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New York Times
6 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
As Sidney Crosby turns 38, could he follow in Tom Brady's footsteps?
PITTSBURGH — I have always found it delightfully ironic that Tom Brady, who ruined so many promising winters in Pittsburgh, also made them better. As Sidney Crosby's concussion was becoming career-threatening in 2011, it was Brady who reached out to Crosby and offered medical advice and contacts to help in the recovery process. But other than being two of the greatest athletes of all time, Crosby and Brady don't seem to have all that much in common. Or do they? Crosby turns 38 today, which is hard to believe. He has been a member of the Penguins organization for more than half of his life (20 years and counting). When a great hockey player hits this age, you know the end is near — like Bob Dylan once said, 'It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there.' But is it? Realistically, sure. But this is Crosby we're talking about. Jim Rutherford, his former general manager, once told me, 'He's not going to age like other players. Do you know why? Because he isn't like other players.' Rutherford said that in 2019 and he was right. Let's take a look at the numbers for a moment. This is Crosby's points-per-game average in each season during his 30s: Age 30, 2017-18 season: 1.09 Age 31, 2018-19 season: 1.27 Age 32, 2019-20 season: 1.15 Age 33, 2020-21 season: 1.13 Age 34, 2021-22 season: 1.22 Age 35, 2022-23 season: 1.13 Age 36, 2023-24 season: 1.15 Age 37, 2024-25 season: 1.14 I don't know about you, but I don't see any regression in those totals. If you have a truly astute hockey eye and study Crosby thoroughly, perhaps you see the slight changes in his game. He doesn't explode through with neutral zone with quite the suddenness of his youth, for instance. But to be honest, that's about the only thing in his game that looks any different than it did a decade ago, and even that might not be accurate. It could simply be that the rest of the league has gotten faster in the past decade and his body is doing exactly what it always has done. All of which brings us back to athletes' careers enduring much longer than they once did in general, and Brady specifically. Peak Brady in 2007 might have had more arm strength than the 43-year-old Brady who won the Super Bowl to conclude the 2020 season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As I recall, 43-year-old Brady would have the occasional off game, something that never happened to 30-year-old Brady. Yet he was still among the best, even at that age, and still able to engineer another championship even after so many had written him off. Is it inconceivable to imagine Crosby doing something similar? Oh, it won't happen this season. Or the one after, I imagine. Crosby is playing for a rebuilding team, something Brady never had to do. Crosby, however, isn't showing any signs of slowing down. Surrounded by one of the NHL's worst rosters last season, he still put up nearly 100 points. While Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust are very much above-average NHL players, let's not act like either of his linemates is a superstar. Crosby wasn't getting cheap points because of them. He was putting up all of those points because he was Crosby. Kyle Dubas has done a good job of acquiring assets for his rebuilding Penguins during the past 18 months. Finally, they have a thriving minor-league system, one that is going to produce one NHL player after another in coming seasons. There is one problem, though: Where is the star power going to come from? That's always the biggest problem for rebuilding teams that aren't lucky enough to win the draft lottery. If the ping pong ball bounces the right way next spring and the Penguins snatch Gavin McKenna, then the rebuild will have gone from 0 to 100 MPH in a heartbeat and everything changes. But the odds are — sorry — that this won't happen. The truth is, Stanley Cup teams need superstars. You don't win a Cup without the likes of Aleksander Barkov, or Jack Eichel, or Nikita Kucherov. Hockey might be the ultimate team game, but you better have star power or you won't last long in the playoffs. The Penguins have one superstar capable — even at the grand old age of 38 — of carrying a team through the grind that is the Stanley Cup playoffs, if surrounded by teammates who are capable of keeping up with him. The common assumption these days is that by the time the Penguins build a truly good team, Crosby will have walked off into the sunset. (Or, if you live anywhere else but Pittsburgh, you think he'll be wearing an Avalanche or Canadiens jersey by then). We are basing this on history and on math. History and math are two fine teachers, so I'm not disputing the potential that Crosby is near the end and we'll see a sharp decline in his play sooner rather than later. We saw it in Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky at this age. We've seen it in others. Perhaps all of this, however, is