Trade Rumors: Canucks, Tatar, Petry, Maple Leafs, Pageau
With little cap space anyway, many were not expecting the Vancouver Canucks to be particularly active at the trade deadline. However, that viewpoint may have changed after forward Brock Boeser suffered an upper-body injury Saturday against the Calgary. While the extent of the injury is unknown, head coach Travis Green said after the game that Boeser would be out “for a bit.”
NHL.com’s Tracey Myers writes that the Canucks may be looking for a forward at the trade deadline, especially with the team hanging on to first place in the Pacific Division by just one point with four teams breathing down their necks. The team is expecting to get back forward Micheal Ferland soon, but Ferland isn’t likely to provide the offense the team gets from Boeser, who has 16 goals and 45 points, third on the team in scoring.
- Plenty of rumors have come up regarding two players with the Montreal Canadiens, including defenseman Jeff Petry and forward Tomas Tatar. Both Petry and Tatar would be valuable trade chips for the Canadiens as they both have one year remaining after this one with reasonable contracts ($5.5MM for Petry; $4.8MM for Tatar). Both are having impressive seasons as well, making them even more intriguing. However, TVA’s Renaud Lavoie reports that he has been told that neither player is being shopped and the team will wait until they are closer to the deadline to see whether they are any closer in the standings to competing for a playoff spot before deciding on whether they would move any of their unrestricted free agents, which could include Ilya Kovalchuk, Nate Thompson or Marco Scandella.
- Now that the backup goaltender position has been taken care of, the Toronto Maple Leafs are thought to need to add to their defense before the deadline. However, Elliotte Friedman on Hockey Night in Canada reports that the Maple Leafs intend to wait until closer to the deadline before they consider making another move. The team currently has Cody Ceci on long-term injured reserve and the team wants to wait to see his status in a couple weeks before making a final decision. “Toronto is going to wait,” Friedman said. “Morgan Rielly has a doctor’s appointment next week, they still want to see what his future is, also the health of Cody Ceci, which they’ll know more about probably in a couple of weeks.”
- On the same Hockey Night in Canada last night, Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reports that while the New York Rangers have started negotiating with soon-to-be unrestricted free-agent Chris Kreider to see if a reasonable deal can be worked out, the Ottawa Senators have not started to negotiate with Jean-Gabriel Pageau, suggesting that he is a strong candidate to be dealt at the trade deadline with several suitors likely lining up to acquire him.
West Notes: Kane, Kunin, Boeser
After his incident with the linesman this weekend, San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane could potentially be facing a lengthy suspension. As Darren Dreger of TSN reports, the abuse of an official penalty that Kane received brings with it an automatic 10-game suspension. Different from those given out by the Department of Player Safety however, this suspension will have to be enforced by the commissioner’s office, something that Dreger does not expect until at least tomorrow.
If Kane does face the full 10-game suspension he would be out until October 25th when the Sharks face the Toronto Maple Leafs, something that has led some to speculate on the possibility of bringing in former franchise icon Patrick Marleau who remains unsigned. Of course, there is also the possibility that the team uses the time to evaluate a young player in the lineup.
- Speaking of suspensions, Luke Kunin will not receive any supplementary discipline for his hit on Bryan Little according to Bob McKenzie of TSN, who reports that the league has deemed it an accidental collision. Kunin collided with Little in front of the Winnipeg Jets’ net, taking him out of the game with an undisclosed injury. Jets’ head coach Paul Maurice didn’t like the hit, but the Minnesota Wild forward won’t face any punishment.
- The Vancouver Canucks put some interesting names on waivers today when they decided to risk Sven Baertschi and Nikolay Goldobin to the rest of the league, but will at least have another goal-scoring forward in the lineup on opening night. Brock Boeser has been cleared to return to action after his concussion from earlier in the preseason and will be on the ice when the Canucks take on the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night. Oscar Fantenberg, who was dealing with a concussion of his own, has also been cleared.
Western Notes: Boeser, Laine, Tuch, Burdasov
The Vancouver Canucks are hoping that they can get Brock Boeser back from concussion for the start of the regular season. The star forward, along with defenseman Oscar Fantenberg, suffered a concussion on Monday against the Ottawa Senators. However, the Vancouver Sun’s Patrick Johnston writes that both players appear to be making progress in their recovery.
The scribe writes that Boeser and Fantenberg skated with the team at practice Saturday for 90 minutes. By participating in practice, the duo are now in Stage 4 of their recovery of the SCAT5 return to play protocol, which involves non-contact training drills. To be cleared, both players must pass through Stage 5, which requires Boeser and Fantenberg to go 24 hours without any symptoms following activity.
With no more practices until Monday, if either player feels well enough, they can be full participants for practice. If they then go 24 hours without symptoms, they will be cleared to play in their season opener on Wednesday against the Oilers in Edmonton.
