This is such a fun week, with the action heating up across the NHL world.
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the big headline yesterday, acquiring Frederik Andersen from Anaheim—and subsequently signing him to a $25-million contract. Andersen is coming in with a pretty decent body of work—125 NHL games over three seasons and a William M. Jennings Trophy from 2015-16 as part of the NHL tandem that allowed the fewest goals against, along with John Gibson.
That's twice as much experience as the 62 games that Jonathan Bernier had when he came over to Toronto from the Los Angeles Kings, and Andersen's personal numbers are a shade better than Bernier's as well, in both save percentage and goals-against average.
It'll be very interesting to see how Andersen fares in Toronto.
In other news on Monday, the Florida Panthers traded for the negotiating rights to Keith Yandle, while the Buffalo Sabres did the same for college prospect Jimmy Vesey. Arizona also acquired the negotiating rights to Alex Goligoski late last week, so we're already starting to see which key free agents are being targeted for next season.
I'll be surprised if the Canucks are able to secure a pick for any of their impending UFAs.
On a brighter note, however, two Canucks players were named to their respective World Junior development camp rosters on Monday.
No surprise, Brock Boeser will almost certainly make his second World Junior appearance in Toronto and Montreal this Christmas, after winning bronze with Team USA in 2016.
The bigger news is the inclusion of defenceman Guillaume Brisebois on the
Team Canada roster.
Drafted in the third round last year at No. 66, Brisebois—who doesn't turn 19 until July 21—had a good third season in the QMJHL, with 10 goals and 26 points in 52 games. He's one of a handful of players drafted below the second round to be invited to the development camp.
It's way too soon to say if Brisebois will pan out as an NHL player, but this is definitely a positive step for someone drafted in his position. Hopefully Jim Benning can have similar success with this year's 64th pick.
On that note, TSN's Bob McKenzie released his order of selection for the Top 80 picks on Monday.
Click here for the article.
One key point that McKenzie makes about his list: "Unlike many of the fine scouting services out there, which attempt to evaluate which prospects will turn out to be the best players in the NHL over the next five years, TSN's rankings are more a narrow prediction or forecast of when on draft day a prospect is most likely to be chosen."
In other words, TSN is trying to predict what will happen on Friday and Saturday more than trying to assess which prospects will pan out into the best NHL players.
Bob's pretty adamant that the Top 3 won't change—Auston, Laine, Puljujarvi in that order. I feel like Puljujarvi's stock could still drop, but maybe that's more about Patrik Laine's rise, narrowing the gap between himself and Auston Matthews. Even if Puljujarvi's achievements late in the season didn't parallel those of his fellow Finn, he did have a pretty good Finnish League playoffs himself, with nine points in 10 games, and was a standout at the U18 tournament.
We now know that Puljujarvi had minor knee surgery after that U18 tournament. He missed some time in the Finnish league back in March with a lower-body injury, per
NHL.com, so he may have been playing hurt for awhile before going under the knife.
If there's going to be a shakeup at all near the top of the draft, though, I think it'll be Puljujarvi who moves.
McKenzie has Pierre-Luc Dubois listed as the fifth selection, which is not a surprise. But he caught my attention when he tweeted out this bit of news during his Q&A on Monday night:
This assessment lines up a bit more tightly with what we've heard up till now:
McKenzie also says that he thinks Tkachuk is the slightly better prospect.
Then, there's the defenceman option. Benning didn't rule out picking a blueliner in his TSN interview late last week, and the chief scout at McKeen's thinks the possibility is still in play for Vancouver:
McKenzie ranks Olli Juolevi at No. 6, and he's now the only defenceman in the TSN Top 10.
The farther down the list we go, the less likely it becomes that players will be drafted at their exact numbers. For the record, McKenzie has goaltender Evan Fitzpatrick listed at No. 64, where the Canucks make their second choice. The Newfoundland native played for the Sherbrooke Phoenix of the QMJHL last year and was Canada's primary goaltender at the U18 tournament in April.
To conclude today, we can now start planning the next 10 months of our lives. The 2016-17 NHL schedule has been released.
Because of the World Cup of Hockey, the regular season will start a little later this year. The Canucks season will begin with a four-game homestand starting with Glen Gulutzan and the Calgary Flames on Saturday, October 15 and will conclude with a home-and-home against the Edmonton Oilers on April 8 and 9.
The Canucks will have a relatively easy October, with seven of their first nine games at home, so the team should have a chance to get off to a good start.
After asking the league for shorter road trips next season, they've still got three doozies: six games in nine nights in early November, five games in eight nights in early December and six games in 10 nights in February. No seven-gamers this year, though!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»