Pacific Notes: Canucks, Koekkoek, Edler

While many teams have dealt with most of their restricted free agents already, that can’t be said for Vancouver who still has center Elias Pettersson and defenseman Quinn Hughes among their unsigned youngsters.  Speaking with Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston, Pat Brisson – who represents both players – noted that there’s no holdup in talks between him and the Canucks.  Part of the delay is that both short-term and long-term deals are being pondered for both players although it’s unlikely they will be able to afford to give each of them a contract that would buy out some UFA eligibility.  It wouldn’t be surprising if talks pick up once they get a deal done with RFA center Jason Dickinson whose arbitration hearing is set for Friday.  Once that’s in place, they’ll have a better idea of how much they’ll be able to spend on their two young stars.

More from the Pacific:

• David Staples of the Edmonton Journal examined the recent two-year deal that the Oilers handed to defenseman Slater Koekkoek. While his numbers were underwhelming last season – one goal in 18 games while averaging just 13:10 per contest – he was better than several Edmonton blueliners in terms of frequency of allowing scoring chances.  Koekkoek’s numbers usually wouldn’t be good enough to yield a multi-year contract so there’s a good chance that the team was intrigued by that particular stat as well.
• Defenseman Alex Edler told Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider that part of the reason that he signed with the Kings was how much interest they showed in him early along with the fit he’d have with the team. He added that he did field interest from other teams which likely helped push his price tag up to $3.5MM for next season, a somewhat high price tag for a player who had just eight assists in 52 games while logging his lowest ice time since 2007-08.  The 35-year-old should have a prominent role with Los Angeles next season and could be used in a shutdown capacity similar to the role he had at times in Vancouver.