selling Crosby short. He will never catch Gretzky's numbers (no one will) and he'll never showcase Lemieux's talent (no one will), but he also has other attributes that exceed those two. They didn't have Crosby's drive. (No one does.) I don't think they had his obsession with winning, either, and that is what keeps him chugging along. I asked Crosby last season if he was going to take a break following the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game. He was exhausted and wasn't 100 percent, the Penguins' season was going nowhere: it seemed reasonable. He just shook his head and responded quietly, 'Nah. When you get older, you start to feel it in your hands if you take time off. I can't do that.' As he ages, he works even harder to maintain this level. He does it because he takes tremendous pride in being the Penguins' captain, yes. He does it because he wants to win one more gold medal as captain of Team Canada in February. But he does it for another reason, too. He's hopeful Dubas pushes the right buttons, this rebuild happens faster than anticipated and a new era of Penguins arrives in the playoff picture again faster than anyone expects. If that happens, Crosby will be waiting to dominate in the springtime, like he's done so many times before. And maybe, just maybe, he'll still be Crosby. Perhaps it's nothing more than a birthday wish. But Crosby might also be capable of willing such a thing to happen. The clock is surely ticking, but it ticks a little more slowly for him, and maybe it won't be dark for a while. He isn't like the others, after all. (Photo of Sidney Crosby and Tom Brady: Justin Berl and Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
CTV News
6 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Single-game Canucks tickets on sale, and some games start at $250
The Vancouver Canucks disastrous 2024/2025 season didn't stop owners from raising ticket prices for 2025/2026. Single game tickets are now available for fans who signed up for priority access, and the two most coveted games have wallet-busting prices. The cheapest seats to the Montreal Canadiens game on Saturday, Oct. 25 are $247 with taxes and fees. The most expensive ones are $789. That's more than most face value floor seats for Taylor Swift's Vancouver concerts last year. Prices are similar for the Toronto Maple Leafs one-and-only visit to Rogers Arena on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. Tickets to the home opener against Calgary start at $155 for nose bleeds. The cheapest tickets for the 41 home games are for mid-week matches against less coveted teams like Anaheim and Buffalo. Fans can get in the building for $103 for those games. Ticket broker Kingsley Bailey says the team is pricing out parents who want to bring their kids to games. 'They're playing it the way that they want to play it, maximize the return as much as they can. And unfortunately, who gets hurt in this is the fan. These prices are really pricing out a family to be able to go to game,' said Bailey. In his post-season press conference in April, Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford acknowledged many fans are upset that the team would raise prices after missing the playoffs. 'I understand the frustration. I don't want to pay more for anything, none of us do,' said Rutherford on April 21. The Canucks say the higher prices reflect the $7 million jump in the NHL salary cap for this upcoming season. 'Another part is the building that we have, is investing money back into an older building,' added Rutherford. The Canucks are replacing all the seats at Rogers Arena this summer. The new seats have a higher backrest and cup holders. But Bailey says fans can't enjoy them if they can't afford to get in the door. 'Some fans will, but a lot won't. And we will probably see last-minute price drops,' said Bailey. That is possible with the Canucks dynamic pricing model. But Bailey is skeptical the drops will be significant. 'That dynamic pricing is a misnomer,' he said. 'Dynamic pricing means there's no ceiling and there's no floor. But obviously there's a floor. For the worst games on a Tuesday night in February when nobody wants to go, that should be a $20 ticket, but still, it's like $80.' While the team is offering three-game packs for a discount, right now fans can't buy single -game tickets for under $100. And those who want to see marquee players and match ups will pay a lot more. The Canucks will try to prove to their fans that it's worth it when the regular season gets underway on Oct. 9.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Vancouver Canucks Sign Pierre-Olivier Joseph To A One-Year Contract
The Vancouver Canucks have made another free-agent signing, inking defenceman Pierre-Olivier Joseph to a one-year contract worth $775K. Joseph has previously spent most of his NHL playing time with the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that both Canucks General Manager Patrik Allvin and President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford have worked with in the past.
