The Vancouver Canucks are rolling — boasting a 10-2-0 record over their last 12 games.
Thatcher Demko has a .922% save percentage in nine games and Collin Delia has been even better — with a .939% save percentage in his two starts.
But it’s not just the goaltenders who have been playing well. The Canucks have four players who are scoring at a point per game clip over these last dozen games. J.T. Miller (19), Elias Pettersson (17), Andrei Kuzmenko (12), and Quinn Hughes (12) have been leading the offence and driving the play of late.
It’s been enjoyable to watch the Canucks play and the hope is that this type of winning is different than the kind we saw under Bruce Boudreau last season.
This type of winning needs to be sustainable.
Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin have made enough moves now to have their prints all over this Canucks team. There’s clearly still a lot of work to do and we expect to see a busy summer from the Canucks front office. This group has shown us that they are willing to move a first-round pick in order to get a player who can help them now and maybe we prospect guys should be worried come draft day.
There’s definitely a different feel around the organization with Rick Tocchet at the helm of the bench and whatever he’s saying, has been working. There’s been a big focus from Tocchet about the summer and wanting to be able to continue to work with some players throughout the offseason.
Filip Hronek made his debut this past week and has really exceeded expectations in his short sample size. There’s clearly an NHL defenceman with top-four calibre written all over him. In his debut with the Canucks, he even had more ice time than Hughes.
So there are a lot of things to like. Change is still on the horizon but hopefully it’s the type of change that can build off of what this team has been able to do over the past few weeks. This is building culture and this could be the beginning of when this team can turn things around.
It’s okay to get excited from time to time.
But selfishly, I really hope they keep that first-round pick.
Now that we’ve chipped away at the word count, let’s dive into the mailbag and see what some of the wonderful people of #CanucksTwitter had to ask this week!
The chance to physically play in front of a head coach means a lot and that’s why I’d still imagine that Vitali Kravtsov and Jack Studnicka are not surpassed by Linus Karlsson or Arshdeep Bains at the beginning of next season.
Bains has a chance because he spends his summers here in Vancouver. His family is from Surrey and if head coach Rick Tocchet is staying around here and hoping to see some players, Bains needs to get in on that and hopefully show what he can do. Bains has worked with Canucks skills coach Yogi Svejkovsky in the past. It wouldn’t come as a surprise at all to see Bains and Svejkovsky work together throughout this summer and give Bains the best chance to get some NHL games in as soon as next season.
He is going to go back to junior next season. I’ve been told that he will not being signing an ATO with the Abbotsford Canucks and joining them for an AHL playoff run.
He wasn’t in the position to be ‘the guy’ this season. Jack Rathbone battled some injuries and also had Christian Wolanin in front of him for both offensive zone situations at five-on-five and on the first power play unit.
Wolanin was excellent and earned every single one of the those minutes but in the process, combined with some missed time due to injury, Rathbone just wasn’t getting the same opportunities as last season.
The big Finnish goalie will be back with Harvard next season.
Hopefully playing more games.
He only played in three games with Harvard this season and hasn’t played a game since January 2nd with Finland at the World Junior Championships.
We will go a lot deeper into Max Sasson’s game later this week but let’s give you what we got so far.
Sasson is a centre through and through. He’s not great in the faceoff dot but he’s positionally sound as a centre.
We expect him to get some time on Abbotsford’s fourth line this season. Likely playing with Danila Klimovich at some point. If Sasson can ignite some of Klimovich’s offence, that would be a nice boost for the AHL team.
As for an NHL future, he’s not really done enough yet to earn that conversation. The kid was a pretty good NCAA player, who was on a good line and posted pretty strong defensive numbers this season. He was also on one of the bets lines in the NCAA but wasn’t necessarily a passenger, you have to be good to be on one of the bets lines in the NCAA and Sasson was good this season.
He’s going to have to prove himself at the AHL level before we begin to chat about him having a shot at the NHL.
The good news is that he is just 22 years old. This is a nice little depth add for the Canucks.
I think it’s funny. That’s what I love about sports talk.
I did legitimately go out and buy an alarm clock for my nightstand. I just can’t trust this damn iPhone of mine for the alarm anymore!
Some of the top agents in the world, like Dan Milstein have multiple client contracts with an NHL team.
Yes, the Dan Milstein connection is funny and the fact that he and Patrik Allvin both speak to their good relationship definitely helps get deals done.
For context, Milstein’s Canucks clients include Ilya Mikheyev, Andrei Kuzmenko, Vitali Kravtsov, Danila Klimovich, Kirill Kudryavtsev and Max Sasson.
For added context, Milstein has four or more clients on each of the Calgary Flames, Winnipeg Jets, Vegas Golden Knights, Tampa Bay Lightning, and San Jose Sharks.
Craig Oster is a big-time NHL agent with Newport Sports and he has six NHL teams with five or more clients.
Agents have a lot of pull in the league and it’s interesting to watch how Agent-General Manager relationships come into play. The good relationship between Allvin and Milstein certainly had to help when it came to landing Kuzmenko. Milstein does incredible work with helping Russians adjust to the NHL and Milstein has a good relationship with Allvin.
I’d expect to see more Russians on the Canucks over the next few years.
For now, let’s just continue to have some fun with Milstein, he loves Canucks fans.
I’d bet he is one of the top-five scoring defencemen next season in the OHL and then makes a transition to the AHL.
Being one of the top-producing defencemen in the OHL will certainly help his confidence as he makes the jump to pro. I’d bet we see him sign an ATO with the Abbotsford Canucks at the end of next season.
He had a quiet year in Russia.
Couldn’t score in the KHL and has slowed down a lot in the Russian minor leagues.
We expect to see him at Canucks development camp this summer.
Well, that wraps up another Monday Mailbag here at CanucksArmy. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions this week. We always get 25+ questions and I really appreciate everyone who gets involved with the mailbag tweets or sounds off here in the comments.
We will see you next week for another instalment of the mailbag.