Report: Canucks Showing Interest in Jiri Hudler and Vadim Shipachyov
By Jeremy Davis
7 years agoThe frenzy of free agency has long since slowed to a crawl, but that doesn’t mean that the Canucks have stopped answering the phones. Jim Benning has been open about the fact that he’d still be open to signing another winger, preferably one that brings both skill and grit.
Earlier today, News 1130 revealed that the player agent Petr Svoboda has been in contact with the Canucks regarding two of his clients – forwards Jiri Hudler and Vadim Shipachyov. Is there anything to consider there?
Jiri Hudler is a 5-foot-10, 183 pound winger coming off of a pretty so-so season, in which he scored 16 goals and 46 points in 72 games split between the Calgary Flames and Florida Panthers. It was just two seasons ago that he had a renaissance year, putting up 76 points in 78 games. Of course, he converted goals at a rate of 19.6 percent that year, four and half points above his career average, as the Flames rode the PDO train into the playoffs. Now, Hudler is 32 and looking for a new contract, one that should be signed with more modest expectations in mind, such as what he accomplished in 2015-16.
Hudler is a smaller, skilled player. In many ways, he was a model for his even smaller and more skilled former teammate Johnny Gaudreau in Calgary, playing a similar shifty game, finding soft spots and converting plenty of plays while also being a mentor to Gaudreau and fellow youngster Sean Monahan.
In terms of a fit with the Canucks, the scoring part checks out, even at his current reduced rate, but the grit factor that Benning was interested in is certainly not there. The age is also a poor fit for the Canucks, who certainly couldn’t be interested in committing term to an early-30’s forward of Hudler’s type.
Hudler is still a good player and could be a useful contributor in a team’s middle six, but given that the Canucks are already going to be at risk of waiving a young player, adding another older one would be a little odd. Personally, I’d rather see those middle six minutes go to guys like Rodin, Granlund and Etem, and maybe allowing Gaunce and Grenier to get into more games as well. Hudler isn’t a long term bet, so you might as well see what you’ve got in the young wingers on your roster.
Vadim Shipachyov is probably best known to us North Americans for tearing up this year’s IIHF World Championships, when he put up 18 points in 10 games for the Russian national team. His 18 points and 1.8 points per game led the entire tournament. He had a successful year in the KHL as well, putting up 60 points in 54 for SKA St. Petersburg, where he was also the captain. That level of production equates to approximately 73 NHL points over an 82 game season, according to the NHLe translation metric.
Shipachyov is still under contract in the KHL, and his level of interest in coming to North America is unknown. There’s also a bit of mystery surrounding whether he’s even allowed to leave the KHL, given that he’s still under contract, but teams still seem to be negotiating with him regardless. He was never drafted to the NHL and has never played professionally on this side of the Atlantic.
On the confusion surrounding his availability, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman had this to say:
Vadim Shipachyov was not eligible to come to the NHL last month and now he is. (I assume that’s because St. Petersburg landed Pavel Datsyuk.) Whatever the case, if my reporting about Radulov turns out to be inaccurate, I will eat it. His asking price scared away most NHL teams.
Which was quickly amended by new and even more confusing information.
A KHL official read this overnight. He reached out to say Shipachyov is still under contract with SKA and expected to be in camp July 11. Meanwhile, my head has exploded.
As a centre, Shipachyov doesn’t exactly match the Canucks immediate positional wants. The Canucks do of course need an eventual successor to Henrik Sedin, though at 29 he doesn’t really fit with the young core that they’re building and could in fact be too old to hold that role by the time the Canucks belong to Brock Boeser, Thatcher Demko, and Olli Juolevi.
Still, Shipachyov’s performance at the Worlds has made him a hot commodity, and it really just seems like due diligence at this point to gauge his interest in coming to Vancouver, just as almost every other team is doing. From Friedman well prior to free agency:
One GM had a good line about Vadim Shipachyov.. Asked if he was having any luck signing him, the exec replied, “I’m trying like everyone else.” So it’s pretty intense.
Given that it’s been a couple of months and a lot of teams have committed a lot of money to other free agents, there’s probably a much shorter list of realistic suitors for the Russian centre. One might think that Shipachyov is more likely to join a team that is in a win now mode, rather than one entrenched in a rebuild, but the fact that his agent is still in contact with the Canucks at this point seems to indicate otherwise. Money talks after all.
Speaking of money, the Canucks have around $4 million in cap space to offer any further potential free agents. This could keep them in the running for Hudler, but likely would have them out on Shipachev (whose asking price has scared away most teams, according to Friedman), unless they’re finally able to move a contract and clear cap space.
In all likelihood, this is probably much ado about nothing. Hudler isn’t really a great fit for the Canucks and the Canucks aren’t really a great fit for Shipachyov. But for now we’ll wait and see how it plays out.
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