New York Times
16-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Five free agents for the Vancouver Canucks to consider as value signings
The free-agent bargain bin has been a key source of talent for the Vancouver Canucks during the Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin era. In the summer of 2023, the Canucks signed Pius Suter to a two-year, $3.2 million contract ($1.6 million annual average value) in mid-August. Suter, perpetually undervalued by the industry due to his complete lack of traits, fell through the cracks in unrestricted free agency before the Canucks pounced on the opportunity to sign him to a two-year deal. Advertisement The Swiss-born forward went on to produce 75 points in 148 regular-season games across his two Vancouver campaigns. He pitched in everywhere in the lineup (and on the penalty kill) and played top-six minutes during the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, during which he scored the series-winning goal against the Nashville Predators. Suter might not have seemed like a needle-moving signing on the day the Canucks announced the deal, but he helped them outscore their opponents and win games in a depth role. Finding real hockey value in the free-agent bargain bin isn't a simple task for NHL talent evaluators, but it's a fishing hole that Vancouver has used regularly in recent seasons. Suter is the most prominent example, but the Canucks also signed Kevin Lankinen to a one-year contract in September 2024, and he helped carry them for months on end, ultimately earning a five-year extension from the team. And, of course, the Canucks have also swung and missed in this marketplace. Daniel Sprong was brought in on an affordable one-year deal to give them a right-handed power-play option and punch up the team's speed and depth scoring, but he never earned the trust of Canucks coaches and was traded for future considerations after just nine appearances. This summer, there are very few potential impact players that remain unsigned, but the NHL's cap system is also awash in unused space. It's an unusual dynamic given what we've become accustomed to observing across the past five years. As a result, while the flow of signings has slowed significantly, there's still a chance that some of the top remaining names on the market will be able to demand more than the league minimum — veteran winger Jeff Skinner, for example, signed on July 11 with the San Jose Sharks and still netted a $3 million contract — despite their apparent lack of leverage. Advertisement From what I can gather in discussing offseason plans with senior team sources, there are a couple of names the Canucks are still monitoring in unrestricted free agency. They, however, are capped out and would need to first send out cap dollars in order to consider rolling the dice on a value unrestricted free agent. Based on what I'm hearing, the Canucks are more than open to that possibility. In fact, they're actively exploring their options to do just that on the trade market. We'll see where this goes, but in the meantime, let's look over some of the free agents that remain unsigned and could add some depth to Vancouver's forward group as value adds in the second wave of unrestricted free agency. Jack Roslovic is the biggest name that remains unsigned, and that's somewhat surprising given his profile. He's a 28-year-old right-handed forward who is coming off a 39-point season with the Carolina Hurricanes, with the versatility to pitch in at both centre and on the wing, and whose faceoff win rate spiked last season. Roslovic has produced at least 30 points in five consecutive seasons, is a high-end skater and has appeared in 25 playoff games across the past two seasons. Vancouver has had interest in Roslovic in the past, dating back to his days with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Canucks also expected to be priced out on Roslovic heading into free agency, as we previously reported, which suggests strongly that they may be as surprised as we are that Roslovic remains unsigned as of July 16. Vancouver could use a centre-capable forward, especially in the wake of Suter's departure for the St. Louis Blues this summer. Even if Roslovic is best used on the wing, he'd give the Canucks an additional right-handed power-play option and an additional player who can at least pitch in at centre. There's an argument to be made that Roslovic would just flat out be an upgrade for Vancouver in a top-nine role. The Athletic's in-house Net Rating model, views Roslovic as a third-line calibre forward. In fact, the Net Rating model would project Roslovic to be the eighth-most valuable forward on the roster if he were to join the Canucks today. Given his evident fit from a stylistic standpoint and his ability to help the club patch over their significant centre needs, if the Canucks were able to find a way to shed a cap liability (or two) and then turn around and land Roslovic on an affordable one- or