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Brock Boeser signs and Jake Virtanen shines as Canucks' preseason begins

September 17, 2019, 2:20 PM ET [185 Comments]
Carol Schram
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Vancouver Canucks hit the ice for their first two preseason games on Monday night — and I'll get to those in a minute.

The games were overshadowed, of course, by Monday night's news that the team had come to an agreement with its last unsigned player, Brock Boeser, on a new three-year deal.



I like this deal just fine for both sides. Boeser has shown that he's a top-end scorer, but 140 career games isn't much of a sample size to go off when looking at negotiating a long-term deal. He's still waiver exempt, for crying out loud!

The three-year term is long enough that his contract status will go to the back burner for a bit, but still gives him the incentive to stay hungry and keep improving so that his next deal will be a home run.

Boeser will be 25 when this deal expires — eligible for arbitration, and still two years away from unrestricted free agency.

There seems to be a lot of chatter about the structure of the deal, which will pay him $4 million this season, $6.125 next year and $7.5 in 2021-22. Yes, that will set him up for a healthy qualifying offer — but it's a far cry from the $10 million level that Timo Meier will be at when his new four-year deal with San Jose expires one year later.

Also - in the current CBA, qualifying offers for all players who make more than $1 million a year are equal to the value of the last year of their deals. Only lower-tier players must be offered raises, so Boeser's qualifying offer at the end of this deal will be $7.5 million.

The timing of the signing makes sense. With camps underway, urgency ramped up for everybody; even Mitch Marner admitted that he got personally involved in his own negotiation and was anxious to sign so that he could join his teammates and get rolling.

Boeser was one of a handful of players who was designated a 10.2(c) player and hadn't played enough games to be eligible for an offer sheet this summer, giving him even less negotiating leverage than a true RFA. The other high-profile 10.2(c) player, Charlie McAvoy, also signed on Monday — also a three-year deal, with a cap hit of $4.9 million and a final-year salary of $7.3 million. That's an almost-identical structure to Boeser's deal, and reflects the market that has star defensemen making less than young forwards this summer.

Boeser's deal was also announced after the NHL Players' Association announced on Monday that it wouldn't be exercising its option to re-open the CBA next season. You can read more about that here:



Boeser's deal will expire at the same time as the current deal — although the NHL and the Players' Association have said that they'll continue to negotiate in an effort to address issues of concern, and are aiming to reach an agreement on an extension that could cover an additional three or four years, up as far as 2026-27.

Whether that happens or not, Boeser's next negotiating window will come after the league negotiates its next U.S. TV deal, which will take effect for the 2021-22 season and is expected to bring in big bucks. If the new Seattle franchise follows in Vegas' footsteps, that could also trigger a nice jump in hockey-related revenue, and it's hoped that the ongoing legalization of sports gambling will also help grow the pie.

Iain MacIntyre has a good outline of how negotiations rolled out:



In summary:

Benning and agent Ben Hankinson never got close to an agreement on a long-term deal, and focused for much of the summer on a bridge contract for Boeser.

Even on a short-term deal, it’s believed Boeser wanted in excess of $6 million annually, while the Canucks were wary of paying more than the $5.5 million Horvat accepted on a six-year-deal signed before the 2017-18 season.


If both sides had to bend in order to get pen to paper, then the final outcome is probably pretty fair.

Boeser's now in transit to Vancouver and is expected to join the team on the ice for practice on Wednesday.



On a personal note, the timing is also nice. Brock's dad has continued to improve after his health scare earlier in the summer. Over the last little while, he has been able to communicate again, and Brock posted a photo of the two of them outside on his Instagram story a couple of days ago. I'm sure it's a little easier for Brock to leave Minnesota knowing that Duke is stable and on the mend.

As far as cap space goes, it's a non-issue. CapFriendly is currently showing the Canucks at $83.2 million — about $1.7 million over the $81.5 million cap season, but that number includes 26 players — 16 forwards, eight defensemen and two goalies.

As soon as the team eliminates three salaries to get down to the 23-man roster limit, it's guaranteed to shave off at least $2.5 million, which is more than enough. That's without dumping salaries via trade or doing any fancy footwork with the injured Antoine Roussel—who has been skating on his own in Victoria and looks like he might not be as far away from a return to the lineup as was originally projected.

It's pretty hilarious that the team's only waiver-eligible players currently on the CapFriendly projected roster are Boeser, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko. Pretty sure none of those guys are getting sent to Utica — so the intrigue over the next two weeks will surround which players end up getting cut.

Most likely, either Oscar Fantenberg or Alex Biega will be placed on waivers. And Roussel will go on IR to start the year. So that leaves one more forward cut if the Canucks start the season with 14 forwards, seven defensemen and two goalies — and everyone else stays healthy through the rest of camp.

That's also assuming that none of the bubble players make a play for a spot on the big club. Adam Gaudette is probably most likely, but he's also waiver exempt, so it's easy to put him in Utica to start the year. Players like Reid Boucher, Justin Bailey and Tyler Graovac are all waiver-eligible, but are long-shots to stick with the Canucks.

So — who acquitted themselves well in their fight for a job in the games on Monday night?

Well, Shotgun Jake slammed the door to his doghouse with a two-goal performance as a Canucks squad composed mostly of kids and minor-leaguers staged an impressive comeback for a 3-2 overtime win against a stacked Flames team in Calgary.



Richard Bachman went the distance and was a hero in net for the Canucks, stopping 36 of 38 shots and keeping Vancouver in the game by giving up just one goal in a first period where the Flames outshot the Canucks 18-2.

In the second, Calgary's edge was 12-5 and Michael Frolik extended the lead to 2-0, but the Canucks found their legs in the third.

Defenseman Mitch Eliot opened the scoring, with an assist by Wacey Hamilton. Both of Jake's goals were individual efforts — and neither looked great for Cam Talbot, who took over from David Rittich midway through the game and gave up three goals on the nine shots he faced.





In Victoria, the Canucks didn't give the fans at the sold-out Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre much to cheer about until the late stages of the game.



The Flames outshot the Canucks 41-34 overall and built a 4-0 lead by the early stages of the third period before Loui Eriksson got Vancouver on the board — cleaning up garbage in front of the net like he was supposed to have done 30 times a year during the past three seasons!

Josh Teves narrowed the lead to 4-2 off a long shot with less than three minutes to go, then Bo Horvat set up a frantic finish when he got his team within one with 55 seconds left to play in the third period.

Vancouver ran out of time before completing the comeback — but after scoring just 10 goals through the entire preseason last year, six on Day 1 seems like a solid step in the right direction, especially without Boeser or Pettersson.

The action continues tonight in Vancouver, as the Canucks host the Edmonton Oilers at 7 p.m. — and once again, you can catch the action on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 650.

Here's the group that's taking the morning skate at Rogers Arena. Fans will get their first look at Pettersson-Ferland and at Edler-Myers — and Jacob Markstrom gets another night off.



Goldobin, Virtanen, Gaudette, Rafferty, Chatfield, MacEwen and Zane McIntyre will go back-to-back after having played on Monday. Word is that MacIntyre and Demko will split the game.

Here's the lineup that Edmonton is bringing to Vancouver:



Markus Granlund returns; former Vancouve Giant Tyler Benson gets a look, and fans at Rogers Arena will get a chance to see highly-touted first-rounder Evan Bouchard on the Edmonton blue line.

Enjoy the game!
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