Zach Hyman and the Nuge

So the other day the Vancouver Canucks fired a player and team favourite coach in Bruce Boudreau and replace him with…..Rick Tocchet? Really? You’re telling me there was no other option other than the recycled, vanilla choice of Rick Tocchet? That’s just bizarre. Tocchet has had very little success as a head coach, his best success came as an assistant coach on the Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins teams in 2016 and 2017.

If you’re interested, I saw this interesting youtube video from a Canuck fan detailing all the issues with the Canucks.

Tell me that doesn’t sound like the Oilers pre-2015. I hear your pain, Canucks fans. The first step should be to do a housecleaning of the scouting staff, but whether Allvin does that or not remains to be seen. That’s what kicked off the start of the Oilers turnaround anyway, and look where we are today.

Speaking of the Canucks, it sounds like the Oilers are interested in Bo Horvat. The idea is to load the Oilers center depth up for bear and absolutely go for it in the playoffs. Although from a hockey perspective, it sounds great, there would be a lot of questions that need answers here. First of all, would you look at Horvat as a rental or a long-term piece? That’s two completely different scenarios and would affect the makeup of the trade. Then the other major question is would the Canucks be willing to trade a major piece to a division rival? I’m not convinced they would be, despite the fact that there’s no danger of him coming back to haunt the Canucks except for whatever amount of games are left between the Oilers and Canucks from now to the end of the season.

The biggest question, though, is if the Oilers want Horvat as a long-term piece how do you fit him into the cap? I don’t see how you can without making major surgery to the roster and turning the Oilers into Maple Leafs West, with three forwards taking up significant cap space.

If the Canucks retained some of his cap hit and took the Bison King in return, that would make the dollars work for this season. Still, long term I don’t see how it could be possible unless you traded away at least two more players in a cap dump in the offseason – and you have to replace whoever you trade away as well as sign Horvat. Tough objectives.

And that’s not even getting into the fact that the Oilers will have to at least think about how to replace the LTIR cap space of Mike Smith and Oscar Klefbom’s contracts, both of whom are set to expire after this season. I just don’t see how they can make the dollars work on anything more than a rental.

Also, there’s this out of Ottawa. Always tough when a member of your organization gets a debilitating disease like ALS.