two-year contract, that would represent a very nice maneuver for Vancouver. Advertisement Hailing from Örnsköldsvik, Sweden — the hometown of Henrik and Daniel Sedin — Victor Olofsson is a crafty depth scoring winger who will turn 30 this weekend. Olofsson was a useful piece for the Vegas Golden Knights last season, even pitching in on their first power-play unit during the playoffs. Of note, he had some especially strong performances against the Canucks last season. Ultimately, however, it wasn't the answer for a Golden Knights club that attempted to make it work with fill-in pieces on the wings while relying on their centres to drive the offence last season, and Vegas has now pivoted by bringing in Mitch Marner to flesh out its attack. While Olofsson would be an interesting potential add for the Canucks, as a player that the Net Rating model views as a solid two-way option capable of providing fringe second-line value, it's worth noting that the fit isn't ideal. Olofsson is a player who's best suited to threatening in stationary attacking situations and capitalizing by finding the quiet areas of the ice during extended offensive zone shifts. He's best deployed alongside a playmaking centre at five-on-five, and he's a legitimate option on the right flank with the man advantage. The Canucks, however, very clearly would prefer to play a quicker brand of north-south, stress-based hockey, which isn't an ideal environment for Olofsson, who is both undersized and has below-average skating speed for a scoring winger. Vancouver is lacking in the sorts of playmaking centres capable of maximizing Olofsson's skills as a finisher, and with Elias Pettersson in the fold, has limited use for a power-play specialist best calibrated to manning the right flank. Despite those fit concerns, adding Olofsson would still be a meaningful boost for a team that sorely requires additional forward talent. Advertisement Max Pacioretty still has some game, especially offensively. The 36-year-old scoring forward — who, as a younger winger, was once one of the NHL's most consistent 30-goal scorers, and a lanky, disruptive demon of a forechecker — has obviously lost a step as he's aged and dealt with a variety of lower-body injuries. The diminishment of Pacioretty's speed has sapped his two-way value to some extent, but he's still a clever attacking player and demonstrated in the playoffs, when he had eight points in 11 games for the Toronto Maple Leafs, that he's still got the stomach to elevate his game in big moments. The fit issue for the Canucks with Pacioretty in mind is that the veteran forward has a somewhat similar profile to incoming winger Evander Kane, although Kane is obviously a higher-calibre contributor at this stage of their respective careers. Namely, Pacioretty is an offence-first winger with some gaps in his two-way value who struggles to stay out of the penalty box at this stage of his career. Pacioretty could add some depth to the Canucks' lineup, but given the Kane addition, he'd feel like something of a redundant piece for this Vancouver team. Hudson Fasching is a worthwhile depth gamble for a team in need of a fourth-line winger who can defend and skate at a high level. The 29-year-old stands 6-foot-3, 210 pounds and is long and disruptive as a checking forward. I'm not sure I watched any other forward cut off the top and take time and space away from Quinn Hughes as effectively last season as Fasching did playing for the Islanders, and that's just about the most difficult defensive assignment that you can task a winger with handling these days. Fasching has spent at least some time in the AHL in each of the past three seasons, and profiles more like a Quad-A player type than a full-time NHLer. Given that the Canucks are intent on promoting several contributors from the Calder Cup champion Abbotsford Canucks this upcoming season, it isn't easy to see how Fasching would fit into this Vancouver lineup. Advertisement As a depth winger, however, with legitimate two-way ability, Fasching would be an interesting add on a two-way deal. Klim Kostin is a 6-foot-4, 230-pound winger. He's probably a pure fourth-liner at this stage of his career, and it's concerning that he wasn't able to make more of a meal of his opportunity with a moribund San Jose Sharks side last season. Still, he's an impressive one-shot goal-scoring threat who has typically produced goals at an efficient per-minute clip. Given that Kostin's standout trait — absolutely ripping the puck and beating set goaltenders at the NHL level — is one of the most difficult skills to find in hockey, and that Kostin combines that ability with a high motor and a massive frame, he's a depth forward that's worth adding to just about any lineup. (Photo of Jack Roslovic: Katherine Gawlik / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
New York Times
11-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Canucks 2025 offseason moves: Where are they better? Where are they worse?
