Monday Mailbag: A Tyler Myers extension, skydiving for Bedard, and were the Canucks too slow with J.T. Miller?

Well, it’s official. Today is August 1st and that means that we can finally say that Canucks training camp is next month!

It’s been a hot week here on the west coast and the Canucks didn’t get up to too much at all this week. There are still a few potential lower-value free agents that the Canucks could target but right now it feels like if there is going to be a notable change to the roster, it will come from trading a winger for a defenceman.

On this week’s episode of the Canucks Conversation podcast, Quads and I set out our ideal forward lines if there is no change to the roster from now until opening night. We both had Nils Höglander on our fourth line and that doesn’t feel like it’s the way the Canucks are going to want to run things in 2022-23.

It got me thinking about what is more likely…

Is it more likely that Tanner Pearson starts on the fourth line, or that Höglander starts in the AHL?

We would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments and I’ll be working on an article about Höglander this week.

For now, we’ve got some questions to answer in this week’s Monday Mailbag at CanucksArmy! We have a couple of questions from last week’s mailbag. As the new procedure says, add (#MM) to your question in the comments section on this article to have it potentially included in next week’s mailbag. It’s been great to include the comments section instead of only relying on Twitter.

We have had a bit of a slow week in Canuckland but there are still plenty of questions for us to delve into. Let’s rip open the digital mailbag and see what we have for questions this week!

If you want to see the Canucks win, you have to say yes to this question. I’ve always thought that skydiving would be easier than bungee jumping. With skydiving, it feels like you are so high up that maybe the worry of heights isn’t as strong.

I’d be making that jump for sure. Connor Bedard has the potential to be the next franchise player, and he’s a huge Canucks fan.

Landing this type of talent would be amazing for the Canucks and skydiving for a 50/50 shot shouldn’t be a no for just about any Canucks fan.

Bungee jumping though? Now that’s scary.

After a week off from J.T. Miller talk, I guess it’s my duty to dive back in on the topic this week.

The Canucks may have over-slow-played this situation with Miller. The trade market felt like it was hot on Miller at the trade deadline and I’m starting to wonder if the best value could have been attained in a trade where Miller was a two-year rental. The Canucks could have retained some of his $5,250,000 and likely gotten a massive haul at last season’s deadline.

It feels like there has been a lot of movement around the league but still, one of the top-rumoured trade targets has not been moved. I do believe that the Canucks have an extremely high ask for Miller and honestly, that’s what they should be doing.

There are times when I worry about what the return will be for Miller if he is a Canuck all the way up to this coming season’s deadline. It makes me believe that trading Miller at last season’s deadline with even a small amount of money retained would have returned the best asset.

We are now in a situation where Miller’s next contract is the biggest part of a trade. The Canucks will be able to receive a strong return if the trade partner is able to lock in Miller to a bit extension. The return may be lacking if a team is simply adding Miller as a one-run rental for the 2022-23 playoffs.

It’s still very possible that Miller returns a great haul before the season starts and we can rejoice about the new building blocks of the Canucks’ future. I don’t believe that the team has slow-played this situation past the point of no return, but in my eyes, they have taken the riskier path in how to manage an asset as big as J.T. Miller.

It would take a lot of money from another sponsor.

The good news about Jett Woo is that he just turned 22 years old. He celebrated his birthday last week and though he wasn’t able to grab a spot on the defence in the AHL playoffs, he still has some skills that are decently exciting.

We didn’t rank Woo in our top-10 prospects last week because of how hard he fell off last season. Battling injuries and playing forward really made us question if there is any NHL potential for Woo. After his rookie AHL season, he looked impressive and we thought that if he continued to improve, we could be talking about a potential bottom pairing in the NHL of Jack Rathbone and Woo.

Woo didn’t get a lot of games alongside Rathbone this past season and simply put, he was not one of the best three right-shot defencemen when it came to putting together the playoff roster. Some of that could have been from battling a mid-season injury but it also represents that there wasn’t much improvement last season.

For a while, we thought Woo found his game early in the season and his coach had high expectations for what Woo was going to do in the second half of the season. It just seemed that he didn’t improve much on his puck-handling and that came to bite him in the ass when he returned from injury.

We’re hoping that he comes out next season and surprises us. There’s an easy path for him to get back into the top-10 prospects in the system as he plays a position of extreme value and we like his playstyle when he’s on his game.

It’s going to take at least one more season of AHL development before we are able to talk about Woo getting even a sniff of the NHL. Even getting games at the NHL feels like a long shot right now. There will need to be a lot of improvements in his game this coming season before we consider Woo a better call-up option than Noah Juulsen, Kyle Burroughs, or Brady Keeper.

Let’s hope Woo can surprise us this fall. We will need to see a big improvement from last season.

It’s an interesting question because Tyler Myers played pretty well last season as more of a defensive defenceman than he has ever played in his NHL career.

If he continues to improve defensively and becomes a bit more physical, there could be a few more years added into Myers’ career. He could end up re-signing with the Canucks after this year. He got the big deal to come here, maybe he would take a bit less than he could make elsewhere to stay.

Myers does spend his offseasons in Kelowna and clearly likes it here in British Columbia.

Three years at $3,500,000. Would that be alright?

Right now, Will Lockwood is probably the 14th or 15th forward on the depth chart.

I expect him to show very well in camp but it would likely take a few very strong preseason games for him to crack the NHL roster out of camp. Lockwood plays an aggressive game but lacks the scoring touch that is needed to stick in the NHL.

He is without a point in 15 NHL games and that needs to change if Lockwood is going to be able to be an everyday NHLer one day.

The good news is that when there eventually happens to be injuries to the forward group, having Lockwood be the call-up to slide into your fourth line is a great thing. Lockwood will come with energy in every shift and uses his speed to make it difficult on the opposition.

There’s still work to go before Lockwood is an NHLer, but for now, he will go be a very important piece in Abbotsford and will be awaiting that call once we see a forward or two go down early in the NHL season.

The prospects ran in teams at the development camp’s grouse grind.

Here’s a post about the times. I was told the Sedins ran in the morning before the development camp groups went up.

So we don’t know which player was the quickest as they had to work together in teams and couldn’t finish until their entire team was up the grind.

I’m unsure if they have been completed but we did have Patrik Allvin’s free agency availability in the Sportsbar. That makes me believe there is a lot more going on in the former media and locker room areas.

if they are a top-two team in the Pacific Division, then, and then only then, should they consider keeping Miller.

I don’t like seeing an asset leave for free but if the Canucks can be one of the top-two teams in the Pacific, they have earned the right to fight in the playoffs with Miller.

Well, that wraps up another Monday mailbag here at CanucksArmy. We will be back with more updates on the team throughout the week and will begin to evaluate how some of the lines will shake down.

It’s that time of the year for some slow stuff but that should give our imagination’s some room to breathe and have some fun.

We will see you next week for another Monday Mailbag article. Thanks again for all the questions on Twitter and in the comments sections here. If you want to ask a question, be sure to begin your comment with (#MM), and ask away!

See you all next Monday.