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Canucks Notes: Pettersson, Karlsson, Kuzmenko

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Recently, the agent for Canucks center Elias Pettersson indicated that he wasn’t sure if there would be any more contract discussions between now and the end of the season.  Pettersson himself has now shut the door on that idea, telling NHL.com’s Kevin Woodley that he wants to wait for those talks until after the season ends.  The 25-year-old cracked the 100-point mark last season for the first time and is on pace to eclipse that again this year, putting himself in a great bargaining position for his final trip through restricted free agency this summer.  Pettersson is owed a qualifying offer of $8.82MM at that time but it will take a few million more than that to get him to pen to paper on a contract when the time comes.

More from Vancouver:

  • The team announced last night (Twitter link) that forward Linus Karlsson was recalled from AHL Abbotsford. The 24-year-old has now been recalled four times this season but the first three didn’t result in much playing time as he suited up in just four contests with Vancouver.  Karlsson has spent most of the season in the minors and has been quite productive, recording nine goals and 16 assists in 27 games.  He could take the place of Andrei Kuzmenko in the lineup tonight against Toronto, Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston suggests.
  • Speaking of Kuzmenko, Sportsnet’s Iain McIntyre speculates that if the Canucks need to clear cap space to make any upgrades before the trade deadline, the winger is the likeliest candidate to move. Previously, Tyler Myers and his expiring $6MM AAV had been perceived as trade bait but he’s playing an important role on the back end while Kuzmenko has struggled mightily in his sophomore year.  However, being only a year removed from a 39-goal campaign will likely have teams interested in him as a buy-low candidate, even with a $5.5MM price tag through next season.

Canucks Sign Jim Rutherford To Three-Year Extension

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1:04 p.m.: Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini confirmed the team has signed Rutherford to a three-year extension (via The Athletic’s Thomas Drance).

11:08 a.m.: The Canucks will announce a contract extension for president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford today, TSN’s Farhan Lalji reports. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes the deal will carry a three-year term, keeping him in his seat with Vancouver through 2027.

If true, it will be the second straight three-year deal for Rutherford after he was brought on as POHO and interim general manager in December 2021. Rutherford held the GM position for nearly two months before settling on Patrik Allvin for the role in late January 2022.

Rutherford, who will be 75 next month, will spend 32 consecutive seasons in an NHL front office if he serves out the extension. The Canucks are his third organization, having previously served as president and GM of the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes from 1994 to 2014 and GM of the Penguins from 2014 to 2021.

His front office regime has seemingly ended a decade-long rebuild process for the Canucks. He’s kept together his inherited core of Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Brock Boeser, Quinn Hughes, and Thatcher Demko, and will guide the Canucks to their first full-season playoff appearance in nine years this April.

What’s pushed this team back into contention, however, are recent acquisitions made by the Allvin/Rutherford crew. Filip Hronek has continued his ascent into a true top-pairing defender, making his duo with Hughes one of the most dominant in the league. Players like Teddy Blueger and Dakota Joshua have proved to be valuable depth players on cheap UFA deals, giving the Canucks some needed bottom-six scoring punch.

The Canucks’ 98-63-21 record ranks 14th in the league since Rutherford took over. While most of his work has come to fruition this season, it’s been a slow build for Vancouver since choosing to replace Bruce Boudreau with Rick Tocchet behind the bench midway through last season. In 81 games under Tocchet, the Canucks have a sparkling 50-23-8 record.

With the extension, Canucks ownership is entrusting Rutherford’s regime to handle one of the most important contract negotiations in history with Pettersson, who is a pending RFA and will need a long-term deal past this season. He and Allvin will also need a new contract for Hronek, who, like Pettersson, is slated for restricted free agency this summer. They’ve done a good job at getting out of what was an extremely undesirable salary cap situation a few seasons ago, but they’ll need to work even harder to manage the financials over the next few seasons with some big-ticket deals coming down the pike.

