Continuing a theme from the last blog, let's start today with another accolade for a Vancouver Canucks prospect:
The Calgary Hitmen acquired Jett Woo from the Moose Jaw Warriors this season, in hopes that he'd help them make a push for a WHL championship this spring.
Woo finished up with 7-39-46 in 64 games. That's a drop-off from his 66-point season in 2018-19, but he was still Calgary's highest-scoring defenseman. His physical game continues to develop, as he hit a career high 88 penalty minutes, and he stayed healthy after undergoing a procedure on his knee during the offseason.
The WHL's regular season was about 10 days from completion when things shut down due to the coronavirus. With 64 games played, the Hitmen were comfortably in the first wild-card sport in the Eastern Conference with a record of 35-24-4-1 and had clinched a playoff spot.
Canucks prospect Carson Focht was also on track to match his breakout numbers from 2018-19, when he improved from 33 points the previous season to 26 goals and 64 points and earned a fifth-round pick by Vancouver in his second year of draft eligibility. Focht had 32 goals and 56 points in 61 games this year, before the season was paused.
Woo did a Twitter Takeover on Thursday on Hockey Manitoba's Twitter feed, answering questions from fans. I think this one was my favourite:
Woo signed his entry-level contract with the Canucks last March, with an eye toward getting him some AHL games at the end of the year, but his knee injury put a wrench in that plan.
He turns 20 in July, so he should start next season in Utica — whenever that happens.
Here's one other note on a potential Vancouver defensemen. The only mention the Canucks get in Elliotte Friedman's
31 Thoughts this week is this:
We’re starting to see some KHL players waver on coming to North America amid all the uncertainty. KHL offers are on the table now. Konstantin Okulov decided to stay. Vancouver’s Nikita Tryamkin — that’s a tough one. We knew their cap situation was tight, and now no one knows where we’re going to go.
I wonder, under these circumstances, if Tryamkin will end up deciding to stay closer to home and re-up in Russia? If he stays with Avtomobilist, his coach next season will be Bill Peters, who signed a two-year deal with the team earlier this week.
The Canucks' cap situation could also play a part in that decision. Would Jim Benning go out of his way to allocate money to Tryamkin when he has incumbent players that he'd like to keep around?
While we're on the subject of defensemen,
Iain MacIntyre has a new story up on Sportsnet about Troy Stecher, and how his game improved over the course of this season, especially when he was once again deployed on a pairing with Alex Edler.
“Just being from here, and being this close to the playoffs for the first time in my four years, it was something I was really looking forward to, something I believed our team was going to achieve," he said. "To have that cut short so drastically like the way it was, it was pretty heartbreaking. But there was nothing you can do. You have to do what you have to do to protect yourself and your family.
“I think having that taste of winning early on in the season added some belief in our room. I guess that was part of the struggle the last three years and why this year felt so different."
Stecher hits the nail on the head when he talks about why there's so much chatter about getting the pro sports leagues up and running again as soon as possible.
“With the 50/50 split with the revenue, I’m sure that both players and owners are going to want to play to recover some of the loss. I’m sure if there’s a way to figure it out, they’ll find a way. But right now, I don’t think there are many answers for anything in the world, let alone hockey."
Stecher made $2.325 million this season — which is a lot if you compare it to Oscar Fantenberg's $850,000, but not-so-much up against Edler or Tyler Myers' $6 million. Stecher turned 26 earlier this month — where has the time gone??
If he gets a qualifying offer, he'd have arbitration rights. Given how strongly he's attached to the Canucks and how much he loves playing in his home town, I wonder if he'd be willing to go the same route that Derrick Pouliot did a couple of years ago, re-signing without receiving a qualifying offer?
In Pouliot's case, he still received a modest raise, from $800,000 to $1.1 million. I can envision Stecher being willing to hold the line or possibly even take a pay cut in order to stick around.
I'm blown away that any contracts are getting signed under these uncertain circumstances. I have no idea how the St. Louis Blues came to terms on two multi-year extensions over the last couple of days — giving Sammy Blais two years at a cap hit of $1.5 million per season after he played at $850,000 last year and re-upping trade-deadline acquisition Marco Scandella for four years at $3.275 million — pretty decent coin for a 30-year-old journeyman who was finishing off a five-year deal that paid him $4 million a season.
In his weekly column at ESPN,
Greg Wyshynski digs into why all the uncertainty could make this a very tough offseason for high-profile UFAs like Taylor Hall to cash in with the traditional big-money, long-term deals they'd usually be entitled to.
While Hall says he doesn't want to sign a short-term contract and kick the ball down the road to a more stable time, I suspect some teams and some players will end up choosing that option. I wonder what that will mean for the Canucks, Jacob Markstrom, Tyler Toffoli and Chris Tanev?
Finally — to wrap up today, here's a look at this Saturday's Canucks Rewind games on Sportsnet Pacific:
Two absolute barnburners. Fun choices!
There's also a 4 p.m. game listed on the Sportsnet
TV Listings page, simply listed as "2019 Golden Knights/Canucks."
Fair to assume they haven't picked one of the blowout losses? I hope so!
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