Canucks recall F Reid Boucher

With Brock Boeser being sidelined from an injury suffered last night, the Canucks have summoned Reid Boucher from the Utica Comets

Boucher has appeared in 8 NHL games this season with the Canucks and has scored two goals. In 45 games with the Comets, he has 25 goals and 21 assists.

Since the Canucks have twelve healthy forwards on the roster, they were unable to exercise the Emergency Recall option for Boucher and have burned one of their four call-ups from the trading deadline to the end of the season. That is stipulated in Article 13.12(l)

The Canucks have now used three of those recalls with the papering down of Tyler Motte and Nikolay Goldobin, and then this recall.

Another important note of all of this is that Boucher has spent 29 days on the NHL roster this season and by being on the NHL roster for one more day, he uses up his waiver exemption. Which is outlined in Article 13.2(b) of the NHL CBA

This means that if the organization plans on sending Boucher back to the Comets for their playoff run, he would be subject to waivers. With that being said, if Boucher is placed on waivers and claimed, the claiming team would be unable to play him in the NHL playoffs, thus unlikely he would be claimed.

It will be interesting to see if Boucher will get into the lineup and I suspect he will because the Canucks used up one callup slot for him and there is the clock on Motte’s waiver exemption. If Tyler Motte appears in 13 more NHL games this season, he will become subject to waivers.

I would expect that we will see Motte sit for four of the remaining 16 games to save his waiver exemption and give Boucher (or possibly Adam Gaudette) some game action. With that being said, another injury or two could really throw a wrench in that plan, so we can only speculate for now.