CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag: January 19th – Part Deux

In no particular order, of course. And I’m not exactly a hockey history buff, so take this with a grain of salt. I’m sure that I’m overlooking at least one trade of note.

If Elias Pettersson and Adam Gaudette are ready to play, and the Canucks can get an NHL-ready player at the draft, why wouldn’t they play? The team needs to get younger and add skill to the lineup desperately. In the salary cap era, it helps to have players on entry-level contracts, too. I don’t see the issue here. What’s the worst that can happen? This team goes from 29th to 30th with exciting rookies leading the charge while all the while selling hope to the fan base? That doesn’t sound so bad to me.

I’d love to be able to tell you I have some degree of confidence that the Canucks could right this ship in the next two-to-three years, but I just don’t see it. The first move Benning appears set to make after signing his extension is giving one out to Erik Gudbranson. That doesn’t instil confidence.

On a brighter note, let’s take a moment to appreciate Jyrki’s BenningOnEmpty comic strips. They’re so, so good. And they probably serve as some form of catharsis for a lot of fans. He’s a valuable member of the Canucks community, to be sure.

It slides under the radar, but Benning landing a second-round pick for Kevin Bieksa three summers ago was a pretty deft move all things considered. It’s a shame what he later did with that second-round pick, but that’s another story entirely. To me, that’s one of his best trades, aside from the ones made at last year’s deadline.

The worst trade is the Gudbranson deal. I needn’t elaborate on why; this should be self-evident at this stage.

No, that seems like a lot of wasted money with very little upside.

I’m the wrong guy to ask. Trevor Linden’s legacy has never been one of my primary concerns, and I’m admittedly not that in touch with fan opinion. In my bubble, it seems like people have soured or are souring on Linden, for whatever that’s worth.

There are a few good ones, but the one I keep coming back to is how down I was on Matthew Tkachuk relative to most in the draft analysis community. That’s an ‘L’ that keeps on giving. I even wrote an article about how wrong I was on the topic.

Not if the reports of a three-year deal north of $4-million annually are true, no.

Nope.

I can’t think of any way that a Jacob Trouba for Chris Tanev trade makes sense. Tanev is two years away from being an unrestricted free agent, and between his constant injuries and lacking offensive outputs, there’s just no way he’s comparable to Trouba in value.

I wish I had an answer. For whatever reason, he just hasn’t worked out in San Jose. Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer can be a hard guy to win over, and Hansen has clearly struggle to work his way into his good graces. He’s a constant healthy scratch and can’t get any traction whenever he is in the lineup.

They’re suffering for all the success they had during the Mike Gillis and Alain Vigneault era.

That would make sense for the Islanders if they were interested in going on a run, what with the John Tavares situation and all. They’re right on the playoff bubble, and the only reason they’re not higher in the standings is their inability to keep pucks out of their net. That’s an area where Tanev would help them a great deal, one has to think.

I’m just not sure what the Islanders plans are. They don’t seem interested in making deals at the expense of their future, and it doesn’t sound like they’re going to be sellers either.

I fear they’ll be a playoff bubble team in the absolute best-case scenario. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see things shaking out.

Ideally, Gudbranson’s new contract comes in at one or two years for about $1-million annually. That’s what his actual value is to the Canucks. They’re outshot, out-chanced, outscored — you name it — with Gudbranson on the ice by such a large margin as to make him a replacement level player. There’s no objective reason that he should make more than what your average third-pairing, replacement level defenceman should make.

I honestly haven’t seen much of the Utica Comets this season. That said, most of what I hear about Jalen Chatfield’s season isn’t encouraging. It hasn’t been a disastrous first pro-year, but it hasn’t been great either. I wouldn’t worry too much about the lack of offensive output — Chatfield’s never been much of a scorer.

That’s possible, but I’m not sure it matters. If that means that the best the Canucks can get for Thomas Vanek is a fourth or fifth-round pick rather than the third they’d get most years, then that’s what they have to do. It’s still the Canucks’ job to make the best of this situation and bring in some futures.

Only Brock Boeser and Bo Horvat should be untouchable. Everyone else should be up for debate if it means bringing in futures. It doesn’t mean that they should be shopping every player or selling for less than fair value on players with term, but they should be willing to listen.

I have no clue. It is, in fact, too early to ask this question.

*Whether.

I feel like Jacob Markstrom is that guy by default. He’s signed for next year and beyond, and I can’t imagine there’s much of a trade market for his services.

Ryan Merkley, for all his defensive shortcomings, intrigues me in that spot.

I’m not sure the Canucks have anything the Blues would have interest in at the deadline. They’re chasing big name wingers with term like Max Pacioretty and Mike Hoffman. Those are the kinds of players that would fetch a prospect of Jordan Kyrou’s quality. Who do the Canucks have to counter that?

Petrus Palmu.

The Washington Capitals underlying metrics, whether it’s expected goals or shot attempts, are pretty ugly, and yet, they’re comfortably in the playoffs. Perhaps they’re something of a paper tiger. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers both have excellent underlying metrics without records to match.

Their record leaves a lot to be desired, certainly. To go through their hits and misses spanning back about ten years would be an article in and of itself. I don’t know who heads it up, either. As for why they still have a job, I’d suspect it’s because that the team’s president and general manager are part of that pro-scouting team.

Whatever the case, we might have an excellent article on the way on this very topic at about noon today. Keep your eyes peeled.

I’m not sure it’s that simple at this stage. I like Quinn Hughes at four, or perhaps even higher, for example. It’s really early in the process, still. Let’s give it some time before we make any conclusions on this.

The Edmonton Oilers. It’s really simple — they have the best player in the world under contract for the foreseeable future.

I don’t have a clue. This team has never seemed more rudderless than they do now. And I’m not sure what the mandate is either.

I always look at the Toronto Maple Leafs or New Jersey Devils as good examples of a quick rebuild. Yeah, the Maple Leafs had been bad for a while, but they didn’t start to rebuild their team until they fired general manager Dave Nonis.

The way I see it, the captaincy is Horvat’s to lose.

About the only thing they have in common is a vaguely similar first name.

Take the best player available. That might not be Andrei Svechnikov or Filip Zadina based on how the Canucks board shakes out. It could be Adam Boqvist or Quinn Hughes; I have time for either of those players in the two-to-four range, frankly.