The Tom Willander contractual stand-off with the Vancouver Canucks has now entered its second month, and there is no sign of a resolution in sight.

By this point, the issue has persisted long enough, and both sides have commented enough, that we have a surprisingly clear inside view of the dispute. As we covered in a recent article, both Willander himself and POHO Jim Rutherford have admitted publicly that the two sides disagree on the amount of (potential) performance bonuses that Willander should be offered on his entry-level contract. In fact, we specifically know that the Canucks think Willander should accept a contract “same as what the 11^th overall pick got last year,” likely referring to 2025 11OA Sam Dickinson, drafted by the San Jose Sharks and signed shortly thereafter.

Now, in reality, no two prospects are the same, and making blanket statements about their value based on things like draft position or on-ice position is only of limited use. But if the Canucks are going to state that Willander deserves the same as Dickinson based on where they were drafted, we’ve got to point out that that’s not strictly true.

Because Dickinson plays the left side of the blueline, and Willander plays the right. Sounds like a simple distinction, and yet it automatically makes Willander a much rarer sort of prospect in the sport of hockey.

The NHL is still, ultimately, an economy, and that economy is still ruled by the basic rules of supply and demand. The supply of right-side defenders is limited, and so, RSDs are able to demand more. It’s more complicated than that, but also not that much more complicated than that.

For a quick refresher on why this is, it’s important to remember that most players who shoot left are right-handed in other walks of life, and vice versa. And, there are far more right-handed people in the world than left-handed. So, RD, who would traditionally be left-handed (one of the reasons we’re moving away from the ‘RHD’ initialism) are significantly harder to come by. Most believe that left-handed folks make up about 10% of the global population. And most RDs are derived from that 1/10th of the world.

Wingers’ positionality, on the other hand, is far less determined by handedness. You get left-shooting right wingers and right-shooting left wingers all over the place. Centres can be either hand, but even there, those who shoot right are typically seen as more valuable, because they’re more rare.

But RD is the position most tied to left-handedness, and thus inherently the most valuable position through the tenets of supply and demand. It’s a universal and consistent truth of professional hockey, and it’s not changing anytime soon.

So, on the surface, it seems reasonable that Willander should be demanding, at the very least, a little more than Dickinson, especially since Dickinson signed right after being drafted at 11^th overall, and since Willander certainly hasn’t done anything since being drafted in that same slot to lose any value.

It’s even more clear-cut when we think of what Willander truly offers. Most scouts and pundits seem to agree that Willander looks poised to play NHL minutes in the very near future, if not outright immediately. Most also agree that his game looks like it will translate to a top-four NHL role at a minimum, and perhaps even more than that.

Of course, any player can bust and greatly underdeliver on expectations. But if we accept Willander as a ‘very likely’ top-four-quality RD within the next few years, we have to value him as the kind of asset that there simply isn’t enough of to go around.

You can really see it when you look at any overall ranking of NHL D split by handedness. There just aren’t enough quality RDs around to say that each of the 32 teams could have two each. Any way one counts it, the 60-64 range of top right-side Ds starts to contain some questionable characters.

If we measure by average ice-time in 2024/25, the 60^th-64^th ranked RDs were Henri Jokiharju, Erik Gudbranson, Michael Kesselring, Daniil Miromanov, and Trevor van Riemsdyk.

If we go by points, then 58^th-63^rd is a six-way tie at 15 points for Josh Manson, Colin Miller, Will Borgen, Conor Timmins, and Sam Malinski.

Sure, there are some names in there that are recognizable as top-four talent. But the majority of them are not. And yet, by the very nature of the scarcity of right-side D, we’ve got players playing above their ability all over the league.

If we go by Corsi, we’ll find that only 54 RDs posted a rating above 50% in 2024/25.

All of which goes toward that argument that, yes, Willander’s position should reasonably give him extra bargaining power. It should, at the very least, make him inherently more valuable than Dickinson, the Canucks’ preferred comparable.

It also tracks with Willander’s own specific importance to the future of the Canucks’ organization.

The Canucks have a top-pairing RD in hand in the form of Filip Hronek. He cost, more or less, a top-six centre to obtain in the form of Bo Horvat.

They’ve got another RD who is currently capable of playing RD most nights in Tyler Myers. But he’s 35, and don’t forget how big of a contract the Canucks had to throw at him to land him in the first place.

Beyond those two, the Canucks have Victor Mancini, a major component of the trade that sent JT Miller to New York. And…not much else beyond that. Sure, the Canucks technically have other RD prospects like Jett Woo and Cole McWard, but no one with a particularly clear pathway to playing an NHL role, and certainly not eventual top-four minutes.

Heck, even Mancini, who has looked brilliant at times in Abbotsford, is said to very likely top out as a good bottom-pairing player.

It’s why both the younger Elias Pettersson and Kirill Kudryavtsev, two LDs with definite NHL potential, have been asked to play on their off-side so often this year.

If the Canucks aren’t able to get Willander under contract, they don’t really have a backup plan. Myers only has a couple years left in him. No one else is coming up the pipeline, and it’s not all that reasonable to expect the Canucks will fall into another high-quality RD prospect anytime soon – especially not if they’re trading their 15^th overall pick in this coming draft.

From where we’re sitting, it would sure appear as though the Canucks have a great need to get Willander under contract and get him into professional hockey as soon as is possible. The sooner that happens, the sooner Willander is playing minutes in Vancouver, and the sooner he starts fulfilling his potential to be, again, a rare quantity in this league.

That would certainly seem to hold more value than did Sam Dickinson when the San Jose Sharks signed him a year ago. It also seems like a few extra performance bonuses should be small potatoes when the supply-and-demand is this tilted in Willander’s favour. For now, however, the Canucks front office would appear to feel differently about that.