Vancouver Canucks mailbag, part 1: Strategic paths to contender status tiers

New York Times

5 days ago

The meat of the NHL offseason is in the books.
That doesn't mean it's the dog days of summer yet, however. There are still some interesting unrestricted free agents who are just beginning to fall through the cracks and drop their respective prices. The Canucks have signed a value free agent midsummer in consecutive years — Pius Suter in 2023, Daniel Sprong in 2024 — and are scouring the market for such options again. We could see a move like that occur in the next three to five weeks.
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Meanwhile, there is some industry expectation that, as the logic of the cap growth era really sets in, we may see more late summer trade activity than we're used to. That must be music to the ears of Canucks hockey operations leadership, especially given the unfinished feeling of this roster at the moment.
As we wait to see what comes next, we wanted to open up the offseason reaction mailbag. We got nearly 150 submissions over the weekend, and we'll pick through the most interesting of those questions to deliver you some answers to your pressing Canucks questions in our two part, post-July 1 edition of the VIP only mailbag.
Note: Submitted questions may be edited for clarity and style.
Can you provide a tiered list of the strategic paths management could take to turn the Canucks into a contender? — Patrick F.
Thanks for the question, Patrick, and kudos for framing it so irresistibly. As you well know, I can't resist a tiered list!
OK, here goes nothing …
The most likely to deliver the next great Canucks team tier
The rebuild over a multiyear time horizon plan
In my view, the Canucks' most likely path to bringing a Stanley Cup to Vancouver in the not-too-distant future is going to require a more dramatic reset than anything they seem to be prepared to even consider.
It's unfortunate because the Canucks mined some super elite top-end talent from their last, fitful, quasi-intentional rebuilding phase from 2014 through 2019, but poor cap allocation, organizational ineptitude, pandemic-related budgetary tightfistedness, poor contractual decisions and, ultimately, interpersonal conflicts in the dressing room have submarined the potential of the Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes era.
Now that's not to say that whatever remains of this era is hopeless. The team, as currently constructed, could congeal under Adam Foote, Pettersson could bounce back, Thatcher Demko could stay healthy and they could very plausibly make the playoffs this year and next. They could maybe even find a solid level as a playoff-calibre team, with a shot to go deep, provided they get a near-perfect run out and make a couple of savvy in-season swings.
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If we're being ruthlessly honest about the true talent level of this team, however, and compare it to what we see out of Florida, Edmonton, Carolina, Vegas and Dallas, there's probably just too much distance to travel.
The Canucks are probably shy of what those top-five contender tier teams have by at least an additional elite player, and an additional top-line calibre player beyond that. And, of course, there are levels to this. Just entering that discussion doesn't put you on par with a Panthers team that seems to have eight bona fide top-line calibre forwards, is keeping the band back together and ran roughshod over four of the top-10 true talent teams on their way to a second consecutive Stanley Cup.
If the goal is to win a championship, the Canucks shouldn't be fearful of rebuilding, though I'll acknowledge that the timing to begin at the moment is completely suboptimal given the handful of recent extensions and the Hughes contract timeline.
Nonetheless, being willing to take a step back on paper and chase more volatile profiles to accumulate value, amassing draft picks, being disciplined about pouncing on sell windows when players 'pop' (as, for example, Brock Boeser did during his 40-goal performance in the 2023-24 campaign) and even trying to maximize your lottery odds with Gavin McKenna and Landon DuPont in mind, would all be worthwhile steps to take given how stubbornly the Canucks appear to be stuck in the mushy middle.
Obviously it's a painful step to have to take, and you'd face a tall task attempting to sell the vision to Hughes (much less Canucks ownership). I simply don't know how Vancouver gets to the top of the ladder without trying to use the natural gravity of the NHL system — even if the weight of that gravity is about to be restrained by the cap growth era — to slingshot back up the standings, in the fashion that the Montreal Canadiens have managed.
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The maybe it could work, but it's on a knife's edge tier
The get Quinn Hughes extended and get lucky plan
This is the plan that the Canucks are more or less attempting to execute, and if they can execute it, it's a credible one, even if it's not as likely — in my opinion — to succeed.
It calls for the Canucks pushing at least some chips into the centre of the table to remain competitive in the short term. The goal is to win enough to remain an appealing destination for their captain so as to minimize the risk of his departure, either as an unrestricted free agent in 2027 or as a pre-agent willing to use his leverage in 2026.
Even if that plan is successful, however, and I wouldn't necessarily say the Canucks executed on it this summer given that they were unable to move their draft picks or trade their second tier prospects for win-now difference-makers that could upgrade the middle of their forward group, it's a difficult one to pull off because it's still going to require them to be supremely efficient in one volatile area or another.
As great as Hughes is, the Canucks will still require more talent beyond the most impactful two-way defender in the sport. So, whether it's by nailing a draft class in the transformative style of the Dallas Stars in 2019 (the Stars won the draft lottery and selected Miro Heiskanen at No. 3, then added Jake Oettinger and Jason Robertson in the same draft class). Or by seizing on multiple unique opportunities in which star-level players shake loose and you're able to hit on a run of hugely valuable trades in bulk (like the Panthers did in landing Eetu Luostarinen, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Evan Rodrigues, Seth Jones and Brad Marchand), Vancouver will still need something extra to occur to more fundamentally change its trajectory in order to join the ranks of the NHL elite.
The one I fear we're seeing
The just get in and anything can happen plan
My concern when I look at this Canucks offseason so far is that they're attempting to build a team that can punch above its weight in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
