Canucks don’t need to rush any moves this summer

The Vancouver Canucks are facing a formative period in their franchise’s history, but don’t need to rush any moves after naming Ryan Johnson as general manager, with Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin as co-presidents of hockey operations. 

On a recent episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Canucks Army’s David Quadrelli joined co-hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to break down the path forward for the Canucks and whether Johnson faces pressure to quickly take the next steps in a drastic rebuild. 

Tyler Yaremchuk: It’s an interesting way to kind of look at this off-season, because there are kind of two ways that it could go, obviously. The one is Ryan Johnson, who could come in, and he’s got the value of time on his side; he’s got job security, so he can kind of go and be methodical with this stuff over the next 18 months. The other side of it is, he could start digging around and go, oh my god, there’s eight or nine guys here who I want no part of as we lay the framework for this next step your organization’s taking. So, which way do you think this is gonna go? Is he gonna come in slow and give people time, or do you think he comes in and it’s like a firing squad, making sure guys are gone?

David Quadrelli: It’s interesting because they really don’t have any players that they need to make a quick decision on, since most of those have been made. If Conor Garland was still here and his no-move clause was kicking in, we’d all be talking about finding out a way to trade Conor Garland…Tyler Myers already got taken care of, they made their moves, they traded all their pending their most of their pending UFAs. Those moves have been made, so now you look at the Canucks’ best trade assets… there’s not a ton on this roster right now that they can use to get more future assets. So, how do you do that? You can sign some guys in free agency, maybe, and try to flip them at the deadline. You can get creative, you can take on bad money, although that’s kind of going away with the cap going up, but you can get a bit creative, and they talked about that, how they’re going to have to kind of leave no stone unturned, but when it comes to what the Canucks have that they could flip to get draft capital, Filip Hronek is their number one trade asset, right? The last regime here sounded like they wanted to name him captain, which basically makes him untouchable, and he’s got a full no-move clause. But Johnson was asked point-blank about Hronek, and he said there are no untouchables on this team and that whatever they can do to make this rebuild go better, they will explore. 

My broader point is, he doesn’t have to make that decision right away. Like, Hronek’s trade value is going to only go up. He’s on a phenomenal contract for a really good right-handed defenseman in an NHL where there are fewer and fewer selling teams, and more and more teams that are left holding their hat out on July 1,  saying, “Wait, what do you mean, Darren Raddysh is gone, and now there’s nobody else really left?” That’s the landscape we’re looking at, so there’s no rush. Like, I think that’s the thing that helps them in this situation is, yes, they want to set the culture quickly, and Hronek is not one of those guys that they’re talking about when they say, if you’re not going to buy into a culture, we’re going to ship you off.

I don’t even think Canucks fans are really opposed to the idea of keeping Hronek around for a year, but keeping him around at least through this summer, and just say, like he was a really valuable resource for our young defenseman and we want him around, and to be part of this, and if we need to do what’s best for the team in a year.

You can catch the full Canucks breakdown and the entire episode right here…