The buyout window may be open, but the more I think about it, the more I'll be surprised if we see much (any?) action on that front before the expansion draft.
I'm sure every team is trying to get clarity on what Ron Francis and his crew are planning to do. And I would assume that the situation is fluid enough that nobody is hearing "No, we're definitely not interested in taking that player you're thinking of buying out." The Kraken's roster puzzle is interlocking, with every decision affecting every other decision. And I don't know that Francis can really start looking at putting those puzzle pieces together until after next Saturday's roster freeze, when he knows exactly what he's dealing with.
There are also minimum exposure requirements for the expansion draft: teams must expose a certain number of players at each position who have enough NHL experience to satisfy the requirements. A potential buyout target could be useful for that purpose. And if he isn't selected, option one would be to try to find a retained-salary deal that's more financially attractive. If that doesn't work either, the buyout window remains open until July 27, one day before the beginning of free agency.
More likely, the player movement we could see around the league this week would be more like the Victor Arvidsson-to-L.A. trade, where a team with protection challenges decides to move out a player for draft picks or prospects that don't require protection.
This may be Vancouver's best opportunity to acquire a meaningful asset. If you take a look at
CapFriendly's expansion draft tool, you'll see that they have a spot open on the blue line, with only Tyler Myers, Nate Schmidt and Madison Bowey eligible for protection. Assuming Bowey is the defenseman that they plan to expose, they can easily bring in one more blueliner and add him to their protected list.
Elliotte Friedman has posted his season-ending
33 Thoughts on the Sportsnet website. The paragraph on the Canucks is brief but meaty:
Vancouver’s looking for defence and a centre with some heft. Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre reported Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson are looking at short-term deals for cap reasons. As has been reported, they are working to find a new home for Nate Schmidt.
That pretty much cements the Nate Schmidt rumours as fact. And while I was in denial about the idea of a swap with Arizona for Oliver Ekman-Larsson when the idea surfaced a couple of days ago, Thomas Drance made a solid argument in the latest episode of the Vancast about how and why Ekman-Larsson to Vancouver could make sense — even if it's not a swap with Schmidt.
As Drance points out, Arizona is in its usual position of trying to stay budget conscious. And the Canucks have a number of players on their books who, while still carrying a cap hit that exceeds their role on the team, are owed less in real dollars next season, now that their July 1 signing bonuses have been paid.
Ekman-Larsson has six years remaining at a cap hit of $8.25 million. He has been paid $16 million so far — so, an extra $500,000 remains on the cash side, compared to the cap hit. And he's owed $10.5 million this year. All salary. No bonus.
Schmidt has four years left at a $5.95 million cap hit. He has been paid $12.9 million so far. So in addition to the fact that the hit of his contract is more than $2 million a year less, he's also owed $1 million less than his cap hit over the remaining lift of his contract. Not a huge saving, but a saving.
Last year, we heard that the Coyotes were asking for valuable roster players, which is why a potential deal fell apart. I seem to remember Thatcher Demko's name being in the mix, and can definitely see why that was a non-starter. This year, as they're still motivated to get out from under the financial obligation, could they be persuaded to take on one or more of these contracts?
• Jay Beagle: one year remaining, cap hit $3 million, bonus paid $1 million, real salary $1.2 million
• Antoine Roussel: one year remaining, cap hit $3 million, real salary $1.9 million
• Loui Eriksson: one year remaining, cap hit $6 million, bonus paid $1 million, real salary $3 million
And might they be willing to throw in a useful roster player as well? Elsewhere in his blog, Friedman mentions that teams are interested in Christian Dvorak, who he calls "a good centre."
At 6'0" and 195 pounds, I'm not sure if he has the "heft" that Benning is apparently looking for — although he's certainly bulkier than Adam Gaudette, who's listed at 6'1" and 170. Dvorak isn't a big hitter. But at 25, he's the right age to fit in with the Canucks' core players, and he's on a long-term deal — signed to a back-loaded contract that will see him earning a total of $2.2 million more than his cap hit of $4.45 million over the next four years.
So, we'll see. Maybe there's something there that can work for both sides, now that GM Bill Armstrong has a year under his belt in Arizona and a more realistic sense of what he's dealing with.
And one final Canucks-adjacent note from Friedman before I sign off for today. On Friday, Laval Rocket head coach Joel Bouchard jumped ship to become the new head coach of the San Diego Gulls — perhaps with an eye toward the head-coaching job of their parent team, the Anaheim Ducks? In their two seasons under Dallas Eakins, the Ducks have finished 27th and 30th overall, respectively. His leash may not be very long next season.
Bouchard is well regarded; he did well in the QMJHL before joining the Canadiens organization, so he could be on track for an NHL job.
That leaves a coaching opening in Laval and, as Friedman puts it, "no one’s going to be stunned to see Alexandre Burrows" in that position. After he jumped into an NHL assistant position at midseason and got a run all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, it makes sense that the next step in Burrows' career development would be to get some head-coaching experience of his own as he tries to work his own way up toward an NHL gig.
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