Team

Betting

CanucksArmy has no direct affiliation to the Vancouver Canucks, Canucks Sports & Entertainment, NHL, or NHLPA

Win, draw or loss: Grading all 35 major Canucks contract signings in the Rutherford-Allvin regime

By Stephan Roget

Aug 26, 2026, 10:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 25, 2026, 17:25 EDT

Comments

Last week, we set out to grade every single trade made by the Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin Regime in their time at the head of the Vancouver Canucks. They made 41 trades in total, which made for a fairly large undertaking. But folks seemed to like the results, and we like the discussion that sprang forth from it.

So, we decided to do the same thing over again, but with contract signings.

Right away, this looked like a much tougher task, and for a couple of different reasons. For one, it’s a little trickier to apply that same W-L-D to signings, where success or failure are often a bit less obvious. For another, signings are far more frequent than trades, with 104 total between December 2021 and March 2026.

To make it easier on ourselves and our readers, we’ll first define exactly what we mean by a win, a loss, and a draw as they pertain to contract signings. For this, we’re looking exclusively from the perspective of the Canucks as a team and organization, and not worrying much about whether the contract was fair to the player themselves. In short, a win is a contract where the Canucks got better than expected value, a loss is one where they got worse than expected value, and a draw is fair value right on the nose. Of course, contract signings don’t happen in a vacuum, so we’ve got to apply at least a little context here in the form of timing, cap growth, and where the team was and was heading at the time of the signing.

To cut down on that total number of signings, we’re also going to limit ourselves to just those signings over a $1,000,000 cap hit. Such contracts are possible to bury in the minors, and so it’s tough to sign a truly unfair sub-$1,000,000 deal, and thus there’s not much worth in judging them. Plus, by cutting out all the ELCs and minor signings, we’re down to a much more manageable 35 contracts signed over the course of the entire Rutherford-Allvin Run.

Here are those 35 contracts!

2022-23

Date: July 1, 2022
Contract: Brock Boeser for three years at $6.65 million
Clause: M-NTC in year three
Cap Percentage: 8.1%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

The first contract signed by this regime – and the only one signed while Rutherford was the acting GM – was a one-year extension for minor league defender Ashton Sautner, signed in December of 2021.

It would take more than half a year for their first major signing, which was a short-term bridge deal for Boeser. Across these three years, Boeser scored 55, 73, and 50 points, including a 40-goal effort in 2023-24. We’ll have different things to say about Boeser’s next contract, but the Canucks got more than fair value out of this one

Date: July 13, 2022
Contract: Curtis Lazar for three years at $1 million
Cap Percentage: 1.2%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Draw.

A fairly standard UFA deal for Lazar. One could question the wisdom of giving a fourth liner a three-year term, but at least the cap hit was reasonable, and at least it came with no protection clauses. When Lazar didn’t quite work out, this allowed the Canucks to move him for a draft pick, after which New Jersey got a lot more out of him. A basic draw.

Date: July 13, 2022
Contract: Ilya Mikheyev for four years at $4.75 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 5.8%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Loss.

Mikheyev showed some promise in Vancouver, but injuries interrupted his first season, and he didn’t seem to recover by his second season. In the end, the Canucks had to give up a second-round pick just to get out of this contract, which makes it a fairly automatic loss – even if the Blackhawks were eventually able to turn Mikheyev around.

Date: September 2, 2022
Contract: JT Miller for seven years at $8 million
Clause: NMC in years one and two, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 9.6%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Draw.

As always, the Miller Question is one of the toughest to answer. Miller scored 103 points in the first year of this contract, which is an amazing instant return. He’s fallen off considerably since, and experienced a messy exit from Vancouver. Ultimately, the Canucks would have been better off to trade an expiring Miller than re-sign him, but they were still able to get a first, a prospect, and a player for him a few years down the road. There were bad decisions made around Miller, but this contract itself was, at the very least, fair money. So, we call it a draw.

Date: January 26, 2023
Contract: Andrei Kuzmenko for two years at $5.5 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 6.6%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Draw.

This feels like a smaller version of the Miller situation. The Canucks definitely should have sold high on Kuzmenko after he debuted with a 39-goal season that he would never even come close to equaling. Instead, they signed him to this extension, and traded him 43 games later. Kuzmenko was a central piece of the Elias Lindholm acquisition, which didn’t really work out, but that can’t be held against him. Three different teams found interest in trading for Kuzmenko while he was under this contract, so it’s hard to call it bad value. In the end, it’s another draw on the contract itself and a loss on the circumstances.

