Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin has been extremely busy over the last 48 hours.
It was a huge win to get Teddy Blueger locked up for two years at a team-friendly $1.8 million AAV to solidify the penalty kill and bottom-six centre depth. The Ilya Mikheyev cap-clearing deal was a slam dunk because it cost almost nothing. Extending Dakota Joshua for four years, $13 million is a fair price, and probably less than what he could have fetched on July 1, for a player with unique all-around value for Vancouver’s third line. Allvin capped the flurry of moves off by coming to a three-year, $3 million AAV pact with Tyler Myers.
Where does all this activity leave the Canucks positioned now? Let’s go through the club’s remaining roster needs and cap situation.
Here’s a snapshot of how the Canucks look right now, courtesy of CapFriendly:
Vancouver has $15.49 million of cap space with 18 players signed. This is how the Canucks may rank their lineup needs, in order of how much money they’re willing to invest in each position.
• A star top-six winger for Elias Pettersson to play with.
• A middle-of-the-lineup defenceman (No. 3/4/5 type).
• A backup goalie.
• A depth forward with upside.
• A No. 6/7 defender to battle with Noah Juulsen and Mark Friedman for depth roles.
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The glaring top-six hole next to Pettersson is an obvious need we’ve written at length about. If there’s one position that Vancouver should be willing to splurge on, it’s this.
Next, the Canucks have to find a quality defenceman that can play a No. 3/4/5 role. In 2023-24, Vancouver’s second and third pairs shared relatively even minutes. We’ll break down if Nikita Zadorov could fit in that role later in this article.
The backup goalie situation is intriguing. The Athletic’s Rick Dhaliwal and Thomas Drance reported that Vancouver is now considering bringing Casey DeSmith back. DeSmith, coming off a $1.8 million AAV contract, would cost more against the cap than RFA Arturs Silovs.
After that, Vancouver could use a depth forward with some upside, even after re-signing Joshua. This is because the club still needs to replace Mikheyev’s lineup slot. In this roster setup, we’ve slotted Pius Suter in as the third-line centre, meaning it’s his previous spot alongside J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser that could be up for grabs. The Canucks could put Suter back on the wing and promote Blueger to 3C where he’s had success with Joshua and Garland, but it’d leave the club’s centre depth vulnerable. And even if you went down that route, you’d still need to sign an extra depth forward anyway since you’d need to get up to 13 forwards.
Finally, it’d be nice for the Canucks to add a cheap depth defenceman to battle with Juulsen and Friedman for the No. 6/7/8 jobs.
There are tons of different avenues that Vancouver could explore in filling its roster out. Let’s walk through a couple of hypothetical paths. The point of this exercise isn’t to predict targets or advise how the Canucks should spend their cap space, these are just hypotheticals meant to illustrate how far the club’s cap flexibility could take it this offseason.
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Hypothetical scenario 1: Winning the Guentzel sweepstakes
Jake Guentzel is the dream target for Canucks fans and it’s expected the organization will take a strong run at him too. He’s going to have a ton of attractive suitors and it will take some luck for Vancouver to have the winning bid but let’s map out the outlook if the club landed the star ex-Penguin at a $9.5 million AAV, for example. The Canucks would have $5.99 million left over with 19 players signed.
The next question many will be wondering: Can they afford to re-sign Zadorov in this scenario? It’s not impossible, but it would involve gymnastics which may not be practical. Vancouver would have to cut corners in filling out depth and Zadorov would have to take a hefty discount.
For example, the Canucks could land a forward at league minimum, grind Silovs down to around $800,000 on a one-year deal and make him the backup (he has no arbitration rights so the Canucks hold all the power) and skip out on adding a No. 6/7 defender entirely, opting to run a lean 22-man roster. This would leave Vancouver with $4.41 million in cap space to extend Zadorov:
Not only is it a stretch to assume they can sign Zadorov at just under a $4.5 million AAV, but the Canucks would be skimping out on the depth forward they land, wouldn’t be able to deepen the goaltending position and there’s no No. 6/7 signing in this hypothetical, so Vancouver would be one injury away from Friedman being an everyday player.
The Canucks can effectively fill out the rest of their roster after a Guentzel signing, but they’d likely have to turn to a cheaper back-end option like Brenden Dillon rather than Zadorov.
Hypothetical scenario 2: The balanced approach
If the Canucks strike out on Guentzel (or Sam Reinhart), it’ll be fascinating how they approach finding a winger for Pettersson. Will they work hard on the trade market to land a star, or will they settle for a less expensive free-agent option like Tyler Toffoli? It’s impossible to predict, but again, just for the purposes of showing how Vancouver can spend its cash, let’s lay out some hypothetical numbers.
In the roster below, we’ve added a $6.5 million winger, a $5 million defenceman, re-signed DeSmith at the same cap hit he had in 2023-24, signed a depth forward for $1 million and shelled out $1 million on an additional No. 6/7 defender:
Several top-six forward UFAs could land in the $5-7 million AAV range: Toffoli, Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson, Jake DeBrusk, Viktor Arvidsson and Teuvo Teravainen. And for reference, here are some top-four UFA defenders that could fit in the $4-6 million AAV range: Zadorov, Chris Tanev, Brett Pesce, Matt Roy, Sean Walker and Alexandre Carrier. This doesn’t even include the players that could be available on the trade market at those cap hits.
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Hypothetically, you could pick one winger and one defender from those pools for a combined $10-12.5 million or so. You may not be able to afford the most expensive combinations (e.g.: you probably can’t sign Marchessault at a $7 million AAV and Roy at a $6 million AAV) unless you cut corners elsewhere, but the club can definitely land a couple of impact pieces.
The Canucks have the cap space to make serious noise over the next week. Let’s see what areas of the roster they splurge on and where they believe they can land bargains.
(Photo of Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
