It was a gutsy, all-out effort by the Canucks. It just wasn’t enough.
While not yet a mathematical certainty, the Vancouver Canucks will likely fall short in their pursuit of a playoff spot this season. That much is all but assured in the wake of the club’s 6-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. on Thursday night, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
Brad Richardson broke his nose, and returned. J.T. Miller was struck in the knee by a shot — observers in St. Paul noted that the Canucks’ “driver” left the rink limping severely after the game — and didn’t miss a shift. Luke Schenn gamely fought Nicolas Deslauriers, one of the few remaining apex predator enforcers in the league.
In a losing effort, Thursday’s performance was nothing short of impressive and gritty. The Canucks took their licks, pushed back and then kept on coming on Thursday evening. They were the better team at 5-on-5 in the contest. They had their opportunities to win.
Vancouver just couldn’t find the extra gear they needed against an elite side.
Despite a valiant run down the stretch — 53 games racking up points like a top-10 side under head coach Bruce Boudreau — Thursday’s defeat left the Canucks’ playoff hopes circling down the drain in much the same way that Kevin Fiala did laps around their net on the pivotal, back breaking third period shift that gave Minnesota a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
There’s work to be done to upgrade this roster and clear cap space. The time has nearly come for Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and Vancouver’s new hockey brain trust to chart a new, disciplined, coherent course for this franchise.
We’ll have time to get into all of that —too much time, in fact, as the club ponders yet another extended offseason — but for now there’s still four games remaining. The Canucks still have some questions to answer down the stretch, even if it’s now clear that they’ll be on the outside looking in at the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Let’s spotlight five of them, as the Canucks enter the final week of the NHL regular season.
You can’t argue with what Boudreau has accomplished since arriving in Vancouver. The record: 30 wins, 14 losses, nine overtime losses. It speaks for itself.
Under Boudreau’s watch the Canucks’ special teams have improved, particularly the club’s shorthanded form. The vibes around the team became lighter almost instantly. The entertainment value went up.
Boudreau and his staff have consistently found ways to disguise the significant limitations of the roster in just about every phase of the game. Boudreau built useful supporting lines out of spare parts. He extracted more out of Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Juho Lammikko and J.T. Miller than I ever would’ve believed was possible.
It seems to me that there’s no other coach in the league that could’ve brought this group to the edge of the playoff race. Boudreau has made a compelling case to earn an extension.
Now, the precise mechanics of this need to be unpacked here, but they’re shrouded in a good deal of secrecy. Boudreau is technically on a two-year deal that lasts through next season, but in fact next season is a team option. As our colleague at The Athletic Pierre LeBrun explained on Thursday:
At the time of his hire, it was announced he agreed to a two-year deal ($2 million this season, $2.5 million next season) but it’s actually a one-year deal with an option for next season. While no one will confirm this, I think it’s the kind of option where if the Canucks don’t pick it up, he gets paid some cash out of it to walk if he’s not kept on. Either way, it requires Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin to make a decision — which I suspect they’ve already made, but are waiting until after the season to announce.
The wording of Boudreau’s option hasn’t been confirmed explicitly by either side, but it was suggested earlier this month by Elliotte Friedman on Hockey Night in Canada that there’s also a mutual component to Boudreau’s option. It means Boudreau could also decide to become a free agent if he so chooses.
“Nobody will tell me exactly what it is but I think that I’ve kind of pieced it together,” Friedman said at the time, “and that is that the Canucks have an option to keep him or not, but if they don’t, there’s a payment that has to go to Boudreau and also, Boudreau has an option not to return and if that was to happen, I don’t think he gets a payout but it would put him on the open market at the end of the year.”
The Athletic understands that Boudreau met with his agent this week and there’s a growing sense in Vancouver hockey circles that the club will, in fact, try to retain him in some fashion.
That’s good news, but it may not be a straightforward conversation. When you consider what Boudreau has accomplished in Vancouver and add in that there could be as many as 10 coaching vacancies around the NHL following this season (and maybe more, depending on playoff performance), one suspects that the $2.5 million that Boudreau is due for next season on his current deal would represent a low-end valuation of what he’d be worth on the open market.
The Canucks should keep Boudreau in his current post with an extension that results in him being paid fair market value and provides him with some term. It would avoid the discordant incentives that occur when an NHL head coach is permitted to coach through their lame-duck season.
We’re only 12 months removed from the club permitting Travis Green, Ian Clark and the rest of the Canucks coaching staff to work through the final year of their contracts in 2021, after all. That was an unnecessarily acrimonious set up and led to subpar decision-making on a variety of levels throughout an ill-fated 2021 campaign.
Aligning the club’s long-term interests with the interests of key decision-makers is crucial, and it’s something this organization has struggled to do repeatedly in recent years. There should be zero appetite to recreate that type of bizarre, internal drama now, particularly now that there’s a sense of freshness and hope surrounding the organization.
By extending Boudreau immediately following the end of the season, the club can turn the page on the endless treadmill of palace intrigue that has punctuated the past five seasons. Doing so would allow the Canucks to project stability this summer, something that has been sorely absent from the club’s public affairs since Trevor Linden’s departure in the summer of 2018.
OK, admittedly, this isn’t a question that’s difficult to answer.
The Canucks have never had a defenseman like Quinn Hughes in franchise history and he’s going to own just about all of the franchise’s defensive scoring records by the time his Vancouver career is done.
Currently, Hughes is one assist away from surpassing Rick Lanz and holding the record for most assists by any Canucks defenceman in a single season. If he records two more points, which seems all but assured with four games remaining on the schedule, he’ll own the highest-scoring season by a defenceman in Canucks franchise history.
