Okay, Fine, Let’s Talk About Jiri Hudler Again

USA Today: © Sergei Belski

The Canucks are over a month into an exhaustive search of the trade market for an established scoring winger and don’t seem any closer to finding a match now than they were when the league year started on July 1st.

It should come as no surprise then that the Canucks are dipping their toes back into the waters of free agency. Specifically, they’re rumoured to be in the hunt for Jiri Hudler. Now, this should come as no surprise given the Canucks needs and the history between their Assistant General Manager John Weisbrod and Hudler. Their paths crossed with the Calgary Flames many seasons ago.

Hudler brings to the table much of what the Canucks have publicly expressed a need for this off-season. He’s a proven goal scorer, reliable from his own end and offers veteran savvy to a forward group riddled with question marks scribbled in no small way by the age of the players they hang over. 

Let’s take a look at why this might make sense for the Canucks and what kind of impact this might have on the complexion of their lineup. 

We should note before we start carving into Hudler’s bona fides that this isn’t the first such report of the Canucks interest this off-season. Just a week into free agency News 1130 AM reported that Hudler was ready to sign that day, and the Canucks were rumoured to be in the hunt. Here we are a month later and, well, nothing, save for another espousal of Vancouver’s interest and a possibly, maybe, could sign this week. Again.

On that same day, the Canucks were connected, loosely, to KHL superstar and World Hockey Championship standout, Vadim Shipachyov. Now, if you were to connect the dots between the two, you’d note that both Hudler and Shipachyov are natural centres. And I happen to think the Canucks chasing a pair of forwards with that kind of positional versatility isn’t a coincidence.

Though the Canucks have spent much of this off-season chasing a scoring winger, I’d like to think the icing on the cake for them would be a player with some experience down the middle of the ice. The Canucks couldn’t find a spot for Jared McCann on their roster this season and he was taking regular shifts on their first line by late-December last season. An insurance policy certainly wouldn’t hurt.

It’s been a minute since Hudler featured in a substantial role down the middle of any of his team’s lineups, but he’s more than capable. Hudler first cut his teeth in the NHL as a centre, after all.

There’s no telling for certain whether that’s played a role in the Canucks continued interest, but it’s an assumption one can comfortably make upon reviewing Jim Benning’s prior experience in the NHL.

When Benning was the Assistant General Manager of the Boston Bruins in 2011, they won the Stanley Cup with no less than seven natural centres in their lineup in any given post-season game. It’s a lot easier to force a centre to play wing than vice versa. Having the ability to swap centres in and out of your lineup based on specific needs and faceoff locations seems to make intuitive sense as value added over the course of an 82 game season, too.

And whether the Canucks value that positional dexterity to the extent I’ve given them credit, they’d be well within their right to covet Hudler the winger as just that. Only 15 players have generated even strength offence at a higher rate than Hudler over the last three seasons. Some of that you can attribute to gaudy percentages, but even then, if we’re talking about a true talent 40th or 50th best producer of even strength offence, that’s a boon to the Canucks offence right off the hop.

For the Canucks, who generated offence at the fourth lowest rate at even strength in the league last season, Hudler represents a sizeable step towards fixing that ill. At this point though it’s a question of logistics. Can the Canucks fit Hudler under the cap? They’ve only $3.2-million in wiggle room according to www.GeneralFanager.com. They’re already facing a roster squeeze too, with fewer openings than players available to fill them.

If they have an answer to all these questions and the resources to make such a move work, then power to them. I’m having a hard time seeing a fit as is, though, and I’d expect another move, or perhaps even a series of moves to follow if the Canucks can, in fact, secure Hudler’s services. You know what, though? Hudler is very probably worth the trouble.

Update: Since writing this post, The Province’s Jason Botchford went on TSN 1040 to speak about Hudler and broached the possibility of a reunion with Radim Vrbata. I wrote about the possibility of the latter in March.