Canucks Sign Erik Gudbranson to Three-Year, $12 Million Extension

Well, it finally happened! Jim Benning and the Vancouver Canucks announced today that they had signed defenceman Erik Gudbranson to a three-year, $12 million extension.

I know some of you may have had some fairly strong opinions on this player, but I’m sure we can all remain calm and discuss this in a respectful, civilized manner.

Mmmk. Let’s start by looking at the positives of this extension. First, it’s only three years. It could have easily been four, or eight, or twenty-five. Relative to a quarter century, three years doesn’t look so bad. It’ll coincide with Boeser’s second contract, as well as the second contracts of Troy Stecher, Adam Gaudette, and Jonathan Dahlen, as well as whatever the Canucks pay Sven Basertschi, Markus Granlund, and Jake Virtanen on their next contracts, but at least it won’t also coincide with the second contract of Elias Pettersson, which, if everything goes as hoped, should be a doozie.

Second, there is no no-trade clause, according to TSN’s Bob McKenzie. This would be good news if the Canucks had interest in trading Erik Gudbranson. Given the opportunity they had, and what just happened, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Of course, the Canucks do still have the opportunity to change their minds and deal Gudbranson some time in the next three years. That would likely mean that they’ve been unsatisfied in some manner with his performance, which would likely in turn reflect a further loss of perceived value around the league. Then again, no one tanks value on tradeable assets like the Canucks do, so nobody should be surprised.

Third, it’s only four million dollars, which is somehow lower than the expectations Gudbranson’s camp had last summer and the summer prior when he was shipped out of Florida. At various points, they were apparently asking for as much as five or six million per season, which would have been a complete disaster.

Now, you may be saying four million dollars is still way more than Gudbranson, a third-pairing defenceman is worth, and you may be right. But have you considered his size? Or his physical presence? Or his leadership qualities? Like the leadership qualities he showed when he threw Ben Hutton under the bus when asked why their pairing had struggled so much? Or the leadership qualities he showed when Troy Stecher got jumped by Matt Martin? I mean, he didn’t do anything at the time, but he did threaten Martin’s life after leaving the ice, guaranteeing an impressive staged fight several weeks later. Or how about the leadership qualities he showed when Brock Boeser got run from behind?! I know, he wasn’t there, but at least he said he would have done something, while simultaneously expressing that he was frustrated and disappointed that his teammates didn’t do something.

These are the types of intangibles that you have to pay two, maybe three million dollars for, so from that perspective, the Canucks are almost getting what they’re paying for here. Then there’s the handsomeness. Just look at this guy and tell me you wouldn’t spend 12 million bucks to have him hang around for a few years.

Plus, he’ll be a great mentor for the younger players. Here’s evidence of him being great with kids.

Wow. It’s looking more and more than the Canucks are getting a fantastic deal here.

Okay, just for the sake of fairness, let’s discuss the bad as well. I think fellow contributor Janik Beichler summed it up very nicely.

As Janik points out, there are several things that Gudbranson gets credit for that he doesn’t actually do. He’s getting paid like a top four defenceman, but his average 5-on-5 minutes per game (14:52) are actually sixth on the team, above only Derrick Pouliot and Alex Biega. Of the 41 games he’s played this season, he’s managed to get more than 20 minutes (all situations) just 11 times. Conversely, he’s played under 17 minutes 11 times as well – not including the game in Boston in which he was ejected after playing just 1:15.

As the Canucks mentioned in their press release, his 99 hits rank third on the Canucks, which I suppose can be considered as a lot. By rate, he sits sixth on the team in hits. Across the league, he sits 97th in hits, with a little less than half as many as the league leader (Philadelphia’s Robert Hagg, who has 205). His hit totals can be more accurately described as adequate, rather than a lot, and that’s not even getting into a discussion on the value and relevance of hitting in the modern era.

As for shutting opponents down, I really don’t see how anything could be further from the truth. The Canucks are allowing 65 shot attempts per hour while Gudbranson is patrolling the ice, which is nearly ten more per hour than they’re allowing when he’s on the bench. That would be bad enough if he was facing extremely tough competition, but he isn’t: his quality of competition is third on the Canucks, in a region that suggests he plays as much against middle six forwards as any other form of opponent. His shift starts lean very slightly towards the defensive side, but as I’ve written about before, shift starts and zone starts have only a small effect on shot rates and shot shares.

Sure, Gudbranson can shoot the puck hard – he recently won the hardest shot at the Canucks SuperSkills competition with a 103.4 mile-per-hour blast that beat the winning shot by Alex Ovechkin at the NHL Skills Competition by a good margin. Evidently Gudbranson had no idea how hard he could shoot and just now, at age-26, thinks it may be a good idea for him to try to shoot the puck more often.

This would certainly be helpful: Gudbranson has 41 shots in 41 games this season, which 19th on the team, while his 3.34 shots on net per hour (all situations) rank 24th on the team. While his ability to suppress shots is poor enough, it’s generation where he really struggles. His relative on-to-off-ice shot attempts per hour (-10.2) is one of the worst in the league. On a pairing with Alex Edler, his generation rate has bumped up marginally from 47 on-ice shot attempts per hour to 56 – unfortunately that’s still a rate that’s well below both league average, and the rate that he’s allowing.

Gudbranson has been analyzed to death on this website, and from a myriad of angles. Jackson McDonald covered him from a very analytics based perspective, while, for you skeptics out there, Janik discussed his play purely from an eye test point of view. Either way, the conclusion was that Erik Gudbranson is not a very good NHL defenceman, and paying him a King’s ransom to continue to not be a very good NHL defenceman is nothing short of fool hardy.

I myself have made my feelings on Gudbranson very clear: they would be better off trading him, and failing that, they should cut ties and let him go in free agency. Re-signing a player like him to this kind of contract is simply the worst case scenario and an embarrassing move by this organization, especially when they had the opportunity to get something decent in return for him and recoup some of the value that was lost when he was originally acquired. Around the league, players like Michal Kempy and Nick Holden are netting third round picks. Instead, the Canucks have decided to double down on Gudbranson and lock in a major reason why their defensive numbers have struggled so much this season. This is undoubtedly one of the worst defensive groups in the league, and they’ve given up a good deal of flexibility here with regards to changing things going forward.

All in all, this deal isn’t going be a back-breaker for the Canucks. If they were a team with any hope of seriously contending in the near future, then spending this sort of money on a player like Gudbranson in a hard salary cap world could have a potentially devastating effect on their ability to maximize their cap value. Luckily for the Canucks, they’re basically treading water and have the appearance of a franchise that is going to continue to finish near the bottom of the league year after year for the foreseeable future, so they can afford to make all the ill advised financial moves that they want. Congratulations to all involved.