It sure looks like the Tyler Myers train will be pulling into Vancouver Central Station on Monday.
On Saturday, the Vancouver Canucks cleared some additional cap space when they announced that they'd put Ryan Spooner on unconditional waivers for purposes of a buyout.
Acquired from the Edmonton Oilers last February in exchange for Sam Gagner, Spooner's cap hit for the Canucks next season would have been $3.1 million. With the buyout, that'll be reduced to just over $1 million—but will cost Vancouver another million or so in cap space next season as well.
If you believe in signs, you could assume Spooner wasn't going to fit in as a Canuck from one of his first appearances with the team, at the Dice and Ice gala three days after he was acquired.
At the time, I appreciated his Luongo-like sense of self-deprecation—and his willingness to still stand in the front row. But Spooner didn't fit in very well on the ice, either.
With a relatively small window to prove himself, Spooner had three assists in his first six games with the team before being hobbled by a groin injury that kept him out of the lineup for three weeks in March. He returned for Vancouver's last five games, logged more ice time in those games, and tallied one more assist.
All told, his final stat line with Vancouver was 0-4-4 and a minus-1 in 11 games, with 11 hits, three blocked shots, one takeaway and two giveaways while averaging 13:36 of ice time per game.
All told, Spooner had 3-6-9 in 52 games last season with he New York Rangers, Edmonton Oilers and the Canucks. It was a pretty quick fall from grace for the 27-year-old, who was signed to a two-year, $8-million deal by the Rangers last summer after putting up 16 points in 20 games when he came to Gotham as part of the return on the Rick Nash trade at the 2018 deadline.
Gagner ended up with 5-5-10 in 25 games with the Oilers and is still on their roster. But since the Canucks sent him to the minors at the beginning of last season and that his cap hit was almost identical to Spooner's ($3.15 million for one more year), I would assume that the Canucks also would have bought him out if he was still on their roster right now.
Even with Spooner out of the mix, the Canucks still have an overabundance of forwards. According to
CapFriendly, 12 forwards are currently signed, at a cost of $39 million, with four more still to bring under contract: Brock Boeser, Josh Leivo, Nikolay Goldobin and Tyler Motte.
It's probably now even tougher to move those big-money vets with cap space around the league at such a premium.
All this, for Tyler Myers?
The Canucks still seem to be the team that's linked most strongly to the big blueliner, and I've heard some massaging of the messaging around the potential signing over the past couple of days.
With the fanbase almost universally outraged at the idea of $7 million for seven years, insiders are now floating slightly smaller numbers for both term and cap hit—presumably in hopes that this deal wouldn't go over quite as badly.
How would you feel about 5 x $6 million? It's still a lot, but a total outlay of $30 million instead of $49 million would actually be a saving of close to 40 percent. That's pretty significant, but if that's what the messaging is with two days left to go, I'd guess there's no other team in the market that's anywhere near this ballpark.
I wonder if they could go even lower. What would be a number for Myers that you'd be comfortable with?
Our dream of acquiring Colin Miller from Vegas fizzled on Friday with the announcement that he had been dealt to Buffalo in exchange for two far-away draft picks—a second-rounder in 2021 and a fifth-rounder in 2022.
That certainly seems like a price that the Canucks would have been able to meet, had they been in the mix. Miller's three years younger than Myers and locked in for three more years at $3.875 million. Maybe Jim Benning is single-mindedly focused on Myers; maybe the Golden Knights were determined to ship Miller to the Eastern Conference.
Either way, with Miller and Erik Haula now gone, Vegas' cap situation is better but still not all the way there. Once they put David Clarkson and his $5.25 million on LTIR, they'll be OK, but they still need to get under the $81.5 million cap ceiling on opening day with that contract on their books—and right now, they're at $82.4 million according to CapFriendly, with just 12 forwards, five D and one goalie under contract—and no waiver-exempt players they could easily slip down into the minors for a minute.
Earlier this week, we talked a bit about their RFA forward Nikita Gusev. Here's his deal:
Gusev's a high-octane winger who turns 27 on July 8. He was originally drafted by Tampa Bay in the seventh round in 2012, and dealt to Vegas along with two draft picks as the Lightning's expansion-draft insurance. In exchange, Vegas took Jason Garrison and his $4.6 million cap hit off the Lightning's hands.
Gusev has remained in the KHL for the last two seasons, but secured his release in April. Vegas signed him to a one-year entry-level deal with the intent of adding him to the playoff roster, but he didn't get into the lineup before the Golden Knights lost their first-round series to San Jose.
Afterward, he joined the powerhouse Russian team at the World Championship, where his 15:50 per game put him behind only Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Nikita Kucherov and Yegveny Kuznetsov in ice time among forwards. He played on PP1, showing tremendous chemistry with his coulda-been-teammates Kucherov and Mikhail Sergachev from the Lightning, and finished tied for second in tournament scoring with Kucherov and Jakub Voracek, with 16 points in 10 games.
Gusev is an offensive dynamo, but the Golden Knights might not be able to fit him under the cap. Seems like he'd be a candidate for an offer sheet. What would it take to get him to sign?
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