Friday Mailbag: Homecoming Eve

Can the Canucks start from scratch? Physically, mentally… standingsly? The answer to the former and latter statements is “no”, but maybe, just maybe, they can hit the mental reset button before tomorrow night. Certainly, it would work to their benefit; the team has had moments that repeatedly lead to anguish over the past few weeks, and you wonder how much of that has created a self-fulfilling prophecy as things have progressed.

Anyway, I hope it ends. In the meantime, let’s dip into some of your questions!

Very frustrating. Do I know for sure whether he would have been a top-sixer in this lineup? No. In fact, I wouldn’t have been shocked if that wasn’t the case. Maybe he wouldn’t have been much help as a fill-in in either. We don’t know.

But that’s just that; we don’t have any idea of what Corrado could be contributing right now. It’s one thing to lose a guy to a team who puts in him a position to succeed. Or in any position. But Corrado has played a few AHL games to get back into game shape, and has already worn those off before making his Leafs debut. The Leafs are probably high fiving each other over shrewd asset management, but the next time they approach a bubble player, they might hear “I don’t want this happening to me too” when they get rejected.

It’ll be super fair, too. If you won’t play him, don’t claim him. 

I think at this point, it would take a superhuman remainder of the season or a career-ending injury to have him not suiting up for the Canucks next year. His cap hit is too high for other teams to take on, especially with his performances since leaving Buffalo being, well, not good.

For Burrows, I feel like the lesser workload, even if unintentional, has helped him over the past few years. This is a guy who was playing at levels a bit behind his age trajectory in the early stages of his career, and of late, has spent a lot of his time resting. While he’s had injuries, nothing has really left collateral damage, so the recovery has helped him stay fresh and the rehab has helped him get physically strong.

As for the kids, they’ve got growing pains. The numbers tend to swing rapidly; nights where they take on tired teams that are facing them for the first time and don’t know what to do with them end up with some success; teams that are more structured have been much more damaging; especially to McCann, who has been straddled with increasingly tougher zone starts as the team instills more trust (also, as the team plays badly enough to struggle to escape the defensive zone).

The proper course of action there would probably to wait and see until we have more data as to what’s happening with them before ripping our heads out and trying to figure out the why.

That’s a good question. I’m not quite sure. You’re going to have to ask the Edmonton Oilers, who are probably going to end up with him somehow.