Despite enduring a season of significant upheaval, the Vancouver Canucks were relatively quiet this offseason. Especially by the usual standard of activity that president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin have established in previous summers. The Canucks had hoped to do more. The ambition was to upgrade down the middle and more fundamentally reimagine the team's forward group. Advertisement As the logic of this new era of salary cap growth worked its way through the NHL, however, the marketplace was seized up by a talent crunch. Very few top players even made it to unrestricted free agency. The usual cap pressures from the flat cap era were absent, giving teams more options to bide their time and eliminating the need for creative problem-solving that had driven player movement for the past five years. Instead of trading draft picks and moving aggressively to upgrade significantly down the middle, the Canucks changed tack. They used their draft picks, made one relatively low-cost trade and extended some of their own players, including a surprise reversal to retain Brock Boeser after the free-agent market had already opened. There is clearly still work to be done to upgrade this roster, and Canucks hockey operations leadership will surely spend the summer exploring their options and sifting through the free-agent bargain bin in search of further reinforcements. With the meat of the offseason already in the rearview mirror, however, it's time for us to wade into the weeds on whether or not this roster has improved, by how much and where the holes remain using Dom Luszczyszyn's Net Rating model. When the model looks at Vancouver's roster in comparison with how it looked prior to the draft and free agency, it basically sends back the meme of Pam from 'The Office' telling corporate, 'They're the same picture.' Vancouver's biggest offseason move was, essentially, to retain its top unrestricted free agent. The Canucks' biggest offseason acquisition was a forward capable of playing at the top of the lineup, but best suited to playing in the middle six. Their biggest offseason departure was, similarly, a forward capable of playing at the top of the lineup, but best suited to playing in the middle six. Advertisement Despite the relative stasis of Vancouver's lineup at this stage of the offseason, what's most important for our purposes in analyzing what this minimal rate of change really means is that the Canucks are returning a team that's very similar to the one we've seen play across the last four years, with a few meaningful tweaks. Since the 2021-22 campaign, Vancouver has had Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Conor Garland and Boeser while Thatcher Demko, when healthy, has served as the starting goalie throughout those seasons. There have been some impactful departures to the supporting cast, most notably Bo Horvat and J.T. Miller, but also players like Nikita Zadorov, Andrei Kuzmenko, Elias Lindholm and Ilya Mikheyev, and some impactful additions, most notably Jake DeBrusk and Filip Hronek, but also players like Marcus Pettersson and Evander Kane. The spine of this group, however, has been constant across the past four seasons, and over the past 16 months, most of that core, aside from Hughes, of course, has been extended long-term. Now, the consequences of long-term extensions in the cap growth era are unlikely to be as harsh and unforgiving as they were during the flat cap era. With the system awash in cap space and teams desperate for talent, salary liabilities aren't nearly as immovable today as they were three years ago. Even inconvenient contracts for cap-strapped teams, like Mason Marchment's, Viktor Arvidsson's or Kane's, netted returns on the trade market this summer. The Net Rating model, however, rated the Canucks' lineup as middle-of-the-pack entering this offseason. And it still views the Canucks as a middle-of-the-pack calibre side in the wake of this summer's activity to this point. Before proceeding to the specifics, let's note some key qualifiers and explain the methodology behind this exercise. Advertisement First off, the big-picture goal of this annual article isn't to compare last season's Canucks to the roster they're set to ice at the outset of the 2025-26 campaign. We're not going to see how this club looks today versus some hypothetical roster if Vancouver had never traded Miller, for example. No, what we're trying to do here is hone in on how much the true talent level of this Canucks roster has improved as a result of the decisions made and the work completed by hockey operations leadership so far this summer. As a result, we're not going to project any changes in the effectiveness of various players due to aging, improvement or injury status. There have been no significant ice time adjustments in the data, and age-related vacillations in projected value are already baked into the numbers you'll see in the 'Before' and 'After' images that will make up the bulk of our analysis. It's worth noting, too, that this is based on an early run of the Net Rating model, and more information will get filled in at a later date as preview season approaches in late August and early September, information that accounts for projecting power-play ice time distribution, for example. As such, it's possible that Vancouver's rating will change somewhat over the balance of the offseason, regardless of whether or not the club makes any further additions. Also, while Vancouver's Net Rating has changed by only a tenth of a percentage point, it's worth noting that the change to the defensive and offensive Net Rating is equal. There's a rounding issue dictating this, which explains the number you'll see in this header and the identical ones you'll see below. Lastly, and this part is critical to note whenever we use the Net Rating model (or its precursor Game Score Value Added), a model is simply one tool — and a blunt instrument at that. It is not the end-all, be-all. It is a baseline projection of a team's true talent level that we can try to lean on for the purposes of having a better understanding of how Vancouver's offseason, to this point, has altered the club's short-term trajectory. It goes without saying that I've long since heavily valued the outputs of Luszczyszyn's model given that it has a