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Vancouver Canucks Sign NCAA Champion Free Agent Defenseman Troy Stecher
April 14, 2016, 2:24 PM ET [340 Comments]
Carol Schram
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Just one day after their end-of-season interviews, Jim Benning and company were back at work, inking North Dakota free-agent defenseman Troy Stecher to a two-year entry-level contract.

ESPN prospects expert gives the move a thumbs-up.




According to News1130 Sports, the entire Canucks coaching and management staff had a hand in recruiting Stecher, who considered several other appealing options before making his decision:




Here's a little more about Stecher, from the player himself:













I'm not going to pin my hopes for the Canucks future on the blue line on an undersized, undrafted 22-year-old, but I'm glad to see the team adding organizational depth—and it's a great sign that Brock Boeser offered up enough positive words about the organization to convince Stecher that Vancouver was a good signing option.

I feel like this also improves the Canucks' odds of also signing Stecher and Boeser's and fellow All-American Drake Caggiula, though he's not expected to make his decision for a few more weeks.

Continuing on the theme of the University of North Dakota, their Ralph Engelstad Arena is the host venue for the IIHF's 2016 Under-18 Tournament, which begins today.

The event shines a bright spotlight on a very high-end venue. Listen to this, from the arena website:

The 400,000 square foot arena is nothing but first class. All concourse floors are granite, each seat is constructed of leather and cherry wood, and there are 48 full luxury suites, two mini suites, and two enormous club rooms featuring the longest freestanding bars in the state. The training facility features a 10,000 sq. ft. weight room and underwater treadmill, fourteen locker rooms, the extra Olympic Sheet of Ice, and with the addition of the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center for the basketball and volleyball programs, what you have is more than a world-class facility; you have the Ralph Engelstad Arena.


No wonder these kids like where they are!

Absent from this year's tournament: the top three projected picks in this year's draft. Auston Matthews is saving himself for the men's World Championship in Russia, while Patrik Laine plays on in the Finnish League final for Tappara after his team ousted Jesse Puljujarvi's Karpat club in a seven-game semifinal.

Click here for a look at the rosters and the schedule.

TSN will be televising Canada's games, the first of which will be against Denmark on Friday at 5 p.m. PT.

If you'd like to go deeper on Laine and Puljujarvi, Jeremy Davis gives us a detailed advanced-stat analysis over at Canucks Army. His conclusion? Same as everything else we've seen—they're both really good, but Laine is just a little bit better.

Radim Vrbata Handcuffed the Canucks?

The other news of the day? Yes, Radim Vrbata offered the Canucks limited trade possibilities when the opportunity came up to deal him at the deadline.

Jason Botchford confirms that Vrbata's required eight-team list included only thee playoff teams in this article in the Vancouver Sun.

“I don’t think I handcuffed them, but I knew what I was doing,” Vrbata said this week. “I could have given a lot more (options) and I would have moved.

“If I wanted to get traded, I would have been traded.”


The issue was Vrbata's wife's pregnancy—she's due in May—and it's not the first time that has been a priority for him.

Back in 2008-09, he signed a three-year free-agent deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning, then left the team in December to return to Czech Republic—"citing confidence issues, and the fact that his wife was having difficulty during pregnancy," as it's phrased on his Wikipedia page. By the time he was ready to return to the NHL in 2009-10, the Lightning organization was done with him and he orchestrated his own trade back to the Arizona Coyotes.

Vrbata suggests to Botchford that he would have been more amenable to being dealt if the Canucks had given him a glimpse into their crystal ball last summer.

“There would have been a lot more teams interested,” Vrbata said. “If they said, after last season, ‘You know what, next year, we’re going young. We have a 19-year-old centreman for you to play with.

“‘Do you want to do something else?’

“Then I think I would have jumped at — considered something different, even though last year was great.”


Of course, this revisionist history ignores the fact that the 19-year-old centre, Jared McCann, wasn't even expected to make the team during the summer. Yeah, 20-year-old Bo Horvat would have been a potential pivot, but if Brandon Sutter had been in the mix for more than 20 games, things would have turned out a lot differently.

Vrbata lamented the fact that the Canucks dealt Nick Bonino away but in his mind, it sounds like Sutter was never really even here.

Throughout his career, Vrbata has been a mercurial player, mixing occasional dazzling goal-scoring with long stretches of nothing.

He had a long list of suitors when he signed with the Canucks two summers ago. Which teams will be interested this time around?

Apologies from Beatle_john

To wrap up today, Beatle_john asked if I could take a moment to share his apologies for his inability to get a hockey pool set up before the beginning of the playoffs. There was quite a bit of interest, apparently, but some technical glitches on the website he tried to use foiled the plan.

Thanks for trying, Beatle_john. Next time!
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