First Look: Zack Kassian Traded to Montreal for Brandon Prust

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Kassian has been rumoured to be on the move since January (originally speculated to be involved in a swap for new Canuck Matt Bartkowski), and we were fairly certain that he was going to be dealt this offseason one way or another. Still, our expectation was that Vancouver would target another “defective” young player or draft pick and take the cap space freed up to spend on the free agent market.

What we didn’t expect is that Jim Benning would give up a 5th round draft pick in the deal to target a 31-year old pending unrestricted free agent who’s very much a 4th liner and making $2.5 million dollars next season. New Canucks winger Brandon Prust brings a consistent hard-nosed and competitive game, but are the Canucks better right now?

Let’s have a look.

As with all deals, there’s a subtraction component and an addition component. Substituting Kassian for Brandon Prust hurts the Canucks in certain areas, but helps them in others, and allows them to pursue new looks with their roster. First off, let’s look at what Vancouver is sending away in Kassian.

Coming in to 2014-2015, we expected Kassian to build on his solid 2013-14 campaign and continue to develop into a credible middle-6 forward by rounding out his defensive game while still scoring like a top-line winger on a per minute basis. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite happen. Once again, Kassian struggled under his third head coach in Vancouver and quickly found himself in the doghouse due to some poor defensive play. Add in a nagging back injury, and it was a fairly disappointing year for the mercurial winger.

Kassian was horrendous at preventing opposing scoring chances last season, and has been at the low-end of third liners in terms of preventing shot attempts over the past few seasons – pretty below average defensively. He doesn’t have any penalty kill upside, and has yet to get any serious looks on the powerplay. On the other hand, Kassian is a well above average rate scorer that has carried a fairly high personal shooting percentage in his NHL career. He doesn’t shoot the puck enough for us to know whether or not this is talent or variance driven (I’d lean variance driven, personally), but he’s been a very efficient goal scorer in his NHL career.

Kassian was also something of a surplus asset in Vancouver, patrolling the right wing. Alex Burrows and Radim Vrbata are more than likely going to occupy the two top-6 RW spots going forward, Jannik Hansen is a better two-way player and has had far more success with the Sedins, Derek Dorsett is a natural RW and locked in for the near-to-mid-term future, and Linden Vey, Alex Grenier (who still needs an RFA deal), and/or Jake Virtanen represent intriguing young options on the right side.

In all, as enticing a package as Kassian was, he was a definite surplus asset for the short-term focused Canucks and didn’t bring much more to the table than what they already had in the organization. He’s a loss that will hurt the team’s ability to score goals and generate offense, but he’s not a huge loss.

Prust is a legitimately useful defensive player, but he’s hovering around replacement level in terms of driving play. He can make some plays off the rush, bringing up his individual goal and assist totals, but he tends to drag down the offensive numbers of the players around him.

Much of Prust’s impact on goals against and GoalsFor% is unfortunately driven by playing in front of Carey Price, but he’s been above NHL average at suppressing shots on net too. This talent carries over to the penalty kill, where Prust has been one of Montreal’s better penalty killing forwards since 2012 thanks to his speed, tenacity, and defensive acumen.

Prust will provide the Canucks with some depth at left wing though, helping insulate a pool of players that thins out rapidly after Chris Higgins with Shawn Matthias having left in free agency. Again, Sven Baertschi should make the NHL jump next season, but Vancouver’s best options after that would have been Hunter Shinkaruk (who needs an AHL season after he’s afforded a whole summer of not rehabilitating a catastrophic hip injury) and the relatively unproven Ronalds Kenins. The Canucks needed a left winger, and they got one in Prust.

Beyond that, Brandon Prust will bring a type of physical edge and consistent nastiness that Kassian struggled with that will surely endear himself to Canucks fans in the long run. Despite what some will tell you, Prust and the edge he brings doesn’t help you win hockey games unless he’s cheap and playing on the fourth line, but it may help Jim Benning sleep better at night, for what little that’s worth.

I don’t like trading an RFA-protected 24 year old who may be improving for a 31-year old battle-beaten 4th liner making more money and is a UFA at the end of the next season. To me, this seems like a “we gotta get rid of Kassian” trade more than anything, especially since Vancouver added in a 5th round pick in 2016.

I don’t think this is a good way to build for the future, and I think these types of moves are the ones that keep you in hockey purgatory. The Canucks gave away a lottery ticket in this deal, they got older, and hampered their ability to add more players – like, for example, a now much-needed depth centre – in free agency, especially since Baertschi, Grenier, Clendening, and Corrado are all still in need of contracts.

The Canucks fourth line might be better now than it was this morning, but it’s a pretty marginal improvement. That being said, Kassian’s back injury adds another variable in this deal, and could prove a decisive factor in who wins going forward. The Canucks got meaner and more intense, but did they get better? I doubt it.