According to a report, the Vancouver Canucks qualified Jacob Markstrom’s contract on Tuesday night, meaning they intend to retain control of his rights for another season. On it’s own, this would hardly be newsworthy as it just represents dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s, but given the Eddie Lack backdrop, it may look a bit suspicious.

Does this move spell the end of Eddie Lack in Vancouver? We’ll explore after the jump.

There’s not a whole lot of info to go off of here, but it sounds like Markstrom is still without a contract, and this is merely the Canucks retaining their rights to first refusal (matching contract offers) and draft pick compensation, per Section 10.2 of the most recent NHL CBA. Tendering a qualifying offer to Markstrom, or any other RFA for that matter, had to be done by 2:00 PM PST this Thursday, so this is merely a bit of paperwork and due diligence.

Personally, I doubt Markstrom will accept his qualifying offer right away, even though it carries a $1.4 million base salary. He’ll likely want to negotiate more dollars and term, given that the organization thinks highly of him and he dominated the AHL. He wants to be an NHL goalie, and he wants a contract that will force his team to give him every opportunity to prove he’s good enough.

Of course, and we’ve been over this a thousand times, Markstrom staying would mean that Eddie Lack is going. Miller is staying put, the team can’t afford both, etc. etc. Oh, and Bob McKenzie dropped this nugget of info on TSN 1040 yesterday:

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we think this is a horrendous idea if the plan is truly and honestly to compete for a playoff spot next season. And if you haven’t, I can now tell you that we think this is a horrendous idea if the plan is truly and honestly to compete for a playoff spot next season. 

However, if Benning and the front office are quietly planning for a full-on rebuild and Lack nets them the best future asset, then that’s a different story. Trading Lack might net them the most value, but with Miller (based on age and performance last year) and Markstrom (based on a previous inability to stop NHL pucks) both more likely to struggle next year than Lack, offloading Lack would also grant a better chance at Auston Matthews or Jacob Chychrun in the 2016 draft, and a brighter long-term future for the Canucks.

Even though it’s getting tougher and tougher to hold this position especially since Bob McKenzie reported something that directly contradicts it, I still just can’t see Vancouver pulling the trigger on an Eddie Lack trade. He’s their best goalie right now, the organization’s goalie coaches think he’s their best goalie right now, and given how sensitive the team is to re-building their image and getting butts in seats, they have to be acutely aware that the fanbase would hate any such move.

Also, qualifying Markstrom merely means that he will not go to unrestricted free agency on July 1st. He does not have a contract, and this move does not signal that the Canucks have made up their mind on who they’re keeping. Markstrom could still very easily be the guy on the way out. We have no way of knowing if Benning and co. have made up their minds on who to keep until a trade actually happens.

And the way things are starting to pick up, that could be any day now.