Welcome back to the CanucksArmy Monday Mailbag! It’s draft week, and Faber will be landing in Montreal sometime soon as we get ready to cover the draft with boots on the ground.
By this time next week, the Canucks will have added some prospects to their ogranization, and we’ll be just two days away from free agency on July 13th.
With that in mind, let’s open up the mailbag and see what our fine readers asked us via the Twitter machine!
A while ago, we told you about how the Canucks could draft another Elias Pettersson this year.
And no, we don’t mean a playmaking centre with a rocket of a shot and respectable defensive prowess.
We mean, quite literally, another player named Elias Pettersson.
“Not a ton of upside there, but could play in a hyper-specialized defensive bottom-pairing role,” one scout told CanucksArmy.
Born in Västerås, Sweden — this Elias Pettersson is a 17-year-old left-shot defenceman who is currently playing for Örebro in the SHL. He spent the beginning of the season bouncing around in the J20 and J18 league but played well enough to suit up for some SHL games.
Pettersson isn’t expected to go in the top 60 and could fall to even the fifth round according to some scouts.
“Not a ton of upside there, but could play in a hyper-specialized defensive bottom-pairing role,” one scout told CanucksArmy.
All in all, Pettersson likely isn’t the best option for the Canucks unless he slips to the fifth or sixth round, but regardless, it’s fun to dream of a world where the Canucks have two Elias Petterssons in their organization.
This is a great question, and one that deserves some breaking down.
For a while, Tyler Myers’ contract was viewed as a net negative, meaning the Canucks would have to give up assets in order to convince a team to take on Myers and his $6 million cap hit.
But that changed this past season, when Myers caught the attention of many with an extended stretch of very strong play shortly after Bruce Boudreau was hired as head coach.
“He’s for sure getting you something back,” an anonymous league executive told CanucksArmy. “It’s hard to say exactly what, but teams want right-handed defencemen, and ones that skate like him at that size aren’t exactly easy to come by.”
It’s difficult to pinpoint Myers’ trade value, but with two seasons remaining at $6 million, it’s hard to imagine a team giving up anything more than a second round pick to acquire him.
Of course, this isn’t taking into account the fact that it’s probably not the best idea for the Canucks to trade him, due to the gaping hole it would leave in their lineup that they would need to spend to replace.
At this point, the best course of action is likely to keep Myers for the final two years of his contract.
It was a question many of us wrestled with once we found out about the worsening condition of Brock Boeser’s father Duke.
How do you quantify grief?
We all know what Boeser had to go through this year was far from easy, and that his on-ice play was impacted as a result.
But how much was it impacted? In other words, what is Boeser’s true, uninhibited by grief form capable of producing for the Canucks?
It’s a silly question at best, as there’s no possible way to put a number on a thing like that.
But Boeser himself says that he’s able to see a correlation between his production and how he was feeling in his personal life at the time.
This, from an interview with Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre:
Boeser said he can trace his emotional state last season by the Canucks’ scoresheets. When he went home for the Christmas break, Boeser said he saw how much Duke had declined. In September, when Brock left for Canucks training camp, Duke could walk. By January, he couldn’t, Brock said.
After scoring five times in six games after Bruce Boudreau replaced Travis Green as coach in December, Boeser scored once in eight games after the Christmas break. When he finally injured his elbow in an April 3 game against the Vegas Golden Knights, Boeser hadn’t registered a point in four games and had scored only four goals in 20.
Able to “re-group mentally” during his five-game injury absence, Boeser finished the season with four goals and eight points in Vancouver’s final seven games.
In the story, Boeser goes on to say that he can’t wait for next season to start, and that he knows he has a lot to prove.
Boeser is signed, and he’s poised for a bouneback season.
As for the next domino to fall? It’s easy to say a J.T. Miller trade but we just have no way of knowing if that will take place for sure. If you’re asking us to make a prediction, we’ll say the next thing that happens is the Canucks making a big splash at the draft by trading the 15th overall pick.
Either up or down, we’re not sure, but we’ve got a feeling the Canucks won’t be selecting at 15th overall this week.
Speaking of which…
Lets break these down one by one.

Trading up from 15th OA to 2nd

I’ve been told the Devils really like J.T. Miller, and that the Canucks asked Juraj Slafkosvky if he could play centre when they interviewed the projected second overall pick.
We’re not saying these two things mean something, but we’re also not going to suggest they mean nothing at all.
We also think Miller’s value could be enough for the Canucks to hang onto their 15th overall pick as well, instead giving up Miller and a second or third in exchange for the second overall pick.

Trading up from 15th OA to 5th

There’s a big difference between the second pick and the fifth overall pick in this draft, which means it’s not likely the Canucks are giving up J.T. Miller along with it.
Instead, if the Canucks move up to fifth overall, they’ll likely pair it with another asset, such as Conor Garland. Garland for the fifth pick straight across may get it done, but the Canucks would likely have to attach a pick in order to solidify the deal.
Probably not 15th overall, but maybe a second.

Trading down from 15th OA to 22nd

It’s difficult to pinpoint trade value when a team is trading down, because it means another team is trading up for that pick.
And at 15th overall, that’s probably because a player they had on their draft board — perhaps even in their top ten slipped and became available.
How badly does that team want the player? In the event of trading down, the Canucks would have the leverage, and at 22, they’ll still be able to find a player that they feel good about drafting, as we’ve identified a number of players that will go late in the first round who the Canucks may be interested in.
We’d say that likely means the Canucks are asking for a second or third round pick back in return — on top of the 22nd overall pick — to move down from 15th overall.
That’s all for this week’s mailbag! Thanks to everybody who asked a question. Be sure to follow @ChrisFaber39 and @QuadreIli for all your Vancouver Canucks draft coverage and to ask a question in a future mailbag!
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