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CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag: Lukas Jasek, The Sedins, Rasmus Dahlin and… Kevin Connauton?
Vancouver Canucks mailbag
Photo credit: Matthew Henderson
J.D. Burke
Apr 4, 2018, 13:00 EDTUpdated: Apr 3, 2018, 21:35 EDT
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From what I can gather, teams in the Extraliiga have to ice a certain number of players under the age of 20 on their roster. So my guess is that HC Ocerlari Trinec kept Lukas Jasek around to hit that quota, and the coach never had any inclination to go above and beyond that. I think he played something like seven minutes a game on the rare occasion that he’d actually play.
I’d love to do something along those lines, but Ryan Biech and I being on opposite sides of the radio aisle means it’d be difficult to put together. We’ll see what we can do.
The parameters for this question are a bit vague. We don’t know the draft order yet, much less the CanucksArmy draft board. I’ll try to answer it all the same. For this thought experiment, I’ve run the NHL Draft Lottery simulator to create a board. Let’s do this.
  1. Rasmus Dahlin – Arizona Coyotes
  2. Ottawa Senators – Andrei Svechnikov
  3. Buffalo Sabres – Filip Zadina
  4. Montreal Canadiens – Quinn Hughes
  5. Vancouver Canucks – Oliver Wahlstrom
  6. Detroit Red Wings – Adam Boqvist
  7. Edmonton Oilers – Brady Tkachuk
  8. New York Islanders – Jesperi Kotkaniemi
  9. Chicago Blackhawks – Noah Dobson
  10. New York Rangers – Ty Smith
I have a hard time seeing Troy Stecher get any less than $3-million annually on his next contract.
The league, whether it’s scouts or draft analysts, all think highly of Thatcher Demko. He’s one of the best goaltending prospects in the game. Adam Gaudette, on the other hand, is in almost every system in one form or another. The major difference is that most teams can’t find a player of this quality with their fifth-round pick.
That’s not take away from Gaudette or even the Canucks. He’s a fine prospect. But Gaudette is not going to save the Canucks rebuild, and people need to be realistic with their expectations.
Walter White and it’s not even close.
Kevin Connauton is fine, I guess, for a third-pair defenceman. He’s not someone worth losing sleep over though. I’m not sure who you sit on the Canucks’ blue line when everyone is healthy for a Connauton anyway. Maybe Erik Gudbranson?
Let’s go with sixth on the Canucks depth chart.
Yeah, that’s not crazy on your part. Darren Archibald playing over 15 minutes a game is, indeed, a bit rich.
I’m not sure if I’m willing to let him off the hook for exhaustion playing that much, though. It’s probably a bit higher than he should play, and what he’s used to, even, but there are people who would kill for that opportunity. If he can’t be even remotely effective because of that, he’s probably not an NHL’er.
I’m sure the Canucks will sign Archibald to a two-way deal at the end of the season — that’s what I would bet on, anyway.
If they didn’t, I’d rather they just aim for having a hyper-modern fourth line. Given the way the Canucks have operated this season, I think it’s far more likely they try and find an old-school style pugilist though.
Utica Comets general manager Ryan Johnson strikes me as someone who might work in the role of Director of Player Personnel.
As for Utica Comets head coach Trent Cull, yes, I would imagine that Canucks general manager Jim Benning and Canucks president Trevor Linden played a large role in making that happen.
Brandon Sutter’s great on faceoffs, for whatever that’s worth — not a whole lot. Oh, also a really good penalty killer.
Ignorance, immaturity and more than a dash of insecurity.
Matthew Weis is an interesting one, although I suspect his draft analytics are hurt substantially by his short stature, at just 5-foot-10.
No.
Probably Kevin Woodley. Or Gregory Balloch. One of the two.
This question is kind of difficult to answer at present, for a lot of reasons. I’ll tentatively answer that with Noah Dobson for now, though. I like his game; I like his game a lot.
Yes.
I have no clue, but I’ll try not to be too harsh on Flames general manager Brad Treliving for the Travis Hamonic deal if for no other reason than I don’t want to be a hypocrite — I liked it a lot at the time. In fairness to Treliving, he also comes out looking pretty good overall on the Mike Smith trade, which most people hated at the time.
Make sure you look for legs and aerate it.
I think Canucks head coach Travis Green deserves a tonne of credit. Nikolay Goldobin is genuinely playing better hockey at both ends of the rink than he was even a few months ago — that’s on the coach. I wrote about it for The Athletic Vancouver the other day.
The extra ice-time doesn’t hurt, but again, Green deserves a lot of credit for trusting Goldobin in that role. There aren’t many coaches in the league that would have been so willing.
Hughes should be gone by eight.
I lean towards the latter of those two options, unfortunately.
No, not one bit. It was never a question of whether Bo Horvat could develop into a player capable of bringing $5.5-million in value annually with his play. The question was whether the Canucks could have had Horvat bring value that exceeded his contract at the maximum allowable number. When I looked at the comparables from the summer, my answer then was no. And it still is.
If Tanner MacMaster keeps scoring at this pace (five points in eight games) with the Utica Comets, one would have to think so, no?
I don’t know why the Canucks haven’t signed Matt Brassard yet, but I’m not too worried. They have time.
I suppose it’s possible that Oliver Wahlstrom’s stats are a touch inflated by Jack Hughes’ presence, but he’s still a special player.
The thing to remember is that it takes a lot of talent to keep up with great players. I remember people weren’t as keen on Jack Roslovic as they perhaps should have been because of the talent he played with, and that’s looking a little bit silly in retrospect. It’s valuable context, but don’t lose the forest for the tree.
Yes, Canucks assistant coach Nolan Baumgartner is responsible for the defence. No, I’m not ready to see him get fired for one bad season with very little talent at his disposal.
Hughes, Boqvist, Dobson, Ty Smith and Evan Bouchard are all worth top-ten consideration.
I suspect that Sven Baertschi will come in at close to $4-million annually with at least four years of term. I don’t have any reason to believe the Canucks aren’t interested in Baertschi, so I’m going to go with a maybe on the second question.
If the Canucks aren’t interested, I’d like to think they can get a low first round pick or a high second round pick for him.
Nope.
The Canucks made Ashton Sautner their final recall of the season, so that’s a no, unfortunately. Jonathan Dahlen could still go to the Utica Comets for their playoff run, though.
Yes. The Canucks likelihood of getting Rasmus Dahlin drops 25% in this scenario.
I think that this is mostly true, yes. I’m still not sure how I square that with the Vegas Golden Knights’ success, though.
I’m not sure if there are any lessons to learn from the New York Islanders, specifically. They’re such dissimilar teams in dissimilar situations. Trying to apply what the Islanders did well or what they didn’t do well seems like a fruitless exercise.
As for New York Islanders general manager Garth Snow, he’s someone I’ve long struggled to understand. His moves seem to range from awesome to downright terrible with very little in between. The one mistake Snow seems to repeat like clockwork is overpaying for depth players, and I think that impacts the Isles ability to make the best of their internal budget.
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