- Tim Campbell of NHL.com writes that Winnipeg Jets forward Patrik Laine, who just signed a two-year, $13.5MM contract on Friday, is expected to be in the Jets’ lineup in New York against the Rangers on Thursday. “Being that he’s been training, and has been training with men, our expectation is he’ll be able to come and move around the ice pretty good,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said of the 21-year-old forward, who was a restricted free agent and has not played this preseason. Laine is expected to arrive in Winnipeg on Monday for fitness testing and a physical and then should be ready for practice on Tuesday before the team leaves for New York.
- The Vegas Golden Knights got some bad news as forward Alex Tuch suffered an upper-body injury in Friday’s preseason game after he lost his balance and crashed hard into the boards and was forced to leave the game. Las Vegas Review-Journal’s David Schoen reports that Tuch is now listed as week-to-week and is expected to miss the start of the season for a second year in a row. Tuch scored 22 goals and 52 points last season and is currently slated to play on the Golden Knights’ third line.
- Despite releasing Russian winger Anton Burdasov from his PTO Saturday, the Edmonton Oilers had hoped they could convince the 28-year-old to accept an assignment to the Bakersfield Condors of the AHL, which might buy some time to get him back on the NHL roster. However, Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson writes that Burdasov intends to return to Russia and was only interested in a one-way deal.
Injury Notes: Boeser, Blidh, McDavid
The Vancouver Canucks have announced that both Brock Boeser and Oscar Fantenberg have been placed in the concussion protocol, but gave no update on their recovery timeline. Boeser was crunched into the boards by Ottawa Senators forward Chris Tierney last night, which is likely when he suffered the concussion. The Ottawa player received a two-minute minor, but Boeser did return to the game.
This is terrible news for a team looking to compete for the playoffs this season and a player that has struggled with injury throughout his young career. Boeser has still not played 70 games in a single season and is now in trouble of missing at least the end of preseason with this latest injury.
- Anton Blidh has a much longer recovery timeline, as the Boston Bruins announced the prospect underwent surgery on his right shoulder yesterday and will be out for four months. Blidh, 24, has played just 21 games at the NHL level but was a mainstay in the Providence Bruins lineup last season with 23 points and 94 penalty minutes in 74 games. He’ll have a long road back if he wants to battle for a spot in the NHL at any point this season.
- Connor McDavid has already fought that battle, and is expected to be in the lineup for the Edmonton Oilers tonight when they take on the Arizona Coyotes in preseason action. McDavid injured his knee at the very end of the 2018-19 season and had to slowly rehab it through the summer, missing out on informal skates and his normal training practices. The fact that he’s ready to go a week before the season begins is extremely good news for the Oilers as they try to instill a new identity under head coach Dave Tippett.
Vancouver Canucks Sign Brock Boeser
The Vancouver Canucks have come to a resolution with Brock Boeser, signing him to a three-year contract worth a total of $17.625MM. That means Boeser will carry an average annual value of $5.875MM, a fair amount less than numbers that had been discussed earlier this summer. GM Jim Benning released a short statement on the deal:
We’re very pleased to have Brock re-sign. He’s a talented player, a key contributor to our offence and an important part of our team’s future. We look forward to having Brock join the team in preparation for the upcoming season.
As with several other restricted free agent contracts, Boeser’s deal will be back-loaded to force the team into giving him an expensive qualifying offer down the road. The full breakdown of the deal comes from Dan Murphy of Sportsnet:
- 2019-20: $700K salary + $3.3MM signing bonus
- 2020-21: $3.125MM salary + $3.0MM signing bonus
- 2021-22: $7.5MM salary
That means that the Canucks will have to offer Boeser at least $7.5MM in 2022, given he will still be a restricted free agent at the end of the deal. As we wrote earlier today when things were picking up between the two sides, the 22-year old Canucks forward was in a different situation than many of the other unsigned RFAs. He and Charlie McAvoy of the Boston Bruins were both ineligible for offer sheets after making their NHL debuts following college seasons in 2017, giving them even less leverage in negotiations. As it turned out, both players have signed three-year deals to get them to their arbitration years.
In Boeser’s case, he still landed quite the raise and will immediately become the second highest-paid forward on the Canucks roster (only trailing fourth-line winger Loui Eriksson). For good reason too, given the 59 goals he has scored over his first 140 games in the NHL, a rate that puts him 17th in the entire NHL since the start of the 2016-17 season. That kind of first-line production will make Boeser a bargain right away for the Canucks as long as he can stay healthy, something that has been something of an issue so far in his career.
