Potential Playoff Opponent: Vancouver Canucks
By Phil Gretzky
The Canucks D is exactly what you’d expect it to be – one superstar and then a huge drop-off after that.
The first pairing is manned on the left side by Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who Jim Benning “Peter Chiarelli’d” from Arizona. In other words, this move is one of the final middle fingers to the organization from a GM who had to know his time into the GM sunset was on the horizon. Just like Chiarelli signed Mikko Koskinen to a ridiculous contract the day before he was fired, Benning made a ridiculous trade with Arizona to bring on one of the worst contracts in the NHL.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised since both Benning and Chiarelli were co-workers in Boston when the Bruins lucked into a Cup win in 2011. The worst part is the Canucks dealt away $10 million of cap space that was all due to come off the books after this season. They would’ve been better off letting OEL rot in Arizona and keeping the bottom six players they dealt away which would’ve given them a huge haul in cap space after this season is up.
Anyway, Larsson has done….OK. He’s not the same player who put up multiple seasons of 40 and 50 points in Arizona, but he’s put up 27 points this season and cleaned up his +/- significantly from -17 with the Coyotes last season to +9 this season. Still, you’d expect better from a blueliner with a $7.26 million cap hit. This is vindication from earlier in my predictions for the Canucks. I can’t for the life of me find the blog anymore but I predicted OEL wouldn’t live up to the hype and so far he’s largely proven me right, despite many Canucks trolls insisting he’d return to form.
Anyway, now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, OEL’s partner is Tyler Myers, another guy being paid way too much money to produce way too little. For $6 million for this season plus the next two, the Canucks are getting a whopping 17 points. +22, a whopping 24 points better than last year in the +/- column, but you’d expect more offence for the money.
Vancouver is currently paying just over $13 million a year for two blueliners to combine for 40 points on their first pairing. Enjoy…..
The second pairing has the guy who is the future top pairing guy in 22 year old Quinn Hughes, who has a whopping 59 points on the season, good enough for eighth in the league in scoring amongst blueliners. His partner is the rather forgettable veteran in Luke Schenn, who was a part time bottom pairing guy in Tampa the last two previous seasons but is in the top four on an inferior team in Vancouver. Go figure.
The bottom pairing is more vanilla extract in Travis Dermott, ex-Leaf, who came over at the trade deadline and has a whopping no points and +3 in 12 games. Well, at least you’re only paying him $1.5 million to keep his head above water defensively and not produce offence. I guess that’s the bright side. His partner is ex-Oiler 33 year old Brad Hunt, who’s carved out a career as an average bottom pairing d-man on the right side. He’s put up 15 points with a -5 which is, well, unimpressive. OK but nothing that makes him stand out. Still better than his predecessor Kyle Burroughs, I guess, who put up 33% less points in almost the same number of games.
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I’m going to have to go with the Oilers on D too, due to better depth and secondary scoring from the stay at home guys.