Date: March 29, 2023
Contract: Akito Hirose for one year at $2.03 million
Cap Percentage: 2.5%
Contract Type: Undrafted free agent ELC
Result: Draw.

Our $1 million threshold led to a few anomalies, and Hirose is one of them. He signed a pro-rated one-year ELC contract after his NCAA career concluded, and the pro-ration led to a strangely high cap hit. Hirose looked great for about a minute, then faded into the organization’s background. Still, he was essentially a free prospect, and it’s hard to complain about that.

2023-24

Date: July 1, 2023
Contract: Carson Soucy for three years at $3.25 million
Clause: NTC in years one and two, M-NTC in year three
Cap Percentage: 3.9%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Draw.

Soucy provided the Canucks pretty much exactly what they paid for, playing a couple seasons on the periphery of the top-four and then being flipped for a decent return. In the end, the salary was probably worth it for that crosscheck on McDavid alone, but Soucy provided stability elsewhere and a modicum of leadership, too. This was about as fair as fair value gets.

Date: July 1, 2023
Contract: Ian Cole for one year at $3 million
Cap Percentage: 3.6%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Win.

Cole came in on an unheralded one-year UFA deal and became the Canucks’ best signing of that entire July. His impact on the blueline was most felt the next season, after he departed and the whole thing seemed to fall apart. Few players have stabilized the Vancouver blueline more from the bottom-end than Cole did in his one season of play – postseason fumbles notwithstanding.

Date: July 1, 2023
Contract: Teddy Blueger for one year at $1.9 million
Cap Percentage: 2.3%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Win.

The Canucks were so pleased with Blueger they signed him to a two-year extension after this with a slight pay increase and added trade protection. That’s a good testament to the immediate positive impact Blueger made. Even just getting his career-high 28 points out of this year was better-than-fair value, and that’s not saying anything about all the other stuff Blueger does on the ice.

Date: July 9, 2023
Contract: Nils Höglander for two years at $1.1 million
Cap Percentage: 1.3%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

This was a fairly standard extension, but the Canucks then got a 24-goal season from Höglander right off the bat. Sure, he fell off very quickly afterward, but that’s something to hang on his next extension, not this one. For a little over a million, Höglander delivered great value.

Date: August 11, 2023
Contract: Pius Suter for two years at $1.6 million
Cap Percentage: 1.9%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Win.

The Rutherford-Allvin Regime capped off an excellent summer of signings with an August gem in the form of Suter. During his two seasons in Vancouver, Suter played every role from 4C all the way up to 1C, and never looked entirely out of place. It would have been great to see the Canucks cash in on Suter via trade instead of letting him walk, but that doesn’t harm the dollar value they got – a total of 75 points for a cool $3.2 million across two years.

Date: March 2, 2024
Contract: Elias Pettersson for eight years at $11.6 million
Clause: NMC in years two through eight.
Cap Percentage: 13.2%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Loss.

Welp. Here we are. Rutherford and Allvin can be forgiven for this deal, as they didn’t sign the bridge contract that led to it, and Pettersson still looked like an ongoing superstar at the time. But we are applying some hindsight here, and it only takes a smidgen of it to call this a bad contract. The Canucks simply haven’t even gotten half-value out of it so far, and though it projects to age better as the cap goes up, any future positive returns are speculative at this point. For now, it’s a top-10 worst deal in the league.

Date: April 18, 2024
Contract: Vasily Podkolzin for two years at $1 million
Cap Percentage: 1.1%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

Yeah…a win for the Edmonton Oilers. The Canucks dealt Podkolzin for a fourth-round pick a few months after signing him to this deal, and he’s since blossomed as a middle-six power forward for the Oilers. Great contract, bad trade.

Date: June 18, 2024
Contract: Filip Hronek for eight years at $7.25 million
Clause: NMC in years two through four, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 8.2%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

Hronek’s contract was fair value when it was signed, and the subsequent explosion of the cap ceiling – combined with Hronek continuing to prove himself as a true top-pairing, borderline 1D – has only resulted in that value getting better. At this point, we’d estimate that Hronek has one of the 10 best D contracts in the entire NHL, and when guys like Bowen Byram are signing for nearly twice as much, that’s only going to become more true. This is probably the single best contract that Rutherford-Allvin signed.

Date: June 26, 2024
Contract: Teddy Blueger for two years at $1.8 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 2%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Draw.

