One positive from the Roberto Luongo situation that I haven't seen discussed in all the conversations since he announced his retirement...
His trade to Florida in 2014 did yield Jacob Markstrom as part of the return. The same Markstrom who, at 29, was named the Canucks' MVP last season. If Ian Clark continues to help Markstrom hone his game, we could be in a situation where Markstrom could elevate the Canucks close to a playoff position based on his play alone next season.
Francesco Aquilini mentioned Markstrom as an important piece of the current team in his
hot stove event with Gary Bettman for the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade before the draft last Friday. There was talk earlier in the season that the team was looking to sign him to a long-term contract extension befitting a No. 1 goalie when he becomes eligible after July 1.
It took awhile for Markstrom to realize his potential but if you set aside all the other chatter about Luongo's legacy and his contract, the Canucks are sitting in a much better position today, goalie-wise, than if he'd never been traded.
I'd almost argue that Markstrom's presence alone is worth the net cap hit of $2.2 million that I suppose the Canucks would have been able to avoid if they'd hung onto Luongo for the last five years, then slid him onto long-term injured reserve themselves to avoid the recapture penalty that now has everyone up in arms.
To reiterate—I think everyone's clear on this now, right? Because of the $800,000 in retained salary that the Canucks were already carrying on Luongo, the impact of the recapture penalty is not actually as significant as it looked at first glance. And by spreading the penalty over three seasons, the Canucks are a lot better off than they would have been if Luongo had retired in 2020 or 2021, when the same penalty would have been imposed over shorter periods of time.
My other big takeaway over the last 24 hours is that even though I was gobsmacked over Luongo choosing retirement over LTIR, the Canucks shouldn't have been.
It sure seemed to me like Luongo's hip issues would be enough to qualify him for LTIR, but it sounds like that wasn't the Panthers' preference.
Florida saves real money, with a negligible penalty themselves, even as they prepare to spend big this summer to ice a competitive team under new coach Joel Quenneville. Based on this tweet from their beat writer for The Athletic, they are trying to downplay this component of the deal.
Luongo has made it clear that he's putting down his family's long-term roots in Parkland, so he'll certainly be geographically available if the Panthers have a role for him.
As for the structure of the contract itself, as Todd Bertuzzi once famously said, "It is what it is."
When the current CBA outlawed back-diving contracts like Luongo's when it was signed in 2013, I was furious that there wasn't a grandfather provision for deals that were already on the books. I mean—it wasn't illegal at the time, right?
What the insiders have reported in the last 24 hours helps explain why that wasn't the case:
The CBA was unanimously ratified by all 30 teams in the league in 2013—including the Canucks and other teams with back-diving contracts on the books like the Minnesota Wild, who have just hit the halfway point of the 12-year deals they signed with Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, both now 34.
Mike Gillis built a winner with the Canucks, but he was laser-focused on that Stanley Cup at the expense of other aspects of organizational health. He traded picks and prospects for roster help, and he seemed to put barely any resources into drafting.
Did you see this Travis Yost article on TSN earlier this week? Based on these metrics, the drafting problem has been even worse that I thought—and I already thought it was pretty bad.
My point: Luongo's contract was another organizational decision made by Gillis to benefit the present with the possibility of a real cost in the future and the attitude of "We'll worry about that later." It's often said that GMs have incentive to think this way because most of them don't stay in their jobs all that long. But what about ownership? They're still here and now they're paying the price—presumably because they were all-in on trying to win a Stanley Cup.
Would fans be less fussed about all this today if the Canucks had won Game 7 in 2011? Or is the angst tied to that heartbreaking loss, the riot, and the team's failure to manage even one more significant run? When it ends, it usually ends quickly, even for the teams that do win. Chicago and L.A. are already in full-scale rebuilds and Pittsburgh certainly could be next after its first-round playoff sweep this year.
The Canucks did give some signals over the last week that they knew Luongo's retirement was a real possibility. I wondered why I kept hearing that they were one of the last few teams in the mix for P.K. Subban, but New Jersey was the only group that wasn't asking for Nashville to retain $3 million in salary. I suspect these two elements are related.
There's also chatter that the Canucks' decisions not to give qualifying offers to Ben Hutton and Markus Granlund also came into focus as the Luongo situation started to look like it was becoming reality—especially when we didn't get any earlier hints on these players like we did with Derrick Pouliot and Brendan Gaunce.
One other note on Hutton—I hadn't realized that, because $400,000 of his salary was paid in bonuses last season, his qualifying offer for 2019-20 was actually $2.4 million, not his full $2.8 million cap hit.
There's talk that other teams might be interested in his services. I'm so curious to see how his situation plays out.
One final note to wrap up today—if you missed it, Scott Walker is out as the Canucks' Director of Player Development and is joining the Arizona Coyotes.
Looks like they were able to shore up their front office now that their new owner has been officially approved. Now all they need is an arena...
That leaves the Canucks will a pretty small player development team.
As Patrick Johnston mentions in this article, one-time Canucks Chris Higgins and Dane Jackson have been helping out at development camp at UBC this week, but neither is expected to become a full-time hire. Higgins is looking to figure out his next career steps after retiring three years ago; Jackson has been a coach at the University of North Dakota for the last 13 seasons.
Once again, the prospects have gotten short shrift here. More on the players and development camp itself coming soon!
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