lengthy track record outperforming all other publicly available projection systems in hockey and, usually, the betting markets as well. Advertisement With that noted, it's worth remembering that hockey is a wildly unpredictable game played by imperfect human beings. A team's fate over the course of an entire season will be influenced by any manner of factors that a model can't project for or anticipate, from team chemistry to injuries, confidence-boosting hot streaks and confidence-shattering droughts. Our purpose isn't to suggest that this data should take precedence over those very real human factors, it's simply to take a look at Vancouver's offseason through the lens of an industry-leading model to see if it might help us better understand what the Canucks have accomplished so far this offseason, and how that might shape the rest of this summer and the campaign upcoming. All right, with that out of the way, let's proceed. Below is what Vancouver's lineup would've looked like this upcoming season if the club had decided to run back the exact same roster without making a single change. And once we sub in Kane for Suter, and promote Aatu Räty and Elias Pettersson, the defender, into the lineup, this is what Vancouver's lineup looks like in the wake of an uncharacteristically quiet showing at the draft and in free agency. To summarize the differences: There aren't very many. The Canucks are largely returning the same lineup, which includes a very solid goaltending tandem, a high-end defence corps and a forward group that is very much a work in progress. While the model prefers Suter to Kane, especially on the defensive side of the puck, it also views Kane as a somewhat significant offensive upgrade for Vancouver. Overall, the model views the club's offseason changes as being of modest impact. This is a team that is largely in the exact same spot today as it was in mid-June. While the changes that Vancouver made this offseason were superficial, all told, the bump that the club receives offensively as a result of swapping in Kane for Suter is material. Advertisement Suter is a talented and reliable five-on-five goal scorer, a forward who legitimately scored at a higher rate at five-on-five than his more heralded teammates like Miller and Pettersson over the past three seasons. Still, Suter's offensive impact isn't nearly as significant as Kane's is, and that goes beyond goal scoring, although Kane is a legitimately high-end five-on-five goal scorer and a top-10 NHL forward by shot rate over the past four seasons as well. Effectively there's an argument to be made in interpreting this data, one that's given weight by our qualitative opinion of watching this Canucks team try to generate scoring chances last season, that even if the model prefers Suter to Kane outright, Kane could be a better fit for the Canucks given their overall defensive level and their desperate need for scoring juice. While Kane's attacking talent gives Vancouver an overall offensive boost, the loss of Suter removes a really high-end defensive contributor from the lineup, and that's felt heavily in terms of the club's defensive rating, and especially the defensive rating of the forward group. The impact of Suter's loss might be a more significant one than the model can anticipate. The model, after all, can't perfectly anticipate the value that Suter provides as something of a fireman in the lineup, capable of pitching in wherever he's needed and raising the Canucks' floor as a first-line left winger, or second-line centre, or third-line right winger, or whatever is required in any given game. In Suter's absence, frankly, Vancouver's forward group looks relatively pedestrian defensively. In fact, the Net Rating model ranks Vancouver's forward group as below average on the defensive side of the puck relative to the rest of the league, as a result of swapping in Kane for Suter. Despite the defensive impact of Suter's loss on the defensive solidity of Vancouver's forward group, the model likewise struggles to really price in the potential impact of Vancouver's younger defenders — like Elias Pettersson, or Tom Willander, who the model wouldn't have a Net Rating score for yet given that he hasn't played a game of professional hockey yet — on the back end. The Net Rating model understands that Vancouver's blue line is both the engine of this team and one of the league's most dynamic blue-line groups. However, if Pettersson and Willander are the sorts of precocious difference-makers that the Canucks expect them to be, there's a path to Vancouver icing one of the best defensive units in the league. Advertisement There's a ceiling outcome for Vancouver's blue-line group that the model can't anticipate as it stands, but is absolutely worth noting. The Canucks entered this offseason with significant needs up front, and those needs remain. Instead, they largely focused their efforts and cap resources on returning and locking up a group of players that, together, have consistently formed a fringe playoff-calibre team. Under the hood, the Net Rating model is actually somewhat higher on Vancouver's playoff chances than the betting markets are. In early summer runs of the model, it envisions there being four truly elite teams in the Western Conference (Vegas, Edmonton, Colorado and Dallas), a fifth very strong team (Winnipeg) and a tier of three playoff hopefuls that includes the Canucks, and also St. Louis and Los Angeles. The Net Rating model views Minnesota and Utah as being a tier beneath those three wild-card striver class teams. It's an interesting dynamic to consider overall, especially because the model is bullish on a Pettersson bounce-back and squarely views Demko as a high-end goaltender. So, a lot of the bull case material that you can make for Vancouver punching above its weight is already priced into the model. What the model can't really anticipate, however, is the impact of Vancouver's young players. If players like Räty, Willander, Pettersson and perhaps some of Abbotsford's Calder Cup champion personnel can be impact contributors, Vancouver has an out to exceed the model and our expectations this season, despite the lack of transactional movement this summer. (Photo of Tyler Myers, Elias Pettersson and Evander Kane: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