Less ballyhooed, but perhaps most impressive, Hughes is currently averaging over 25 minutes of ice time per game (25:11). If he finishes the season north of 25 minutes, he’ll become just the third defender in franchise history — joining Matthias Ohlund and Ed Jovanovski — to average 25 minutes per game or more while appearing in at least 60 games since the NHL started tracking the time on ice statistic in the 1996-97 season.
Hughes does so many remarkable things so consistently that it’s easy to take it for granted on a nightly basis. The fact is, however, that Hughes has stepped up his offensive production to a level that’s truly historic in the context of Canucks franchise history, all while improving as a defensive player in his third campaign.
In the years to come, Hughes is going to dominate the Canucks franchise record books for defenseman scoring even further. There are a few records that won’t be easy to match, however, including Paul Reinhart’s franchise record of 39 power-play points from a defender in a single season (Hughes has 31 this season, and it’s hard — although not impossible — to imagine the Canucks power play being more lethal than it is right now) and Dale Tallon’s record of 39 even-strength points (Hughes has 28 this season).
It’s going to be a lot of fun, however, to watch him try.
On trade deadline day, the Canucks papered Vasili Podkolzin down to the American Hockey League to preserve his eligibility to compete for the Abbotsford Canucks in the Calder Cup playoffs.
The Calder Cup playoffs will begin in early May and Abbotsford is likely to have home-ice advantage, by virtue of a scintillating season-ending win streak that they’ve cobbled together despite a shorthanded roster. When the playoffs begin, it’s likely that Abbotsford will airdrop Podkolzin into their lineup, along with Sheldon Dries, Nic Petan and Will Lockwood, as reinforcements for their inaugural season playoffs.
Podkolzin has played his best hockey for the Canucks down the stretch. He’s built to excel in heavy games when the intensity ramps up and space becomes limited. Of late he’s played the game with physical intensity and ill intent.
Now the question is, how will that translate at the American League level in the playoffs?
Over in Russia last season, Podkolzin elevated his game in the playoffs, transforming into nearly a point-per-game player in the 2021 Gagarin Cup playoffs. Will we see something similar in the AHL?
Part of the club’s reasoning in sending Podkolzin to the American League, even at the tail end of a long rookie year, is that it will give the 20-year-old power forward the opportunity to be “the man” in a way that he hasn’t been for the Canucks in his first season. We’re talking penalty killing time, being a featured part of Abbotsford’s power play and playing major minutes in all situations at 5-on-5.
Podkolzin should be the best player on every American League ice sheet he steps onto during this playoff run. Will he seize the opportunity and dominate? It’s hard to bet against him.
Speaking of Podkolzin, he’s got some potential Schedule A performance bonuses that we should be aware of as the club plays out the final four games of the 2021-22 regular season.
The relevant bonus milestone to be mindful of here, is his plus/minus bonus. Here’s how it works, if Podkolzin finishes the year among the top-three Canucks forwards (minimum 42 games played) by plus/minus, and he’s currently tied with Tanner Pearson for third with a +9 rating, he’ll earn an additional $212,500 performance bonus.
This is worth tracking because any performance bonuses that Canucks players hit this season will count as an overage penalty against the Canucks’ 2022-23 salary cap sheet, as a result of the club exceeding the upper limit of the salary cap this season due to their use of long-term injured reserve (LTIR).
Of note here, is that it’s relatively rare for Canucks prospects signed toward the tail end of the Jim Benning era to carry any performance bonuses attached to their plus/minus rating. A few years ago, during the 2016-17 season, Brendan Gaunce hit this particular bonus while still on his entry-level contract during a season in which he appeared in 57 games for the club and was a minus-2. Thereafter the club began to negotiate this out of entry-level contracts, wherever possible.
In Podkolzin’s case, however, he was a top-10 draft pick and had significant leverage coming out of the KHL. He got his full allotment of Schedule A bonuses, including the plus/minus bonus.
The other outstanding bonus worth tracking is Jaroslav Halak’s $250,000 bonus for finishing the season with a .905 save percentage or better. When Halak was injured earlier this week against the Senators, he was 10 additional saves away from bumping his save percentage up to .905. He never got the opportunity to do so.
Halak has already captured a $1.25 million bonus for starting 10 games for Vancouver this season. He isn’t with the Canucks on their current road trip, but if he were to appear in another game and make 10 additional stops (or 22 additional stops while surrendering a goal against), he would earn that bonus.
These are relatively small sums, but every stray cent matters, particularly given Vancouver’s suboptimal cap positioning going into this offseason.
Against the Wild on Thursday night, Travis Dermott was Vancouver’s third most frequently used defender. He played over two minutes more than Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
He played very, very well. Dermott has added a good deal of speed and puck-moving ability to Vancouver’s defense corps, and on Thursday the club outscored the Wild 2-0 with him on the ice at even-strength, while playing him in top-four minutes.
Is this a one-off, or the start of a trend? Will Dermott get an opportunity to audition in more regular top-four minutes over the final four games? And could that influence what moves the club opts to make this offseason, particularly given that upgrading the blue line is an existential necessity for this club?
In a similar vein, Will Lockwood has shown solidly well since joining the club a couple of games after the NHL trade deadline. He hasn’t generated much offense and he certainly hasn’t been spectacular, but he’s brought speed and tenacity to Vancouver’s bottom-six and he hasn’t looked out of place at this level.
Could Lockwood do enough in the games that remain to convince Canucks management to hold a spot open for him in the bottom-six next season? He certainly profiles like a Rutherford-style winger, but the leap from being an American League player capable of giving an NHL organization some games as a depth player to being an everyday NHL player is a steep one.
As the season winds down, Lockwood has a golden opportunity to leave an impression on management — much like Matthew Highmore did at the tail end of the 2021 campaign.
Can Lockwood and Dermott do enough to influence how Canucks management views their needs going into the offseason?
(Top photo: Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)