Monday Mailbag: AHL Standouts, Turtling, and Trading Brandon Sutter

I got a lot of questions like this one. Ultimately, I can’t explain to anyone why the Canucks appear to be unable to  push with a third period lead, but I can say that Travis Green teams do have a habit of playing the trap when they have a lead, although not the the extent we saw against the Rangers.

It’s probably a little of Column A and a little of Column B. On one hand, the Canucks have done this enough times with Green as their coach to indicate that it’s systemic. On the other, he looked incredibly displeased with his team on Sunday, so I doubt the games against Philadelphia and New York unfolded in exactly the manner he envisioned.

The truth is, half the Canucks’ roster is designed to play this way, so even if Green wanted the Canucks to maintain pressure with a lead, there’s a decent chance it wouldn’t happen, so it’s hard to lay the blame squarely at his feet. I think everyone involved is culpable.

To be completely honest, I thought there was a decent chance Goldy was done by midway through last year. The only real chance I see of him making it back onto the active roster is if the team is bit by the injury bug. The front office and coaching staff appear to have soured on him, and J.T. Miller has played quite well in that spot (even if Pettersson and Boeser haven’t looked as good), which only serves to decrease the desire to inject Goldobin back into the top six.

While I like Goldobin quite a bit, I think it’s somewhat unfair to blame the team for how things have unfolded. There’s certainly a case to be made that they were unnecessarily hard on the kid, but his job this preseason was to prove he belonged in the NHL and he didn’t do that. I’m happy to see him continue to perform at an elite level in the AHL, but I don’t think anyone ever doubted his talent at that level. He needs to look more consistently engaged in the majors if he wants to be an everyday player. He’s talented enough to be on an NHL roster, but not talented enough for most execs and coaches to overlook his deficiencies in the current NHL landscape.

I think at this point the team envisions Boucher in his current role, which is to be the guy they call up when an offensive player has suffered an injury. Much like Goldobin, he would probably have a spot on my NHL roster, but I can understand why a lot of people don’t feel that way. He would be an odd fit in this team’s bottom six, and while I think it’s constructed in a way that is doomed to fail in the long run, I can also admit they’ll probably have more success going all-in on their philosophy than trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

As far as a trade is concerned, I just don’t see it happening. Boucher has cleared waivers nearly a half-dozen times in the past few years. I don’t think there would be a ton of interest.

I would imagine Sven Baertschi is intended to be the first call-up, since the team has already implied that the decision to send him down was a difficult one. He’s also by far the most proven commodity at the NHL level, which would likely make him their preferred option if there’s an injury in the top-nine.

I can see the thought process that led you to this question. Turris is a more valuable player, but he’s locked up at the same price for much longer than Eriksson is, so both teams could gain a perceived advantage from making this deal. Having said that, I think both teams are probably better off with the player they already have based on where they’re at in their life cycle. The Predators’ window is closing, and they need the better player even if it costs them later on down the road. In contrast, the Canucks’ best years are still ahead of them and need the flexibility of a contract that expires in two years. Stranger things have happened, but I don’t think this suggestion solves the problems of either club. It just creates new ones.

From an entertainment standpoint, I certainly think they are. Otherwise, I’m not sure. I’d love to see a few coaches with talented rosters give their players some more rope as an experiment, but that’s not likely to happen. I can certainly see the case for loosening up on the power play. The Canucks’ PP has been for too regimented over the past few years, and there’s not nearly enough movement. That could be a sign of being over-coached.

It depends on who you ask. Is he overrated by the coaching staff? Possibly, considering how much time he’s seen on the power play this season. If you ask just about anyone else, though, I’d say he’s quite the opposite. He’s traditionally sported very strong underlying numbers, he’s a good two-way player with the versatility to play up and down the lineup, and he scores at a decent rate at even-strength. He doesn’t belong on the first unit, but he’s far from the problem with this team’s roster. In fact, I think he’s just about the perfect bottom-six player for the team based on how they’re currently constructed.

Trade. There’s nothing he provides to the lineup that can’t also be provided by Jay Beagle, and he takes up an unnecessary amount of cap space.

Absolutely not. This front office wasn’t even bold enough to move a player like Shawn Matthias a few years ago, and that team had far less future success on the horizon than the current incarnation does. For the past 5 years, the organization’s philosophy has been to prioritize the present over the future whenever possible. The only instances where the team has ever traded a player for futures has been when their season is already lost, and they’re likely to lose the player for nothing if they don’t act. If the Canucks are in a playoff position, they will be loading up, not unloading. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out for them.