping Weber in the fold for 2015-16. 

Either that, or they’re just that confident a deal will get done. I’d be skeptical of this, though.