The Canucks didn’t get as much out of their second contract with Blueger as they did their first. Part of this was due to injury in the second year of this deal, and part of it was the Canucks’ inability to trade Blueger in a centre-starved market. It’s not like Blueger played poorly at all, and his point pace for 2025-26 was the highest of his career. It just wound up being closer to fair value than the bargain his first deal was.

Date: June 27, 2024
Contract: Dakota Joshua for four years at $3.25 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 3.7%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Loss.

The Joshua contract is a bit tough to gauge. The Canucks regretted it fairly quickly, with Joshua dropping from 18 goals to seven right after signing it, and so they traded Joshua to the Maple Leafs for a fourth. Any contract you can get out of with a slight profit can’t be a bad one, but at the same time, the extension really destroyed any theoretical trade value Joshua had, and continues to be an inconvenience for the Leafs. That’s enough to call it an overall loss.

Date: June 27, 2024
Contract: Tyler Myers for three years at $3 million
Clause: NMC in years one and two, M-NTC in year three
Cap Percentage: 3.4%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Win.

Not only did Myers return great value on this contract, often turning in 20 minutes a night at a rate of $3 million, but it really seemed to turn his reputation around with the fanbase. As soon as Myers stopped being the highest-paid D on the team, and as soon as the wins stopped mattering as much, fans started to appreciate Myers for what he was. The Canucks got a year-and-a-half of solid play and better mentorship out of Myers before converting him into a second and a fourth, albeit with retention. Myers’ first contract with the Canucks was a case of awful timing, but his second was close to perfect timing.

2024-25

Date: July 1, 2024
Contract: Jake DeBrusk for seven years at $5.5 million
Clause: NMC in years one through three, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 6.2%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Draw.

The Canucks can’t complain about the statistical returns they’ve got from DeBrusk at the rate they paid him. But DeBrusk often seems to be less than his numbers because of inconsistency and lacklustre play off the puck, so it still feels wrong to call this contract a win. Truthfully, the cap ceiling rising so much is going to make this deal a bargain eventually one way or another, and maybe whether it’s a win or a loss in the long run will come down to a matter of how much the clauses get in the way of an eventual trade.

Date: July 1, 2024
Contract: Danton Heinen for two years at $2.25 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 2.6%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Loss.

You can pinpoint the exact moment in which Rutherford and Allvin really started to get loose with the trade clauses, and it’s this moment. It was questionable at the time whether the Canucks even needed another middle-six winger with Podkolzin and Höglander in the fold, and it was obvious enough that the 17-goal campaign Heinen was coming off was an anomaly. Still, they handed him a good chunk of change and an M-NTC. He’d be a cap dump to Pittsburgh, more or less, within the season.

Date: July 1, 2024
Contract: Kiefer Sherwood for two years at $1.5 million
Cap Percentage: 1.7%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Win.

If the Hronek extension isn’t Rutherford-Allvin’s best contract, it’s this one. Few players have ever made more of an impact in just two seasons than Sherwood did in his two years in Vancouver. If it was just the 36 goals and 63 points they got out of him, it would have been fair value. If it was just the single-season hit record, fair value. If it was just the fan favourite status during the darkest of times, fair value. But the Canucks got all of that out of Sherwood, and then they turned around and converted him into two second-round picks. What a signing!

Date: July 1, 2024
Contract: Derek Forbort for one year at $1.5 million
Cap Percentage: 1.7%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Draw.

Forbort’s one full season in Vancouver was a little bit mixed. He started as a regular healthy scratch, but then became fairly integral on the blueline as the roster and season broke down around him. By the end of 2024-25, Forbort was one of the few Canucks showing any backbone, and it kind of cost him his season and offseason in the form of a Yakov Trenin sucker-punch that broke his orbital bone. The Canucks, at the very least, got their money’s worth from Forbort.

Date: July 1, 2024
Contract: Vincent Desharnais for two years at $2 million
Cap Percentage: 2.3%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Loss.

Desharnais was brought in because of a perceived upside and to provide some extra muscle. But he didn’t tap into any of that upside while in Vancouver, and he only occasionally showed a physical presence. He, too, became a dump within the year, going to Pittsburgh alongside Danton Heinen as cap ballast in a larger trade. He’s since shown a real spark, first in Pittsburgh and then in San Jose, and translated that into an even bigger UFA contract this past summer. But the Canucks didn’t get any of that out of him.