Vancouver Canucks Plan To Be Aggressive At Deadline

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  • Having already been one of the most aggressive teams on the trade market this season, the Vancouver Canucks are still looking to add at this year’s trade deadline. In a quote reported by Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet, the General Manager of the Canucks, Patrik Allvin, stated, “I think I owe it to the players. We know that they are capable of playing at this high level. And if they continue to do that, it’s on me to support them and give them opportunities to be successful”. Even though another trade could put Vancouver over the top in the Western Conference playoff race, Allvin will have to get creative in any move, as the team only has a projected $1.22MM available in deadline cap space.

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Morning Notes: Kakko, Hodgson, Sobotka

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New York Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette has announced that winger Kaapo Kakko is set to make his return from a lower-body injury on Sunday. He has been out of the lineup since November 27th, missing 21 games. The Rangers placed Kakko on long-term injured reserve on November 28th, alongside linemate Filip Chytil, who is also progressing from an expected concussion.

Kakko was off to a slow start before his injury, managing just two goals and one assist in 20 games. He’s continuing to search for his groove in the NHL, scoring a career-high 40 points in 82 games last season. It was only the second time that Kakko has played in more than 50 games in a single season since making his debut in 2019-20.

The New York Rangers have also sent Jake Leschyshyn back to the minor leagues, after bringing him up on an emergency recall on Tuesday. He appeared in one game with the top club, setting a -1 in six minutes of ice time in New York’s Thursday night loss to the St. Louis Blues.

More notes from around the league:

  • 328-game veteran of the NHL Cody Hodgson is reportedly eyeing a return to professional hockey, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Hodgson had to step away from the game in 2016 after being diagnosed with malignant hyperthermia. But he’s returned to the ice, skating routinely in an effort to get back on the ice. The 33-year-old was drafted 10th overall in the 2008 NHL Draft – a part of a First Round that’s yielded 12 different players with 700 or more games played.
  • Long-time St. Louis Blues winger Vladimir Sobotka has signed a one-year extension with HC Sparta Praha of the Czechia Extraliga. He’s a 528-game veteran of the NHL, recording 171 points, 362 penalty minutes, and a -22 over his career. Sobotka has been productive in Czechia, with 19 points in 27 games this season, bringing his totals up to 121 points in 148 games with Sparta Praha since joining the team in 2020-21.

Canucks Notes: Pettersson, Hughes, Kuzmenko

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Canucks center Elias Pettersson is the most prominent player among those eligible for restricted free agency this summer.  Although talks were reportedly shelved heading into the season, there have been some discussions since then.  Whether there will be more remains to be seen as Pettersson’s agent Pat Brisson told Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre that he’s unsure if there will be further talks on that front between now and the end of the season.  Pettersson, who can break the all-time NHL record tonight for consecutive games with a game-winning goal (he’s currently at four), has 22 goals and 35 assists in 42 games and stands to land considerably more than his $8.82MM qualifying offer whenever a new agreement is eventually reached.

More from Vancouver:

  • Defenseman Quinn Hughes has shown himself to be quite dynamic offensively throughout his NHL career. However, at least one person in Vancouver’s front office though felt he could be better utilized.  In an appearance on the NHL Network (video link), former head coach Bruce Boudreau indicated that he was approached several times about making the 24-year-old a center, a request he rebuffed each time.  Hughes is having a stellar season on the back end this season with 51 points in 42 games so far, making him a strong contender for the Norris Trophy so it’s safe to say keeping him on the back end was the right call.
  • Things haven’t gone well for winger Andrei Kuzmenko in his sophomore year. After scoring 39 goals last year, he has just eight so far this season and has been healthy scratched five times.  However, his agent told Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic (subscription link) that Kuzmenko is happy in Vancouver and isn’t looking to leave.  The 27-year-old has another year left on his contract after this one with a $5.5MM price tag which would make finding a viable trade in which they receive full value a challenging proposition.

Multiple Teams Showing Interest In Acquiring Rights To Sasha Chmelevski

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Sasha Chmelevski’s first attempt at playing pro hockey in North America didn’t go particularly well and when his contract with the Sharks expired in 2022, he opted to head back home to play in the KHL; San Jose tendered a qualifying offer to retain his rights at that time.  However, after a strong couple of seasons there, ESPN’s Kevin Weekes reports (Twitter link) that teams are showing interest in acquiring his rights and that Chmelevski’s agent has been granted permission to try to facilitate a swap.  Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK and The Athletic notes (Twitter link) that the Canucks are among the teams showing interest.

