Earlier in the offseason, I wrote a blog after rumors of Brock Boeser being shopped out of Vancouver started floating around on social media. The theory was that the Senators could land a good player for less than they might otherwise have to pay given the fact that Vancouver is in a tight salary cap situation. With the Canucks now out of the playoffs, and reportedly very interested in bringing back both Tyler Toffoli and Jacob Markstrom, it’s a good time to look at the possibility of Ottawa taking advantage of Vancouver’s cap woes in another way.
One of the common questions to Mike’s Mailbag since the turn of the calendar has been about where there might be a chance for Ottawa to use its cap space to recoup valuable assets. Both the questioners and my responses typically reference Vancouver as a target. The reasoning is simple: Despite their on-ice success this year, the Canucks’ cap situation is a mess. They overcommitted to underwhelming depth players at the expense of the potential to re-sign key contributors with ease. Per CapFriendly, the Canucks are sitting on about $14M in cap space with only 17 players on the roster for 2020-21. When you consider that both Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes are going to need contracts in the year following, it becomes even easier to see that there’s an opportunity for a team with cap space to take advantage.
Thanks in large part to Jim Benning’s penchant for signing depth players to lengthy, expensive contracts, there are a number of targets on the Vancouver roster. A name like Loui Eriksson, whose contract has two years remaining at $6M per season, comes to mind. Then there’s Brandon Sutter, who only has a year left at $4.375M. Or, what about Jay Beagle, a fourth line centre making $3M per season for the next two years? You could even list Micheal Ferland, whose recent injury history makes his $3.5M contract a near-liability for a cap team like the Canucks. The point here is that there is no shortage of names to target on Vancouver’s roster.
From Ottawa’s perspective, most of Vancouver’s albatross contracts line up quite well with Pierre Dorion’s apparent plan. Realistically, this Senators group isn’t going to compete for another two or three years. None of the names above have deals that extend beyond that timeframe, so Ottawa can afford a bit of dead weight on the roster without competitive implications.
As good as the fit sounds based on the discussion above, there are some unfortunate new realities that exist thanks to Vancouver’s success over the last year. Firstly, there’s likely a whole lot less short-term pressure on Jim Benning than there otherwise might have been without a second-round playoff run. Managers under short-term demands have a tendency to throw away futures for pennies on the dollar, which presents a perfect opportunity for a team like Ottawa. For most of the season, Benning looked like he was going to be in that kind of position, as he was last season when he helped Tampa out with a J.T. Miller cap dump that netted the Lightning a first-round pick. No longer.
The other downside to a potential Senators/Canucks trade match is Vancouver’s lack of immediate draft capital. They have no first or second round pick this year, which likely pushes any potential asset recovery for a team like Ottawa out to 2021 or 2022. That’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but the time value of [draft picks] suggests that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
Even with those factors considered, I still think it’s worth exploring the idea of weaponizing cap space to bolster what is already an incredibly strong prospect system by calling Jim Benning and the Canucks. The seeds of a future competitive team have already been planted; something like this would only strengthen the cause.
As always, thanks for reading.
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