For the Canucks, there was no way they could afford to start the season without Boeser in the lineup. Vancouver spent up to acquire more talent this offseason by signing Micheal Ferland and Tyler Myers in free agency, while trading a first-round pick for J.T. Miller. After a few years of rebuilding the team wants to start contending for the playoffs once again, with Boeser, Horvat and Elias Pettersson driving the play up front.
The question now becomes who else is on the roster behind them. The team has 15 forwards signed to one-way contracts plus Pettersson and Adam Gaudette who are both still on their entry-level deals. 13 of those one-way deals are for at least $1.25MM, meaning they would still be felt (in part) against the cap even in the minor leagues. Boeser is also the only one of them that is still waiver-exempt, meaning there will be tough choices on who to expose to the rest of the league at the end of training camp if the group is healthy.
Boeser’s signing leaves just nine restricted free agents still to sign.
Brock Boeser Talks Picking Up
As of last week, the Vancouver Canucks and Brock Boeser were still not close on a contract despite training camp starting and the season approaching. That may be changing. Both Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic and Rick Dhaliwal of Sportsnet have reported today that talks have “picked up” over the last 24 hours. While both insiders can’t guarantee a deal comes soon, it is a positive sign at the very least that the two sides are talking again.
Boeser, 22, isn’t in the same situation as some the other restricted free agents. He doesn’t have all the rights of the others and couldn’t sign an offer sheet even if one was presented, because he’s played only two full seasons in the league. The former University of North Dakota standout signed after his sophomore college season ended and has just 140 games under his belt. Like Charlie McAvoy however, who was in the same situation, that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to secure a huge raise over his entry-level earnings. Boeser has been one of the most dangerous goal scorers in the league since his debut, registering 59 in those 140 games along with 57 assists.
While McAvoy ended up signing for just three years at $4.9MM, reports earlier this summer had the Canucks offering Boeser a much bigger and longer deal. His camp was trying to keep the term shorter than the reported six-year offer, but at this point it’s not clear what is being discussed. If one side has conceded on the term or salary, perhaps there is something to be done in the coming days. Like most players, Boeser and the Canucks have expressed a desire to get a contract signed before the season begins in order to miss as little time as possible.
It won’t take long to get Boeser to training camp, but the preseason schedule kicks off tonight for the Canucks. Every day this stalemate continues is lost preparation time for the young forward, and we’re now just over two weeks from the start of the regular season. The Canucks open the year in Edmonton on October 2nd, and hopefully will have their sniper ready to go.
Vancouver Canucks, Brock Boeser Still Not Close On Contract
The Vancouver Canucks begin training camp on Friday ahead of a big season with big expectations. Their young core led by Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser is hoping to turn things around push the Canucks into a playoff spot in the Pacific Division. There’s only one thing wrong with that picture—Boeser still doesn’t have a contract. The 22-year old won’t be with the club on Friday without one, and Rick Dhaliwal of Sportsnet reports that the two sides are still not close to a deal, with a big salary gap even on a short-term deal.
Boeser, who has scored 59 goals through the first 140 games of his career, is absolutely paramount to the Canucks’ chances this season. Though the team has added talent like J.T. Miller, Micheal Ferland and Tyler Myers, no one can match Boeser’s pure goal-scoring ability and perfect fit with Pettersson on the top line. His 39 even-strength goals over the last two seasons puts him ahead of other wingers like Patrik Laine, Mitch Marner and Phil Kessel and he ranks 25th in the entire league for goals (of any variety) per game over that time.
The question will be how the two sides finally structure the deal to provide Boeser with the best financial opportunity. There have been reports earlier this year that had the player asking for a number somewhere in the vicinity of $7MM per season, but it would be difficult for the Canucks to fit that in at the moment given their other cap commitments—this is where Roberto Luongo‘s recapture penalty is really squeezing GM Jim Benning and the rest of the front office. A comparable player in Timo Meier signed at the beginning of the summer for $24MM over four years, but loaded $10MM of that in salary at the end so that his qualifying offer would be that high in his final year of restricted free agency. The Canucks may not want to do something like that and provide a roadmap for Boeser to get to UFA status so easily, but obviously there is a substantial gap still on shorter-term deals.
It is important to note that unlike other restricted free agents that have played three full seasons on their entry-level contracts, Boeser is not eligible for an offer sheet thanks to making his NHL debut at the end of the 2016-17 season after coming out of college. He only has two options at this point, hold out or sign a deal with the team, since he’s also not arbitration eligible. Boeser must sign before December 1st in order to be eligible to play at all this year.
Canucks Notes: Boeser, Goldobin, Juolevi
The Vancouver Canucks are one of the teams looking at the start of training camp in a few days with one of their key players still without a contract as Brock Boeser remains unsigned now into September. Though there is obvious upside for both the player and team to have things resolved before camp, Rick Dhaliwal of Sportsnet tweeted yesterday that there is still “lots of work to do” before a deal can be made.
