iI’m not saying I want the Panthers to Luuuuuuuuuuuse, but you have to imagine this streak ends soon, no? Bobby Lu is doing some Vezina-quality net production and the Jagr-Barkov-Huberdeau line has been great, but the rest of the team bleeds away the puck in fascinating fashion.

I don’t know if the Canucks are the team that brings them back to Earth, but it would be fun to see tonight. In the meantime, here are a couple of mailbag questions to get you prepped for puck drop!

The circumstances were a little bit different for Lecavalier. The contract length is the same on paper, but in practice, everybody knows that Lecavalier is retiring at the end of this season. Luke Schenn is a pending UFA, both players have their salaries retained at 50%, and both of their names had more or less disappeared from the trade block after some speculation at the start of the year. The Flyers, amazingly, found a way to shed both players contracts while still remaining in a position of power.

The Canucks don’t quite have the same position of power here. Yes, they’re the ones choosing to end Higgins’ time here, but literally everybody knows it. As it stands, a conditional pick and an expiring contract is the likely end game here. Another question-asker suggested potentially retaining his salary, but I don’t think the ends justify the means there; by the time you retain half of a $2.5 million cap hit, you may as well just send him to the Comets and keep him.

As for bundling in Hunter Shinkaruk, you don’t use one of your top prospects as bait to trade a player to make room for one of your top prospects. That’s beyond purpose-defeating, short-sighted, and generally silly.

Going into July, the Canucks have Matt Bartkowski, Yannick Weber, Taylor Fedun, Alex Biega, and Dan Hamhuis as unrestricted free agents, and Andrey Pedan as a restricted free agent.

Looking at the UFA group, Fedun and Biega are basically a coin toss, based on whether the team feels a need for contract space or not. Both are serviceable in and around the league minimum on one or two-way deals. Bartkowski and Weber will be products of demand; if either thinks they deserve a significant raise they will likely be walked away from, but the organization likely sees value in both (for entirely different reasons) at their current tags.

Hamhuis is tricky. Many had him as a deadline day asset to see, but he may not make off the IR in time to make that worth the risk for a team. In that case, the Canucks could look to him to stay another year as a veteran presence, but I doubt they’ll be overly stressed to let him go if he asks for a lengthy deal. Pedan is a lock to get a qualifying offer and then sign a normal, low-cost contract shortly after.

Basically, we’re at the “who knows” stage still. It’s very early and not a single one of these guys have made a significant case one way or another.

If you gave the keys to me and handed me today’s roster, you probably take out Linden Vey up front, and, honestly, you leave Sbisa as a seven until there’s reason to not do so. Some people have pointed to the Canucks losing games without him as proof that their worst possession and production defenceman is worth while. But I don’t think that’s the case; the team nosedove at a coincidental time. Next to none of the results that Sbisa produces for the team are correlated with winning in the long-term, and there’s nobody I’d definitely rank him over in the lineup right now.

With that said, it’ll be Alex Biega who comes out.

Oh, and by “it’ll be Alex Biega who comes out”, I mean “another half dozen Canucks will get injured by the time these two come back, so whoever they replace is probably in Utica right now”.

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