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Obviously, we know that the game changes in the postseason, but attempting to reverse-engineer a Cinderella playoff run is the path that the Canadiens were on under Marc Bergevin. And it's a path that regularly made the Canadiens a reasonably difficult out come playoff time and helped them reach the 2021 Stanley Cup Final, where they were overmatched and summarily dispatched in five games by the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The problem for the Bergevin era Habs, of course, was that they didn't have a championship ceiling. So while they were tough to eliminate once they made it to the playoffs, they only had a high enough level to even make it there about half the time.
When I think about what Evander Kane brings to the Canucks, and when he's at his most impactful (when the games are heaviest come playoff time), or when I consider why this team would be willing to invest $13 million in goal beyond this upcoming season, my greatest concern is that the organization is attempting to build a plucky playoff team, as opposed to constructing a team with a greater level of ambition in mind.
Doing so in an NHL era in which parity is virtually non-existent feels like a very unlikely path to a Stanley Cup victory.
Marco Rossi? It just makes so much sense. Wild don't want to pay him. Canucks have surplus on wings and need at C. What's a realistic trade offer, and are the Canucks still in on it? Is there a 'Ballard, Raymond and a second' type offer that isn't a joke? — Joel T.
Yeah, I can't shake the thought that this is a hypothetical deal that we'll be talking about long into the dog days of summer.
Whether or not it actually happens, however, is another matter entirely. Rossi wouldn't be the first restricted free agent to undergo contentious second-contract negotiations with their team, only to re-sign and ultimately remain in place until a much later date (Martin Necas and Cole Perfetti are a couple of similar situations that come to mind).
Clearly, the Wild have a bit of a problem on their hands with Rossi, and it's one of their own making. This isn't just a dollars-and-cents issue, either. Rossi was upset about his playoff usage and said as much.
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The Canucks, of course, have an even more significant problem on their hands. The Wild's issue is repairing a relationship with a promising young player who felt underutilized and untrusted in the playoffs; Vancouver's issue is that it doesn't have a promising young centre who's a candidate to fill a hole on the second line who is nearly on Rossi's level.
Which brings us to the reason that we'll keep monitoring this one. The Wild have a problem, and the Canucks have a problem. The two organizations are very closely linked, not solely because Wild general manager Bill Guerin was Jim Rutherford's assistant general manager in Pittsburgh, but also because Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin and Guerin are very close personal friends with an exceptional working relationship. Guerin, in fact, attempted to hire Allvin when he departed the Penguins organization for Minnesota, and was rebuffed.
When it comes to creative cooperative problem solving, it's usually easiest to pull it off with someone you like, trust and respect. The Wild and the Canucks have that going for them at the hockey operations leadership level.
We'll see if that matters. At this point in the offseason, I'd expect a short-term agreement that keeps Rossi in Minnesota for the time being to be the most likely outcome here.
As for what a realistic trade package might look like, it's likely going to be difficult to pull off in the wake of Vancouver's offseason moves, less because the Canucks no longer have their 2025 first-rounder to sell and more because of the cap space they've already committed. In order to add Rossi and extend him long-term, Vancouver would have to shed a fair bit of salary either directly in the trade or prior to executing it. Even trading both Dakota Joshua and Teddy Blueger (which would give the Canucks about $5.5 million in total cap space with 20 men on the roster) probably wouldn't be enough to get it done cap-wise.
Maybe it gets you close enough if you front-load the bonus structure sufficiently and amped up the trade protections involved on a max-term second contract, but it would be a very tricky balance to strike.
Even so, if the Canucks are going to land Rossi, I still suspect that Vancouver would be looking at trade packages in which either Tom Willander or their 2026 first-round pick would have to be included. And I have a hard time seeing the Canucks be willing to do that.
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What does a reasonable trade deal for Artūrs Šilovs look like? — Andy L.
The Daniil Tarasov deal that the Panthers completed with the Columbus Blue Jackets is probably the high water mark of what the Canucks can realistically expect in an offseason deal involving Artūrs Šilovs.
However, based on how both goaltenders appear to be viewed in the industry and that Tarasov is the more NHL-tested goaltender of the two, he probably carries modestly more value, even if Šilovs has the better AHL statistics and is coming off an incredible run as the MVP of the Calder Cup playoffs.
You're most likely talking about a late-round pick, with the value diminishing further the closer you get to Canadian Thanksgiving.
Of course, the Canucks don't necessarily have to trade Šilovs and shouldn't rush into doing so. They could also elect to place him on waivers early, as Vancouver did years ago with Jacob Markstrom, in an attempt to get him through while teams have a large number of players on their training camp roster and are less likely to put in a claim. Vancouver can also hold Šilovs and wait to see what shakes loose during training camp, in terms of goaltender injuries and the like. Remember, after all, Vancouver didn't bring in Kevin Lankinen until after training camp concluded last September, and he carried the team through the first half of the season!
Things change quickly in the crease, and there are currently no obvious goaltending jobs around the NHL. As such, Vancouver's best play is likely to wait and see what changes. Failing that, the club can always try to sneak him through waivers early on during camp, or find a team willing to pay modestly to jump the waiver queue (like the Panthers did for Olli Juolevi, in sending Noah Juulsen and Juho Lammikko to Vancouver; or as Vancouver did for Vitali Kravtsov). That's the dynamic that Vancouver is most likely locked into here.
(Photo of Thatcher Demko and Quinn Hughes: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images)