Monday Mailbag: Camp Cuts, Sam Gagner’s Future, and Bob McKenzie vs. Elliotte Friedman

There aren’t a lot of easy fits. The Canucks could probably afford to take on Jonathan Ericsson or Niklas Kronwall, but both have no-trade clauses and it’s unclear if either player would waive to come to Vancouver. The Canucks could also look at Jimmy Howard or Trevor Daley if the Red Wings want to shed salary in the short term, but I’m not sure they’d be willing to give up the assets to make it worth the cost. The truth is that the Red Wings probably have the worst contract outlook in the NHL and I wouldn’t touch any of their truly awful deals with a ten-foot pole.

Adam Gaudette, Tyler Motte, and Darren Archibald. I could also see Zack MacEwan sticking around for awhile if he has a good camp.

I feel that I should preface whatever I say by pointing out that at the moment, we don’t have the greatest metrics for measuring quality of competition. The best we can do is look at the average corsi-for percentage or expected goals for percentage of the opposition he faced on a nightly basis. Some valuable information may get lost in that process, but that doesn’t mean looking at QoC stats is completely worthless.

When looking at both the average CF% and xGF% of Boeser’s competition, it appears that your intuition is correct. Among Canucks regulars, only Brandon Sutter and Loui Eriksson faced tougher competition. That’s either a reflection of Travis Green’s deployment, teams keying in on Boeser, depending on who you ask.

If Boeser does regress it’s more likely to be from a regression in shooting percentage than anything else. Boeser can probably eventually get his shot rates up enough to withstand a drop in his conversion rate, I’m just not sure if that will happen as soon as next season.

I don’t think you can go wrong with either one, but Bob has the longer and (I would argue) better track record when it comes to these matters. You can always trust both of them to only report or speculate on something if it has legs, but Bob’s rumours seem to come true more often, at least as far as I can recall.

My advice to anyone trying to decide which game to go to is always to pick a team with a big name on the roster. That way, even if the Canucks get shelled, at least you got to see *insert player* in the flesh.

It really all depends on whether or not Elias Pettersson can stick at centre. If he plays on the wing, the Canucks will likely have to go shopping for another scoring centre or look to the draft unless someone in the system can surprise. The truth is, I don’t feel strongly enough about any prospect not named Elias Pettersson to pencil them into the top-nine until they’ve earned it, so outside of the probability that Baertschi-Horvat-Boeser remains the team’s first line in the near future the rest of the lineup is really anyone’s guess.

One of the things we learned from the Mike Gillis era is how potentially embarrassing it can be to miss out on prospects in your own backyard. For that reason alone, it’s probably wise for the organization to cultivate an intimate knowledge of the Giants. There’s no risk attached to a Young Stars invite, so I’m all for it. In Plouffe’s case, there may even be something there.

It’s close, but I’m going to have to go with the latter. Obviously, an offensively potent Loui Eriksson would change the look of the team and significantly increase his trade value; but an additional second-round pick and a blue-chip prospect would be huge additions for the team at this stage in their life-cycle, especially because Gudbranson’s value is basically negligible at this point.

The first part of this question was harder to answer than you’d think. As far as I can tell, the Florida Panthers, Ottawa Senators, and Los Angeles Kings tied for the league lead in amount or rookies to play at least one game last season, with ten. I don’t think it’s even possible for the Canucks to come close to that total unless they see a virtually unprecedented number of injuries.

Fans who are expecting to see Sam Gagner anywhere other than on the active roster come the first game of the season are living in a fantasy world. I’d estimate there are at least half a dozen or so players the team would be more likely to cut bait with than him. He had a bad season last year, but so did a lot of other players. For better or worse, the Canucks have been very loyal to their free agent signings, and it seems unlikely they’d be willing to risk turning off future suitors by waiving a big free-agent signing in the middle of his three-year contract. At best, they might look to trade him if there isn’t room for him on the roster, but I’d imagine there isn’t a huge market for his services.