Monday Mailbag: Zack MacEwen, The Trade Deadline, and Fixing the Injury Problem

To be honest, I don’t think ignoring evidence that doesn’t conform to your worldview is in any way unique to hockey. Someone in the replies used politics as an example, and the examples are so obvious and plentiful that I won’t bother listing them here.

I live in Victoria, where we just saw the highest snowfall for the month of February on record in just over a three-day period. The entire city has one snowplow. For most of Monday night and Tuesday, the roads were unsafe and buses weren’t running. Most businesses closed. But I know of a few restaurants that stayed open in spite of the fact that they were understaffed and all the evidence pointed to the likelihood that they wouldn’t make any money. I know for a fact that one of them served so few people on Tuesday afternoon and had so few employees available to make it in for the night shift that they closed up shop at 4 PM.

I don’t want to sound too much like Slavoj Zizek, but the reason those places stayed open was ideological, not practical or evidence-based. It was because, for whatever reason, the people in charge felt like it was the right thing to do. The service industry is about as results-driven as any other business on earth, and as someone with a decade of kitchen experience I’m willing to bet it’s every bit as insane and illogical as the hockey world.

I understand your frustration, but I think we’re all gonna have to be patient when it comes to Zack MacEwen’s ice time. I can’t think of any coach in the NHL who wouldn’t keep an AHL call-up with no NHL experience on a short leash. Coaches are inherently conservative when it comes to deployment, and it’s fair to criticize that, but I don’t think this is the time to do it. Travis Green more than likely just wants to see what he has in MacEwen before he takes the kid gloves off and that’s a reasonable route for any professional to take. Now, if in three weeks time he’s proven to be a better option than other guys and the lineup and he’s still getting the same treatment, complain all you want. I’ll be right there with you. I just think it’s unfair to do so before we’ve seen more of Zack.

The two big fish in this year’s crop of NCAA free agents appear to be Taro Hirose (LW, Michigan State) and Joseph Duszak (D, Mercyhurst). Both players are undersized and known for their offensive skill, and have a track record of strong production that goes back long enough to indicate this season isn’t a fluke. Odeen Tufto (C, Quinnipiac) is another player who’s stat line jumps off the page, but I’m not sure it will be enough to overcome his 5’8″ stature.

To be honest, it doesn’t look like a particularly strong crop this year. The only player that should really be of interest to the Canucks is Duszak, who has a history of elite production at every level and would fit an organizational need as a right-handed defender. He’d be a worthy target.

The easy solution would be to bring in some new voices. Obviously I’m not privy to what conversations are going on behind the scenes, but the current approach isn’t working. The Canucks have had better luck at the draft, where data has been increasingly incorporated into their decision making, perhaps a similar approach could be brought to the pro scouting department. I feel like I’m always saying the solution is to give Jon Wall more of an influence, but it couldn’t hurt.

The only thing I could really see making sense is a one-for-one swap of underperforming prospects, with someone like Nikolay Goldobin or Olli Juolevi going the other way. I’m not sure if the Canucks should be interested, though. Something is clearly amiss with Puljujarvi and I wouldn’t want to part with futures unless I know what it is. Nikolay Goldobin and Olli Juolevi have their own issues, but at least the organization is familiar with what they are and can manage them. Plujujarvi is just a giant question mark right now. That doesn’t mean he’s not a worthy target, but I’d just like to have a better idea of what the issue is in Edmonton before I make an offer.

I think it’s going to be a quiet deadline, largely because the pieces I think they’d be interested in moving are going to become easier to trade in the summer. If they can find a taker for Loui Eriksson, I think that’s a deal they would make, but his limited NTC doesn’t kick in until July 1st. The same goes for Brandon Sutter, who could still generate some interest from a contending team and looks to be the odd man out after the Ryan Spooner trade.

The one big piece I could see moving at this year’s deadline is Erik Gudbranson, but I don’t know if the offers are out there anymore. He’s been bad enough to scare teams off and I wouldn’t be surprised if the interest that was there a year ago has evaporated.

Obviously, I think you have to take look inside the organization at the medical staff, strength and conditioning coaches, even the dietitian or whoever is in charge of what the players are putting in their bodies just as an act of due diligence; but I think you’ve correctly identified the bigger issue. The Canucks are over-reliant on players who have proven to be prone to injury. Alex Edler and Chris Tanev are good defenders, but you can’t act surprised when they get hurt anymore. It’s just part of their player profile and you either have to accept it and plan for it or move on.