Date: October 6, 2024
Contract: Nils Höglander for three years at $3 million
Cap Percentage: 3.1%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Loss.

The Canucks made a bet on Höglander rebounding back to at least the vicinity of his 24-goal season. But they lost that bet. But he’s scored just 10 goals since signing this contract, and it’s still got two years left on it. Sure, the Canucks were able to flip Höglander to Nashville for a third, but that feels like a risk on the Predators’ part for now. Until Höglander rebounds, this was a bad deal.

Date: February 5, 2025
Contract: Marcus Pettersson for six years at $5.5 million
Clause: NMC in years one through three, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 5.8%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Draw.

The timing on this one is tough, as it amounts to the Canucks’ extending a veteran defender less than a year before they declared the rebuild. Still, the value was fair at the time and seemed destined to age well given the context of the cap ceiling. Pettersson had a good first partial season for Vancouver and a rough second one, though some say his underlying numbers remained good and that his downslide was mostly due to Adam Foote’s coaching. In the end, the Canucks got a first-round pick back for Pettersson via trade, but it’s tough not to feel like they got lucky to do so. That’s why we’re calling the contract itself a draw.

Date: February 18, 2025
Contract: Drew O’Connor for two years at $2.5 million
Clause: M-NTC
Cap Percentage: 2.6%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Win.

Some eyebrows were raised when O’Connor signed this extension barely a month into his Vancouver tenure, but others correctly called it a sign of the inflation to come. Unlike Pettersson, O’Connor performed better in his second season with the Canucks, notching a career-high 17 goals. He now seems poised to be cashed in as a rental on the final year of this extension, which would be the cherry on top of an already fine contract.

Date: February 21, 2025
Contract: Kevin Lankinen for five years at $4.5 million
Clause: NMC in years one and two, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 4.7%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Loss.

Oof. Of all the losses on this list, Lankinen’s is one with an outsized impact. His presence already cost the Canucks the services of Arturs Silovs, and could soon cost them Nikita Tolopilo. Meanwhile, Lankinen sits with a full NMC and well below league-average stats. The Canucks definitely should have flipped Lankinen off the cheap, one-year deal he signed prior to this (so cheap it didn’t even qualify for our list!), but instead they ended up with an anchor deal in the backup position that doesn’t seem to have much hope of rebounding to even value.

Date: June 3, 2025
Contract: Derek Forbort for one year at $2 million
Cap Percentage: 2.1%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Draw.

The Canucks only got two games out of this Forbort extension. But it was apparent even at the time of signing that Forbort’s health was uncertain. It was not that aforementioned orbital bone issue, but a hip injury that would ultimately force him out of the 2025-26 season. Still, this contract could be seen as simply doing right by a player who had sacrificed his body for the team already, and because of that – and because Forbort didn’t hurt the Canucks sitting on the IR all year – we’ll call it a simple draw.

2025-26

Date: July 1, 2025
Contract: Conor Garland for six years at $6 million
Clause: NMC in years one through three, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 5.8%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Loss.

Any contract you can get out of isn’t a total loss, in the same vein as the ‘any landing you can walk away from’ maxim. And the Canucks did get a second and a third out of Garland, in the end. But that isn’t enough to call this a win, or even a draw. The timing of the Garland extension was both awful and unnecessary, coming a full year before his previous contract expired, and was plainly a misguided attempt to get Quinn Hughes to consider an extension of his own. What the contract actually did was destroy Garland’s trade value, especially after his production started to dip before this contract even began. That put the Canucks up against a tough, self-imposed deadline of an oncoming NMC, and they did the best they could to get at least something back from him, but far less than they might have gotten trading him without the extension.

Date: July 1, 2025
Contract: Thatcher Demko for three years at $8.5 million
Clause: NMC
Cap Percentage: 8.2%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Loss.

You can take a lot of what we said about Garland and apply it to Demko, except the Canucks haven’t gotten out from Demko’s extension yet, and probably won’t. Demko signed this extension one year after he was nominated for the Vezina but exited the playoffs early, and immediately following a season in which he played just 23 games. He followed that up with just 20 games in 2025-26, and the extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. The Canucks still aren’t sure if Demko will be ready to go for Training Camp 2026, but his NMC is now in full effect.

Date: July 1, 2025
Contract: Brock Boeser for seven years at $7.25 million
Clause: NMC in years one through three, M-NTC for remainder
Cap Percentage: 7.6%
Contract Type: UFA extension
Result: Loss.

