Monday Mailbag: Elias Pettersson’s Linemates, Young Stars, and the Salary Cap

To be honest, I’m not sure I can see Gaudette making the team out of camp given how many veterans will be filling out the bottom six. However, Tim Schaller underwent hand surgery in late May and it sounds as though he won’t be healthy in time for camp, so there’s a chance he makes the cut if the team decides to roll with 14 forwards.

If Pettersson plays the wing in his first season I maintain that the the best bet for the team would be to put him alongside Bo Horvat where Brock Boeser played for much of last year, and hope Boeser can create enough offence to prop up a player like Sam Gagner at even-strength. If he plays at centre, I’d imagine he’ll get a shot with just about any winger with offensive upside.

It’s way too early for this conversation. I lean towards Cozens but that will almost certainly change multiple times between now and June.

It’s hard to say, given that he has yet to play an NHL game, but my best guess is he’ll start at right wing, and if he plays on the first unit power play he can probably hit 40-50 points.

What’s commonly referred to as “analytics” is really just a series of outputs, whereas things like strength and conditioning are inputs. So, stats like Corsi or p/60 or expected goals don’t exactly take those elements into account so much as they are a reflection of being a good hockey player. Sometimes that means the player in question has excellent conditioning. Occasionally, it doesn’t.

Injuries are inevitable. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with signing some extra depth players as insurance. It only becomes an issue when a team isn’t willing to sit veterans in favour of younger, more skilled players. I don’t think it’s outlandish to suggest that in many ways, the injury bug has been a blessing in disguise for the Canucks’ front office. It’s shielded them from criticism when the team has performed poorly, and it’s forced them to ice more youth than they may have otherwise.

If the Canucks finally put together a healthy season, it will be fascinating to see how the market reacts, and what the message from the team’s management will be. I don’t expect any of Jay Beagle, Brandon Sutter, Antoine Roussell, Sam Gagner, or Markus Granlund to sit in favour of Nikolay Goldobin, Brendan Leipsic, or Adam Gaudette. If the team performs poorly while icing a veteran-heavy lineup, it will be interesting to see how the front office responds.

I’m not certain whether you’re talking about the 2017 or 2018 draft, so I’ll just cover my bases and answer for both.

2017: Aleksi Heponiemi

2018: Jonatan Berggren or Akil Thomas

The Alberta teams wanted to do something local. There was talk of moving the tournament to Red Deer in 2018, but the plan was scrapped (thankfully). The CIS teams are just there to pad out the schedule with some extra games over the weekend, they won’t be facing off against Vancouver or Winnipeg. The hope is that things will return to normal in 2019, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a compromise is reached and they rotate the tournament back and forth from Penticton and another location every other year.

I think the salary cap has absolutely made the game more competitive. Most teams can afford to sign their star players now, and the league doesn’t have issues with small-market teams becoming farm systems for the richer ones like we see in Major League Baseball. Sure, not all teams spend to the cap, but the difference between the salary cap and the salary floor is small enough that even teams with a shoestring internal budget can offer up a competitive product. If you sort by projected cap space for the 2018-19 season, you’ll see plenty of competitive and up-and-coming teams that don’t necessarily spend a lot of money.

I remember being a child in the early aughts and watching the New York Rangers become the place where superstars went to die while small-market teams couldn’t even field a remotely competitive roster. It was embarrassing and I’m glad fans aren’t suffering through that kind of excess anymore.

That’s not to say that criticism of the salary cap isn’t valid. It deprives fans of the dynasties and super-teams that were an essential part of the league’s history for most of the 20th century, and there are moral and philosophical issues that spring up from putting a cap on the earnings of the labourers who provide 100% of the entertainment. Its not a perfect system, but it’s absolutely achieved its goal. The league is more competitive now than ever.