CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag: Part Deux – The Draft, Michael Del Zotto and Canucks RFAs

I just haven’t done enough digging on this topic to provide a thorough answer, unfortunately. That said, The Athletic’s Corey Pronman wrote an article on some NCAA free agents that offers a couple of interesting options.

I think it’s 50/50 on whether the Sedins will re-sign with the Canucks or not. My intuition? They’ll return for another season. If they don’t, I’d expect the Canucks to make a big push at James Neal — I would’ve said Evander Kane, but that doesn’t meat the “wouldn’t expect” qualifications of that question.

The way the Canucks are losing players to injury, I don’t think they’ll have to send anyone down to use their final call-up. Even if they did, I don’t suspect Nikolay Goldobin is the one they’d send down — it would probably be Tyler Motte, so as to avoid him gaining waiver eligible status for next season. Both will join the Comets once the Canucks season is done though and hopefully play big roles in a long playoff run.

As for whether a strong playoff will help Goldobin’s case next season, I’m skeptical. At this stage, Goldobin’s done everything possible at the AHL level to prove his worth, and now it’s up to him to prove he can do it in the NHL, too. I doubt the Canucks consider this at all next season, and they probably shouldn’t.

The Canucks should trade Sven Baertschi, but I’m not sure if that’s realistic. The Canucks have to do something this summer with their wealth of cap spaces and a shortage of roster openings, so if you’re looking for a shakeup, take comfort in that. I just don’t know who is going to be in the crosshairs.

My dark-horse possibility? Brandon Sutter. I think the Canucks are starting to realize he’s not the foundational piece they once thought he was. Why else would they have had interest in chasing Mikael Backlund this summer?

Reid Boucher cleared waiver and Goldobin struggles to surpass Nic Dowd at times in the Canucks lineup. I don’t suspect there is much value there between them.

Perhaps the Canucks can find someone who thinks of Goldobin as a worthwhile restoration project, but even then, I don’t think they’re going to get much in return.

Option B.

If Connor McDavid is worth $12.5-million annually in the prime of his career, then that’s the cap for the rest of the NHL period. John Tavares is a hell of a player, but there’s no way he’s going to supercede McDavid’s salary.

This doesn’t seem worth exploring though given everything we know about Tavares. For starters, I’ve read countless times that he’s loyal almost to a fault, meaning it would be very difficult for him to reconcile signing with anyone other than the New York Islanders. They’re still the betting favourite.

But if Tavares won’t sign there, why is he going to choose the Vancouver Canucks? Are they even close to contending? No, they’re not even close to the playoffs. And whatever the Canucks can offer, there are another handful of teams right behind them with a cheque just as large. Tavares to the Canucks is a non-starter.

I don’t have Adam Boqvist that high on my board, but I’ve seen him there a few times on other people’s. This is to say that Boqvist could be the best player available to the Canucks, depending on how they feel about him — seems obvious, I know, but it bears mentioning all the same. Either way, I have no clue what the Canucks’ board looks like, so it’s impossible for me to answer this question.

Somewhere in the $4-million range for about four years.

When the NHL playoffs start.

Yeah, I’m not sure it matters whether or not the Canucks trade Goldobin at this stage. I’m not even sure he’s an everyday NHL’er, so I’m not that invested in going to bat for him.

That said, if I were forcing myself to come up with a reason to not trade Goldobin, it would be that the upside that’s still present in his game is of more value to the Canucks than the pittance they could get in return for him in a trade.

If the Canucks win the Rasmus Dahlin sweepstakes, that changes everything. I take back everything I said about the John Tavares scenario broached by one of my Twitter followers earlier in this article. I would back a Brink’s truck into his agent’s office and try my damnedest to sell him on this franchise.

I’d probably stray from a William Nylander offer sheet though. The Toronto Maple Leafs would match it in a heartbeat, and then you have to deal with a pissed off Lou Lamoriello, and nobody wants that.

I’d be surprised if the Canucks could get anything more than a third- or fourth-round pick for Markus Granlund if they put him on the market. As for what fair value is on a contract, I’d suspect something short-term around the $1.5-million mark annually is market value.

Honestly, I haven’t thought that far ahead. CanucksArmy’s own Ryan Biech has, though, and he looked at a couple of defencemen that the Canucks could target in the early parts of the second-round in an article for The Athletic Vancouver.

I think the most optimistic I can be about the Canucks short-term future and when the misery ends is close to the three-year range.

I already answered the Granlund question earlier, so I’d ask you to pan up a bit on the article and check that out. As for Baertschi, I think that the Canucks could fetch a pair of mid-round picks — something like a second- and fourth-round pick. There’s still some time under team control with Baertschi, and that works in the team’s favour.

There’s so much variance after first-overall in this year’s draft. Taking a defenceman and the best player available might be one in the same thing, depending on how the Canucks’ board shakes out. For example, I’m having a hard time not earmarking Quinn Hughes for second overall.

I have no clue what the return would be for moving down two or three spots. One of the rumours out of last year’s draft has it that the Vegas Golden Knights were willing to part with a second-round pick to move up from sixth overall to fifth, so I feel like it might be more than a second to move up two or three spots that high in the draft.

I’ve yet to see one that discerns the difference between a legitimate NHL’er and a AAAA player. That said, I feel like it’s worth pointing out that Emerson Etem has played more NHL games than Derrick Pouliot and the latter of those two hasn’t exactly cemented himself with the Canucks in the final half of this season — they might be one in the same.

Yes.

It depends on who you ask this question to. For starters, there’s no way Brady Tkachuk would be that high on my board, and Hughes is probably closer to two or three for me than four or five. The variance in draft rankings from two-to-five though suggests that there isn’t a significant drop off in talent in that range, much less from the third overall pick to the fourth.

There has to be one in light of some of the other players that we see move like clockwork year after year.

I have to admit, the hockey season is a grinder for writers like myself, and that’s especially so when you’re covering a team like the Canucks who have been so, so bad for so, so long. So it’s more difficult than usual to find interesting storylines to follow, yes. Sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day with this team, really.

That said, I’m interested in following Brendan Leipsic, Nikolay Goldobin, Derrick Pouliot and Tyler Motte to see how they finish the year. Certainly more interested in those players than the likes of a Jussi Jokinen for example.

As for Michael Del Zotto, I’d just suggest searching his name on this website. You’ll find that none of us can find a reason why he’s bulletproof.

I lean towards Hughes because I think he’s a dynamic, playmaking offensive defenceman who can bring so many elements to this Canucks blue line that they desperately need.

Here’s the thing about the publicly available quality of competition metrics — they’re woefully inadequate.

I don’t think that QoC doesn’t matter per se, but I think people generally overstate its importance based on the tools they use to drive their assumptions. For example, by Corsi for, the variance in competition is about 1% across the entirety of the Canucks lineup according to Corsica.Hockey. How big of a difference then should I really expect in the players at the high and low end of that spectrum as a result? It’s probably not that significant.

I think Ben Hutton has relatively good numbers because he’s having a mostly good season. It’s that simple for me.