CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag: December 11th – Part Deux

We should evaluate the trade on the merit of the assets that are changing hands. General managers make trades, sometimes with the consultation of their coaches, but often of their own volition. What the coach does with the player after the fact — especially when they’re this low on the totem pole — shouldn’t factor in too heavily at the time.

I don’t think Dowd is going to play when Bo Horvat and Brandon Sutter are healthy. And there aren’t any obvious options in Utica as far as centres are concerned — certainly not prospect centres. If you want to talk about any Canuck that might specifically be blocking Canucks prospects from playing, it’s still Thomas Vanek.

You might be in danger of overthinking this one. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Canucks put Dowd on waivers by the end of the season. The way I see it, they gave up a prospect they didn’t see a future in to bide time at centre while two of their most relied upon players are down with injuries.

Now, if you want to argue that Alexander Burmistrov is having his ice-time stolen by Dowd, that’s another story.

I don’t even need to channel my inner fan to be upset about Dowd and Michael Chaput playing ahead of Nikolay Goldobin and the like. I love the game of hockey. I wouldn’t work twice as much as the average person for a quarter of the pay to cover this sport if I didn’t. I have a vested interest in watching a good product that goes beyond rooting interests.

That’s my long-winded way of saying: yes, this is frustrating, on so many levels. Now, that said, I like Chaput as a 13th forward and Dowd far out-performed him in that role last season. It’s not insane that Canucks head coach Travis Green sees them as viable NHL options. It’s maddening, however, that he sees them as viable options ahead of Goldobin.

I’m a huge fan of Quinton Hughes game. I’ll be advocating for him increasingly as we get closer and closer to the draft. Been following him for years now, and he always impresses.

I don’t think the Sedins are expected to retire. Not that I know of, anyway. It doesn’t seem like anyone knows what their exact plans are beyond this season. I think you can include the Sedins in that group of people, too.

And if the Sedins don’t know what they’re doing next season (to the best of everyone’s knowledge) how could I possibly have a clue what their plans are? I could lie and give you an answer, but that’s just not my style. Sorry, man.

I’ll be honest — I wasn’t a big fan of the Jack Rathbone pick for the Canucks. I loved the Rathbone story. He seems like an awesome kid. Truly, a salt of the earth type if there ever was one. It’s just that players coming from American high school are extremely difficult to project using statistical models, and based on the statistical assumptions we can make they don’t carry a high rate of success.

I’ve read some scouting reports of Rathbone, and I have to admit, they’re generally quite positive. I read somewhere that he might’ve been a first-round pick if not for playing high school hockey. If I were to guess — I just haven’t watched Rathbone play that much — Rathbone probably checks out as having third-pair, puck-moving defenceman upside.

With the success that the Canucks have had mining talent from the United States in Canucks general manager Jim Benning’s time on the job, I’m willing to give them a pass on this one and assume they’ve done their homework. With Adam Gaudette and William Lockwood well ahead of our original projections on CanucksArmy, they’ve earned the Canucks the benefit of the doubt in this region.

Seeing as Brock Boeser is a highly productive player in the NHL currently, I’d say the best NHL comparable is probably Brock Boeser.

Just to humour you, though, I’ll answer this question as if he were still a prospect. I heard the Kyle Okposo comparison a lot for Boeser, but I’ve always thought he had more Patrick Sharp to his game. Turns out, he’s going to be better than both of those players.