Report: Hutton might not be qualified

With the deadline to provide restricted free agents qualifying offers coming up at 2 PM tomorrow, everyone has focused their attention to some of the pending restricted free agents that the Canucks have.

Rick Dhaliwal with Sportsnet 650 was busy this afternoon providing the updates.

It’s important to remember that this is what Rick has heard at this moment and things could change between now and 2 PM tomorrow.

So, let’s start with Ben Hutton.

There have been various reports over the last few weeks that the Canucks might not qualify Ben Hutton as they are concerned that he will take them to arbitration and they would be unable to walk away from the awarded salary. As Rick mentions, if it is under $4.4M per season, they would have to accept the deal.

Thus they may explore the avenue of not qualifying Hutton.

They did a similar thing with Derrick Pouliot last season as they were concerned about the same issue but were able to come to a new deal with him prior to July 1st. The issue is that once that deadline passes, the players can speak to other teams and could very well just leave.

It feels like the Canucks are about to give up an asset for nothing while worrying about a cap issue that shouldn’t be a concern. Hutton isn’t a fantastic player but does provide value to their group and letting him walk with nothing come back would seem a bit misguided.

Things could change between now and the deadline, as they could find a deal to move his rights, which is something that Dhaliwal mentioned:

Furthermore, the report may not be true and they do provide him with a QO by tomorrow, as they did with Pouliot, or agree to a new deal.

Dhaliwal provided two more updates this afternoon

This isn’t too surprising as the Canucks management group appeared ready to have Goldobin back and work with him to continue to be part of the solution here. The Canucks need more offensive depth and letting Goldobin walk at this point would be counterintuitive.

Boucher spent most of last season in Utica as their top line winger and that is likely what they envision for him next year. He has seen some games at the NHL level but clearly lacks the foot speed to be a regular and instead slots in as a depth forward to help the kids in Utica and then play in the NHL in a pinch.

It will be interesting to see how the next 24 hours plays out with Hutton as it’s clear that the Canucks want to make changes to the backend.

There is no disagreeing with the fact that they need to make those changes but letting a player like Hutton for nothing isn’t the best look for an organization that isn’t rife with assets.