The 24-year-old center was a sixth-round pick by San Jose back in 2017 (185th overall) out of OHL Ottawa.  Chmelevski was a productive player in his final two years with the 67’s, collecting 151 points in 124 games over that stretch.

Chmelevski spent the majority of his entry-level deal with San Jose at the AHL level where he posted respectable numbers, collecting 35 goals and 53 assists in 122 games with the Barracuda.  Meanwhile, while he didn’t score at the NHL level in 24 games with the Sharks, he did post ten assists despite spending a lot of time in the bottom six.

But Chmelevski’s decision to return to the KHL with a shot at more guaranteed money and a big role has paid off.  He’s in his second season with Salavat Yulaev and currently sits tenth in league scoring with 21 goals and 22 assists in 49 games.  Based on the trade interest, it appears there are at least some teams that are open to giving him an NHL look next season.

With San Jose in the midst of a rebuild, it’s a bit surprising that they don’t seem to be one of those teams.  Otherwise, they’d be trying to work out an agreement with Chmelevski themselves.  But with multiple teams showing interest, they might be able to pick up a decent draft pick or prospect for his rights which is still not a bad outcome for a player who opted to go overseas two seasons ago.

Latest On Vancouver Canucks Trade Deadline Strategy

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Arguably the biggest surprise of this season has been the stunning success of the Vancouver Canucks. A team that once looked to be in a dire situation just a year ago is now 25-11-3, tied for fourth in the NHL in points.

The team’s pillars at each key position (forward, defenseman, goaltender) are playing to the absolute peak of their capabilities, with Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko each a candidate for the Norris and Vezina trophies, respectively. Center Elias Pettersson could very well be a candidate for the Hart Trophy as well, if the race for that award did not already figure to be a two-horse race between Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov.

The Canucks are in a position where they can legitimately consider treating 2023-24 as a “Stanley Cup or bust” sort of win-now campaign. The Athletic’s Thomas Drance wrote as much in a recent piece, positing that since “uncertainty looms beyond this year” regarding the futures of Petterson, Filip Hronek, other blueliners, and J.T. Miller, the Canucks could reasonably consider behaving like a true Stanley Cup contender at this year’s trade deadline. (subscription link)

If that ends up being the case, the Canucks have numerous trade possibilities in front of them. The team has already bolstered its defense with the acquisition of Nikita Zadorov from the Calgary Flames, but it may not stop there. Drance specifically names Nashville Predator Dante Fabbro and former Canuck Chris Tanev as two of the team’s potential trade targets, with the two right-shot blueliners likely to replace either Noah Juulsen or Tyler Myers in the team’s regular lineup if acquired.

But while defense is an area that the Canucks might stand to improve, Drance writes that “a top-six forward is seen as an area of greater need” for Vancouver. Up front, much of the conversations regarding what the Canucks might do centers around forward Andrei Kuzmenko.

Although the 27-year-old had a stellar rookie season with 39 goals and 74 points in 2022-23, he’s lost his spot next to Pettersson this season and has been at times a healthy scratch.

While he’s still managed 19 points in 33 games and does factor in on the power play when in the lineup, head coach Rick Tocchet’s demands of his players away from the puck has led to Kuzmenko’s overall role eroding.

For what it’s worth, Drance notes that Kuzmenko’s agent, Dan Milstein, told The Athletic that “he and his client remain committed to making it work for Kuzmenko in Vancouver.” But although this isn’t a situation where a player is responding negatively to a reduced role and is seeking an exit, an exit could still very well be in store.

Moving Kuzmenko could clear as much as $5.5MM off of the Canucks’ books, which would open up significant new avenues for external additions. NHL teams are making calls on Kuzmenko’s availability, according to Drance, and one team reportedly is reportedly “showing real interest” in acquiring the Russian forward. His will be a name to look out for among fans of clubs in need of skilled additions up front.