This one is difficult to swallow. The Canucks seemed poised to trade Boeser at the 2025 deadline, but failed to, so it looked like he was going to walk as a UFA for nothing. Then, at the last minute, the Canucks signed him to this extension. A year later, it looks like trading him would have been a far better option, and that letting him walk for nothing would have been a fine alternative.

Sure, Boeser battled through a hard 2025-26 season to a respectable 22 goals and 48 points, but it was apparent that he’d lost a step, and he’s about to hit 30. It’s hard for a contract to age poorly in this era of cap expansion, but Boeser’s seems like one that is almost destined to.

Date: July 9, 2025
Contract: Braeden Cootes for three years at $1.01 million
Cap Percentage: 1.1%
Contract Type: Entry-level contract
Result: Win.

This one is a consequence of our arbitrary $1 million threshold meeting the rising cap. Now the top end of ELCs is over a million, with the first such case being Cootes. It’s pretty hard to do anything but win on ELCs, so while we’ve listed Cootes here, we’re going to take this contract out of the final count…and, in retrospect, that means we’ll have to do the same with Hirose, too. Rutherford and Allvin are down two easy wins!

Date: November 15, 2025
Contract: David Kampf for one year at $1.1 million
Cap Percentage: 1.2%
Contract Type: UFA free agent
Result: Win.

We’re almost tempted to list this one as a draw, just because of how frustrating it was that the Canucks deployed Kampf as their 2C for so long, only to cash him in for a measly sixth at the deadline. But he was still a mid-season UFA signing off a mutual termination that turned into a free draft pick, and that’s still a win.

Date: December 15, 2025
Contract: Max Sasson for two years at $1 million
Cap Percentage: 1%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

The Canucks liked what they saw early from Sasson last season and rewarded him with a two-year extension. Sasson finished the year strong and established himself as a full-time NHLer moving forward, now locked in for the next two years at a minimal rate. This is an easy win.

Date: January 2, 2026
Contract: Linus Karlsson for two years at $2.25 million
Cap Percentage: 2.2%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Win.

This extension was controversial at the time of signing, as some questioned its timing and necessity, but Karlsson went on to finish last season as the Canucks’ top five-on-five scorer. That, combined with continued cap inflation, makes it seem difficult for this contract to end up as anything more than fair value, with a high chance of it being great value.

Date: March 26, 2026
Contract: Victor Mancini for two years at $1 million
Cap Percentage: 1%
Contract Type: RFA extension
Result: Draw.

The last contract on our list is a fairly standard RFA extension for Mancini. For now, it’s fair, and any surplus value is going to have to come out of Mancini taking the next step forward as a defender this upcoming season.

Overall Record

If we eliminate the Hirose and Cootes’ ELCs from our count, that leaves the Rutherford-Allvin Regime at a signing record of 12 wins, 10 losses, 11 draws. Or, for those who like a statline, a 12-10-11 record.

That’s a significantly worse record than the 18-11-12 we had them at for trades, but we’re overall seeing the same issues here as we did there – namely, a lack of consistent vision. Rutherford and Allvin were at their best early on when playing it safe and seeking out bargains on the UFA market and reasonable extensions with their internal pieces. But they got ahead of themselves in the misplaced desperation to keep Hughes in Vancouver, and that led to a good run of questionable or outright regrettable deals circa 2025.

We’ll note that a lot of the wins here come from deals with players in the bottom half of the lineup, and that Rutherford-Allvin did significantly worse with their top-end players, with the only outright wins there being the Hronek extension (a huge win, to be fair) and their first of two Boeser extensions. Their losses, meanwhile, are considerable, and either conspired to severely reduce the trade value of their assets or, in the case of folks like Elias Pettersson, Demko, and Lankinen, remain on the books as ongoing issues.

The Rutherford-Allvin Regime’s record on signings, then, is actually worse than that 12-10-11 record would suggest on the surface. There are a handful of wins that mattered or will matter, but the losses will probably matter more and for longer.

The Future is Daily Faceoff Vancouver

The future of hockey coverage is bigger than one team, one market, or one platform. By bringing our local hockey brands together under Daily Faceoff, we’re creating a more complete hockey experience — one that gives fans the best of local passion and league-wide expertise, all in one place. The community remains at the centre. The experience is simply expanding as part of the next evolution of how we cover the game.

Welcome to Daily Faceoff Vancouver – Driven by hockey.