logo
CanucksArmy has no direct affiliation to the Vancouver Canucks, Canucks Sports & Entertainment, NHL, or NHLPA
Mailbag Part 2: Waiver Edition
Vancouver Canucks mailbag
Photo credit: Matthew Henderson
Oct 1, 2019, 11:00 EDTUpdated: Sep 30, 2019, 19:39 EDT
Comments
It varies from team to team, but generally coaches exert at least some level of control over personnel decisions, and I suspect that the front office gives Travis Green a fair bit of leeway when it comes to determining who ends up on the 23-man roster and who ends up on waivers or in Utica. Whenever he’s been interviewed about these kinds of roster decisions, he seems to imply that they are achieved through consensus.
I think I would still say Jared McCann, which has pretty much been my answer from day one. I don’t think he’s ever going to develop into an elite player, but his 35 points would have been good for fourth in team scoring if he had been on the team. The Canucks managing to salvage some value for him in the form of Tanner Pearson softens the blow, but given the fact that he’s young and cost-controlled, I’d probably still prefer McCann.
I’ll just give you the entire forward lineup to keep things simple.
Goldobin-Pettersson-Boeser
Baertschi-Horvat-Pearson
Ferland-Miller-Leivo
Eriksson-Gaudette-Virtanen
Beagle
Gaudette is obviously the big wild card here. If he were to continue to play at the level he showed in the preseason, I would dump Eriksson in the minors, move JT Miller up to wing on the second line, and let beagle play in a shutdown role on the fourth line. To be honest, I’m not married to any particular line combination, because I think it’s going to take a lot of experimenting to figure out the best spots for many of the players in the lineup. I can even see the case for keeping Motte in the lineup if they decide they need a shutdown line, but my Canucks lineup would always have Sven Baertschi in it if he’s healthy.
Season ticket renewals go up when the team is better and more exciting. Given that waiving Eriksson would help them in at least one of those departments, I could actually see it causing a spike, but I don’t think having him in the lineup is as big of a deterrent as you’re implying.
To be honest, I don’t hate the idea, but the uncertainty and risk involved in such a strategy means it would probably never happen. Might be worth a try for a team with no expectations, though.
It would be some sort of cross between a cement mixer and a prairie fire. It would taste like shit and cost almost six million dollars.
No idea, but I suspect Adam Gaudette’s will clock in at right around $1488.
Pettersson, Boeser, and Horvat all have a shot depending on who stays healthy. In any season where he plays 82 games, I would expect Pettersson to lead the team in scoring.
There’s a tendency for people in the online Canucks ecosystem to mistake my criticism or ridicule for dislike. It’s not the case. You can ask any of my closest friends and most of them will tell you I roast them all the time. It’s just what I do. I don’t have anything against Tej or any of the Larschcasters, I just think they’re silly. That’s about all there is to it.
This question would have been better if you left out the last 5 words.
Say what you will about the Canucks’ brain trust, but they’ve generally been pretty transparent about the thought process behind their decisions. It just rarely makes sense. The Canucks believe Eriksson is one of their 13 best forwards, of this I am completely certain. The Canucks’ brass already gets paid a lot of money to make poor decisions, I don’t see why anyone would have to offer them extra cash to insure it stays that way.
The concerns you have are at least somewhat justified. The production isn’t all that impressive given the hype that’s attached to his name, and that was reflected when he dropped all the way down to 10th overall after being seen as a potential top-5 pick for much of the season.
The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that Russian hockey operates in a really different way from what we’re used to. At every level of Russian hockey, older players are leaned on very heavily, even when it doesn’t really make sense for them to be, and that usually results in much lower point totals from prospects than we’d normally expect. Even Alex Ovechkin, who was slated to go first overal for the entirety of his draft year, had just 24 points in 53 games in 2003-04, and just 26 points in 37 games the following year. He would go on to score 106 points in the NHL in his rookie year following those campaigns.
When it comes to Russian players, you really can’t put too much stock in their numbers, at least not for the first couple of years, and the fact that he bounced between leagues so much last year only made matters worse. It’s tough to say how the selection will turn out, and there was certainly some risk attached to taking on Podkolzin, but overall I think it was a reasonable pick. They swung for the fences and I respect that.
The outcome of the decisions the Canucks made today won’t change my decision in the slightest. There are plenty of reasons the team might believe waiving Baertschi and Goldobin is the right move. In Baertschi’s case, he’s coming off injury trouble and makes too much money, and Goldobin just hasn’t done enough to prove he belongs in the lineup. What makes the decision hard to stomach is that the Canucks’ front office and coaching staff took a look at this roster and determined that players like Schaller, Eriksson, Motte, and Sutter were better options. There’s plenty of overpayment and injury trouble to complain about within that group of players, and none of them bring the offence Baertschi has produced when he’s been healthy.
This team desperately needs to join the rest of the league in the 21st century and get some scoring from it’s bottom six, but it appears as though they have no desire to do that, and waiving Sven Baertschi in particular signals that. Will it kill them in the long run? It’s hard to say, but it’s emblematic of everything wrong with the Canucks’ philosophy. At every turn, when it comes to building a supporting cast, they’ve valued things like grit, “compete”, and other intangibles over the ability to produce, and that’s why they’ve been one of the league’s lowest scoring teams for the past 4 years. Until their philosophy changes, I expect that trend to continue.

Uncategorized

Breaking News