In terms of who the Canucks could potentially acquire, Drance names two specific forward trade targets as he did on defense: Pittsburgh Penguins star Jake Guentzel and Buffalo Sabres winger Jordan Greenway. Guentzel, who the Canucks’ front office has familiarity with from their time in Pittsburgh, would be an absolutely massive addition. The pending unrestricted free agent would likely only be moved if its clear the Penguins are out of the playoff hunt by the deadline, and if he’s available he’d likely be the top name on the trade market. He’s scored 18 goals and 43 points this season and has two 40-goal seasons on his resume.

As for Greenway, the 26-year-old was traded to Buffalo just last season. The big six-foot-six power forward would add some size and snarl to the Canucks’ forward corps, something the team does not have in abundance. His acquisition cost would likely be far less steep than Guentzel’s, though he does come with an additional year on his contract at a $3MM cap hit.

Regardless of which particular player the Canucks ultimately target in earnest, one thing is clear: Vancouver is unlikely to sit this deadline out. They’re a team whose stellar form so far this season has inspired legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations, and with dreams of a championship come dreams of the game-changing deadline acquisition that pushes a team over the top.

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Canucks Loan Josh Bloom To OHL, Signs With Saginaw

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  • The Canucks have loaned out left-wing prospect Josh Bloom back to juniors after he began the year in the minors, and the 20-year-old subsequently signed an OHL Scholarship and Development Agreement with the Saginaw Spirit. Bloom spent parts of four seasons in Saginaw from 2019 to 2023 before he was dealt to North Bay early last season, where he proceeded to rack up 25 goals and 55 points in 49 games while being a major factor on the penalty kill. Bloom, initially a third-round pick of the Sabres in 2021 whose NHL rights were traded to Vancouver last February, had just one assist in 14 games with AHL Abbotsford and two assists in eight games with ECHL Kalamazoo.

Canucks Activate Carson Soucy, Place Phillip Di Giuseppe On LTIR

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The Canucks activated shutdown defenseman Carson Soucy from long-term injured reserve Saturday, with Soucy taking winger Phillip Di Giuseppe’s spot on the active roster. Di Giuseppe has been added to LTIR with an undisclosed injury sustained last Tuesday against the Senators, which caused him to miss Thursday’s showing against the Blues. Thus, his LTIR placement is likely retroactive to January 3.

After signing a three-year, $9.75MM pact to join the Canucks last offseason, Soucy’s first few months in British Columbia have been marred by injuries that have limited him to 13 out of 38 games. When in the lineup, however, he’s been effective at first glance, logging two goals, three assists, five points and a +6 rating in 16:52 of ice time per game. That’s a bit more offense than most expected from Soucy, who scored just three times in 78 games with the Kraken last season.

More advanced metrics tell a different story, though. His possession impacts have been mediocre, posting a 46.3% Corsi share at even strength that ranks 16th among Canucks skaters with at least ten games played. He’s been most commonly paired with Tyler Myers, which has by far been the Canucks most disastrous two-way duo with just 41% of expected goals when they’re on the ice together, per MoneyPuck. Myers has fared marginally better when paired with Ian Cole or Nikita Zadorov.

While those numbers aren’t pretty, judging a player acclimating to a new system while fighting long-term injuries is hard. Soucy returns tonight from a lower-body injury that’s kept him out since November 12, causing him to miss 23 games.

It’s also a tough break for Di Giuseppe, who will now be out at a minimum through the end of the month. The 30-year-old veteran of over 250 NHL games spent most of his last two seasons with the Canucks in the minors with AHL Abbotsford but made Vancouver out of camp this season, playing in all but six games. A high-scoring threat at the AHL level, Di Giuseppe started in a top-nine role but has seen his minutes diminish in recent weeks, culminating in a few healthy scratches before sustaining the injury. He has three goals and five assists for eight points this season, averaging 13:03 per game.

Linus Karlsson Recalled From Abbotsford

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  • The Canucks announced (Twitter link) that they’ve recalled forward Linus Karlsson from AHL Abbotsford. The 24-year-old made his NHL debut earlier this season, getting into three games with Vancouver but has spent the bulk of the year in the minors where he has been quite productive, notching 23 points in 25 games.  Vancouver has an open roster spot so no corresponding move needed to be made to bring Karlsson up.

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