Tyler Motte

Heading into the 2020 bubble playoffs, many fans around the league may have never noticed Vancouver Canucks forward Tyler Motte. He had registered just 38 points in 187 games to that point in his career, bouncing from Chicago to Columbus to Vancouver as a depth player moving in and out of the lineup. But in that condensed postseason, Motte made a name for himself with endless energy and a few well-timed goals, helping the Canucks reach game seven of the second round.

When things resumed for the 2020-21 season, the bang-and-crash forward suddenly found his role increased for the Canucks. He averaged more than 16 minutes a night through his first 15 games, scoring five goals in the process. Unfortunately, he was injured in a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs and eventually found himself on long-term injured reserve, meaning he’d miss a good chunk of the season. He dealt with two other stints on the sideline with injuries and ended up with just 24 games played last season.

Now, after it was made clear that Motte wouldn’t be available to the Canucks at the start of training camp, Rick Dhaliwal and Thomas Drance of The Athletic have confirmed it is because he is rehabbing from an undisclosed surgery. Vancouver GM Jim Benning explained that the team will “see where [Motte] is at here in the next three weeks.”

On the second season of a two-year contract signed after that strong playoff performance, Motte will carry a cap hit of $1.225MM this season. That three-week timeline mentioned by Benning likely refers to the period from now until the team’s first game, which will be held in Edmonton on October 13. If Motte’s not ready to join the lineup by then, the team will have to find another option to take his minutes and penalty-killing role.

With Vancouver sitting in fifth place in the North Division and the top four teams from there getting into the playoffs, the Canucks aren’t quite ready to sell just yet.  However, every team but Ottawa has multiple games in hand on them so while their current playoff gap of three points could be considerably larger by the time those are made up.  Accordingly, teams are calling about some of Vancouver’s roster players and one of them is winger Tyler Motte, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports in his latest 31 Thoughts column.

On the one hand, it’s easy to see why there is interest in Motte around the league.  He has shown more of a scoring touch this season with five goals in his first 16 games while logging over 16 minutes per night, a career-high.  It certainly hasn’t come at the expense of his physicality either as he’s averaging 4.67 hits per game, the second-highest rate in the league.  With a $1.225MM price tag this season and next, he’s also quite affordable.

It’s also not the first time he has shown flashes of offensive upside.  Last year in the bubble, he picked up four goals in 17 games while averaging over 3.5 hits per game so while his early-season output is a bit of an outlier relative to his past regular season production, he also technically just picked up where he left off last summer.

But on the other hand, Motte hasn’t played in a month due to a high-ankle sprain and is currently on LTIR.  Although he has resumed light skating, he’s still likely a couple of weeks away from returning.

It was only a few years ago that Motte felt like effectively the throw-in in a deal that sent Thomas Vanek to Columbus and Jussi Jokinen to Vancouver but now that he has established himself as a capable energy player, Jim Benning could be in a position to land a quality return, especially at a time when power forwards are in high demand and affordable players are at a premium.  But first, they’ll have to choose if they’re buying or selling, a decision that is probably still a few weeks away.