CanucksArmy Year In Review: Markus Granlund

Markus Granlund, the man can sort of do it all! Granny kill penalties, plays in a shutdown role, can be a winger or a centre and he can even slot in to your powerplay in a pinch. He sounds like a great addition to a team, and as a 13th forward I would argue that he is very valuable to an organization if used in that role.

I’m not going to dump on Granlund’s game too much, he is what he is. Granny can contribute to an NHL team, this season he notched 12 goals and 10 assists in 77 games played, finishing the year as a -4 while mostly being used in a bottom six role with time on the second powerplay unit and the second penalty kill unit as well.

The biggest problem is that though he is capable of helping with those two spots he shouldn’t be the first option, even for the second units. Granlund is adequate when it comes to special teams but he is nothing to write home about. His usage on this team is forced because of a lack of elite talent which creates open spots for a guy like Granlund to be pushed into roles that he likely won’t accel in at the NHL level.

Sure, Markus Granlund was nearly a 20 goal scorer in a year that saw him catch a lot of people’s eyes and after that year it was believed that he could be an impact forward who could provide some depth scoring. This could still be true but with the season that was just had there is reason to believe that Granlund may just be another depth forward in the Canucks organization that they could be looking to move on from.

He played 121 minutes on the powerplay and was on the ice for half of the teams shorthanded goals against which was four. Compare that to guys like Alex Edler, who was on the powerplay for over 176 minutes this season and only allowed two shorthanded goals against or Elias Pettersson who was on the powerplay for 256 minutes and only on the ice for one shorthanded goal against.

It was an up and down season for Granny and it’s been like that for a few years now, coach Travis Green seems to like him, being quoted multiple times this season saying “We wanted to get Granny in” when talking about other players like Goldobin or Schaller being taken out of the lineup.

And that’s where Granlund shows his value, he is likely a better contributor to the Travis Green’s game plan than other fringe players on this team, that’s why we saw Granlund play in 77 games this year while guys like Goldy and Schaller were at 63 and 47 each.

Granlund can be used in many different situations and though he isn’t a gamebreaker or very memorable he is useful in a fourth line role with the ability to kill penalties, or jump up onto the third line. Granlund would be a good bargain at anywhere under 1.5 million dollars as he is definitely an everyday NHL player but we as fans just need to try and accept that Granlund isn’t going to be the 20-25 goal scorer that some of us (including myself) thought we would see out of him after showing some offensive potential early on in his Canucks career.

After another bumpy season for Granny, he now approaches into restricted free agency, coming off of a 1 year, 1.475 millions dollar contract I would expect to see something similar but for maybe double the term. Granlund has had times where he was a contributing factor on this team but he was also absent for good stretches of games, he had an 11 game run this season where he averaged 18:39 of ice time per game while also having a separate 11 game run where he averaged 11:37.

I can see the Canucks looking to sign Granny at a 2 year, 1.3-1.8 million AAV contract. I can also see the Canucks just looking elsewhere into free agency. A guy like Brandon Tanev would be a name that would probably do a lot of what Markus Granlund has been doing and maybe even more. In the end Granlund is another bottom six player on a team that has too many bottom six players. He will likely be back for another season with the Vancouver Canucks but if he isn’t there are plenty more Markus Granlunds out there.

I honestly want to know what your takes are on Granlund, is he worth bringing back at 1.5-1.75 AAV?
Is he just another one of the too many bottom six guys.
Let me know in the comments, I am very curious.