Boeser, 22, has already scored 59 goals in his young career but has been limited by injury in each of his two full seasons with the Canucks. While other players like Mitch Marner, Brayden Point and Mikko Rantanen have huge point totals to bring up in negotiations, Boeser has a career-high of just 56 thanks to all the time he’s missed. There’s no question how important he is to the Vancouver attack but there are serious risks on both sides to both a bridge deal and long-term deal, which may have made the negotiations a bit more difficult. Boeser is expected to be looking for a four-year deal with a cap hit around $7MM, but with less than two weeks before training camp opens things may have to change to get it done in time.
- The Canucks have another restricted free agent that gets much less publicity, but still could be an important piece. Nikolay Goldobin hasn’t been able to find his way in the NHL just yet, but Dhaliwal reports that there has been “positive dialogue” towards a new contract. The 23-year old Goldobin had 27 points in 63 games last season and showed flashes of the offensive ability that made him the 27th overall pick in 2014, but he needs to find more consistency in order to really be an impact player for the Canucks moving forward.
- Speaking of high draft picks that haven’t quite found their way, the Canucks still have high hopes for defenseman Olli Juolevi as he continues to rehab a knee injury. Juolevi may not participate much in the upcoming prospects camp according to Ben Kuzma of The Province, who spoke with Canucks GM Jim Benning. Benning explained that the team wouldn’t “throw [Juolevi] into the fire” as they try to avoid any setbacks and have him ready for the start of the season. Juolevi underwent knee surgery last December and still has not made his NHL debut despite being the fifth overall pick in 2016.
Poll: Who Will Be The First Top RFA To Sign?
It’s the question on everyone’s mind. When will these restricted free agents sign? The workday on the second last Friday of August has almost come to an end and there is still a huge list of unsigned stars with no real progress being made. Whether they are all waiting on Mitch Marner or Brayden Point to set the market or not, we’re starting to get closer and closer to the start of training camp and real contract holdouts beginning. We’ve already heard one player has contacted a European squad to give them a place to train, and there will undoubtedly be more.
So who breaks the dam? When Colin White signed earlier this week there was hope that things were finally progressing, but instead there has been deafening silence around the league. Even with small tidbits of information coming out from situations surrounding Zach Werenski and Brock Boeser, there still doesn’t seem to be any movement. Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney explained today that things with Brandon Carlo and Charlie McAvoy are going “not as fast as everybody would like” but that he’s confident they will be with the organization for a long time.
It’s not even just the top players that are still out there without a contract. Names like Kevin Fiala, Brendan Perlini and Adrian Kempe are still without deals for one reason or another and may still be waiting on the high-profile players to be finished first. That’s a tough place for any young player to be in, especially when you’re not quite as established as someone like Point or Marner. Missing training camp would be a huge detriment to their careers, meaning they’re likely watching the news wire just as closely.
When will things change? Who will finally decide that the waiting game is taking too long? Cast your vote below and make sure to explain why in the comments. We’ve included the top names, but feel free to explain why another player may be the one to kick things off.
[Mobile users click here to vote]
Snapshots: Rangers, Boeser, Koivu
The Rangers appear to be sticking to their guns when it comes to their remaining restricted free agents in winger Brendan Lemieux and defenseman Anthony DeAngelo. Larry Brooks of the New York Post reports that the team has no apparent inclination to move off the qualifying offers that they tendered back in June which were worth just over $874K each. Neither player had salary arbitration rights which limited their options while they don’t have a multi-year track record to really command a bigger deal either. New York is also tight to the salary cap which is playing a factor as well. The duo could try to solicit an offer sheet where the compensation thresholds would be low but beyond that, it appears the waiting game for these two will continue.
Elsewhere around the league:
- While the contract Canucks RFA winger Brock Boeser is seeking is believed to be similar to that of San Jose winger Timo Meier, don’t expect it to have a similar structure. Postmedia’s Ben Kuzma notes that the asking price remains four years at a $7MM AAV (Meier came in at four years at $6MM per), but GM Jim Benning isn’t a fan of the back-loaded structure that creates a highly-inflated qualifying offer at its expiration. A four-year deal would carry some risk in that it would take him a year away from UFA eligibility but at the same time, it would carry a lower AAV which would be helpful given their salary cap situation.
- Wild center Mikko Koivu expects to be ready for training camp after undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus and ACL last season, reports Jessi Pierce of The Athletic (Twitter link). However, it’s likely that he will be limited during the preseason as a precaution. The 36-year-old is entering the final year of his contract which carries a $5.5MM cap hit and with his output dipping in recent years, it will be interesting to see if the 14-year veteran will get a chance to stay with the only NHL team he has ever known or if new GM Bill Guerin will opt to move on.