To be honest, I’m not very familar with Mitch Eliot at all, and my viewings of Matt Brassard have been fairly limited, so I thought I’d reach out to Jeremy Davis and get him to fire up the ol’ PGPS machine and see what it says.

It would appear that, from a statistical perspective, your assessment was basically correct. Both are low-percentage prospects without a huge precedent for future success, with Brassard looking like a slightly better bet at this stage. I should point out that Zack MacEwen looked like a bad bet too, though, and we’ll be eating crow for quite awhile on that one. There’s obvious limits to the pGPS system, and the biggest among them is that it makes no considerations for context or work ethic. At a cursory glance, I’d say neither player is really worth a contract but it’s up to the Canucks’ amateur staff to identify the players who may have fallen through the cracks.

For starters, I’d say it’s unfair to include Luke Schenn in that equation because he was mostly a salary dump. When it comes to the other two, I think you might be on to something; but it extends beyond just those two players, and even beyond defensemen in general. Looking back at the laundry list of failed players they’ve acquired – Luca Sbisa, Linden Vey, Adam Clendening, Emerson Etem, etc.- the organization has seemed at times to overestimate how much of a player’s development occurs after the age of 22-23. On too many occasions, they’ve seen potential to develop and improve in players that had more than likely reached the height of their abilities. I think that speaks to an issue with pro scouting in general, not just when it comes to defensemen.

As far as Olli Juolevi is concerned, I think that was just an ill-advised pick. Juolevi’s numbers in his draft year were relatively uninspiring and I think the organization underestimated how much they had been inflated by playing on the OHL’s best offensive team. He still has an NHL future, but it will likely be similar to the career Jake Virtanen is in the process of carving out: a useful player, but not one who produces at the rate you’d hope for out of a top 5-6 pick.

Adam Gaudette and Zack MacEwen should both be on the team next season, and I won’t be surprised by any means if they make the team out of camp, but the team will have to figure out how to make the numbers work first. MacEwen can move in and out of the lineup and up and down from the minors to the NHL for awhile if need be, but there simply isn’t a spot for Gaudette in a healthy lineup as it’s currently constructed. Even if Ryan Spooner plays on the wing, there’s still four natural centres ahead of him on the depth chart. Someone is going to have to get moved if they want him in the NHL. Unless that happens, don’t be surprised if the team looks more or less the same next year.

He’s been incredible. He’s been the Canucks’ leader among regular defenders in underlying shot-based metrics, and that’s only continued as his role, ice-time, and quality of competition has increased.

I don’t know how many times it needs to be said, but while quality of competition is obviously important, it does not account for massive differences in on-ice shot metrics or production. That’s why we’ve seen Ben Hutton and Troy Stecher continue to put up decent results in the absence of Alex Edler and Chris Tanev while Erik Gudbranson continues to get scored against at an unprecedented pace regardless of who his partner is.

Among defenders on the current roster, Troy Stecher is the best bet to be an effective part of top-four in three years time. What we’re seeing from him has been a long time coming. All he needed was a bigger role, so he could continue doing what he’s done for most of the season.

I believe the plan is for Spooner to join the team when they return to Vancouver. I expect to see him remain on the active roster for the rest of the season.

I think they could move on from both and the organization would be no lesser for it. Brassard’s been okay, and if the Canucks see something there it may be enough to justify a contract. Gunnarsson would be a hard pass from me. It was a strange pick at the time and it looks even less defensible today than it did at the time of the draft.

Zack MacEwen is probably going to be a victim of the numbers game once the team gets healthy. I just can’t see the Canucks putting a player on waivers unless they absolutely have to. MacEwen has looked good, but not good enough to force their hand.

You can absolutely play Nikolay Goldobin. The best bet moving forward is to play him in the top 9, let him get his reps in, tell him to work on his shot, and hope he turns the corner. He’s got the talent. He just needs to put the work in.

The team’s I’d be looking at are the Winnipeg Jets and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Both are going to be in a cap crunch this summer, and while I expect they’ll get their big guys locked down, it’s more than likely they’ll have to part ways with a secondary piece. Guys like Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson on the Leafs and Kyle Connor and Jacob Trouba on the Jets could be victims of the numbers game, and all would be worthy targets for the Canucks at the right price.