CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag: Prospects, Profiles and Joe Thornton (?)

I think so!

I’d argue the Canucks level of play in the regular season shows how far away the Canucks are from competing regularly with the league’s best. They have the worst record in the NHL over the last three seasons and just finished their last campaign with the 26th best record in hockey. I think there’s ample evidence already.

Not a chance. In fact, I wrote about this very subject for The Athletic Vancouver last week. Here’s the tl;dr of it all: Brandon Sutter isn’t going to produce at a point per game pace, the Sedins are gone, and Jussi Jokinen likely is, too.

I’ve heard the Canucks aren’t that high on Adam Boqvist and mixed reports on their interest in Quinn Hughes. With that, I’d expect them to lean towards the latter.

You’ve got “Boqvist is interesting” right, though. No two people hold the same opinion on the Swedish defenceman. I spoke with a scout after the 5 Nations tournament who left thoroughly unimpressed; I’ve also spoken to many people, including Ryan Biech (whose opinion I trust a lot) who think quite highly of Boqvist. Right now, I find myself leaning more towards the former camp.

I wonder if the Canucks would have any interest in another Chicago Blackhawk whose payday is perhaps a touch rich. I’m talking, of course, about Brent Sea… gotcha! I’m talking about Artem Anisimov.

Anisimov, 29, is making $4.55-million for the next three seasons, which is perhaps a slight overpayment, but nothing that would make one blink relative to half the players on the Canucks’ ledger. He’s not going to replace Henrik Sedin, but neither is Tyler Bozak. If the price low enough, Anisimov could make sense as someone to tide the Canucks over for the next two-to-three seasons — then he’s a tradeable asset of their own!

Let me get back to you on that.

My guess is that Jonathan Dahlen will need a year in the AHL. That the Canucks already have a tonne of players on the roster for next season isn’t going to help his cause.

The WAR data in Sean Tierney’s charts is from Corsica.Hockey, and while I’m sure it has some utility, I often find myself dubious of the results. That same dataset suggested Henrik Sedin was below replacement level last season, for one example. It would help if there were an article explaining the methodology behind what goes into these numbers, though, it’s also possible I’ve just missed it, and it’s already out there.

My guess is that Hutton’s WAR is low because he didn’t play that often. My intuition based on what I’ve seen from Corsica’s WAR metric is that it’s telling the story of how many wins have been added, not how many wins a player’s predictive data suggest he’s truly worth. That would also work against Hutton.

Usually, I hear that teams value black box data based on statistical inputs — i.e. assessing zone entries, but not a player’s on-ice shot attempt numbers. I don’t have that much information on how the Canucks do business, but my guess is that’s where they place their stock.

I don’t think Canucks head coach Travis Green is going to expect Elias Pettersson to throw the body around or get engaged physically if he’s meeting his end of the bargain offensively. Even when Green sat Brock Boeser for those infamous first two games, it had more to do with conditioning than physicality, and Boeser never threw the body around.

As for the stylistic changes, I think it’s probably overstated. The men playing in the SHL aren’t exactly in a no-contact league. Pettersson has had to take his lumps, I am sure.

If Olli Juolevi ascends to the point where we can justifiably argue he might be one of the Vancouver Canucks’ best defencemen in franchise history, I don’t think we can call him a bust, no.

Overpayment: Timothy Liljegren and a first-round pick

Underpayment: Kasperi Kapanen

I think the Canucks could get something of value for Sven Baertschi, and a Julius Honka-type player doesn’t seem out of the question. I’m skeptical of how much the market will bear for Ben Hutton, and I think Markus Granlund’s value is so low as to not be worth exploring.

Pettersson will be because the team needs his offensive skill set and playmaking ability. He’s also too good not to be in the NHL.

Dahlen might not, because of the aforementioned roster squeeze.

I think a lot of it is by sheer necessity. The Comets have struggled to field a full roster without the help of professional tryouts for much of the season, so getting some high-quality rookies is certainly preferable.

That said, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Utica Comets head coach Trent Cull a few times, and I get the sense that he takes the Comets role as a developmental team seriously. Cull never seems willing to forego wins for the sake of giving young players unwarranted chances, but he’s more willing to experiment to the betterment of his most inexperienced players than most.

One of the great tragedies of the mid-series prospect profiles is that the voting and placement of players are going to feel so out of date, and I think no one will suffer that to a greater extent than Lukas Jasek. It’s a small sample size in the AHL, but Jasek looks like the player we were all so very intrigued by when the Canucks drafted him out of the sixth-round. I can’t wait to see what he does in the playoffs.

I’m not sure if I’d put Jasek ahead of Jonah Gadjovich quite yet, but if he tears it up in the playoffs, I just might have to consider that.

I think Dahlen’s ceiling is a low-end first line talent, but I just can’t see him getting there. It’s highly unlikely, anyway. When it’s all said and done, I think Dahlen will have spent his career playing mostly in the middle-six of his team’s lineups.

The Canucks absolutely should have interest in taking on the final four years of Marian Hossa’s contract. I have a difficult time figuring out what the Canucks should get for the privilege. A second-round pick seems fair, at first glance.

This might be a touch rich, but I’d love to see the Canucks land Portland Winterhawks defenceman Henri Jokiharju. When Juolevi played with Jokiharju at the World Juniors, they seemed to have awesome chemistry. Their skill sets complemented each other so, so well. That’s a pipe dream though.

That’s hard to say at this stage.

Obviously, I don’t think it hurts that David Pastrnak is playing with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand. Then again, in this season, for example, Pastrnak had 13 points in little over 200 minutes with Riley Nash. Clearly, he’s not dependant on Bergeron and Marchand, and fully capable of finding the scoresheet on his own.

Speak of the damned devil! I’d probably avoid Nash if I were the Canucks. Ideally, you want to find players like Nash while they’re still underrated. Half the value is that there’s a market inefficiency there between what he provides and what he pays. Now that his boxscore stats are starting to shine, I fear that won’t be the case much longer.

I don’t think Brady Tkachuk is a top-five talent, so there’s that. With regards to what separates them, I’d guess it has to do with their status as sophomores, opposite Tkachuk’s as a freshman.

I doubt the Canucks could even land Joe Thornton, but if they do, it would only make sense as a one-year contract that they could ship out at the deadline. I’d rather they take on Spezza’s contract and an asset for the trouble.