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Draft Day 2020 looks and feels very different for the Vancouver Canucks |
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After all the excitement of the past few years, Draft Day 2020 feels like it's barely a thing in Canucks-land.
For the past four years, the Canucks have been in the thick of the action with top-10 picks. And despite not having had a shred of draft lottery luck, they've made out well with two definite blue-chippers in Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, with hope still simmering for both 2019 first-rounder Vasily Podkolzin and the 2016 pick, Olli Juolevi, who got into one playoff game this summer and seems like he'll be expected to contend for a job on the main roster whenever the 2020-21 NHL season gets going.
Update on that: sounds like January 1 is now the revised target date for the new season.
That makes sense.
When I spoke to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly while I was in Edmonton, he told me that the reason why the league had decided to schedule the draft and free agency so soon after the end of the playoffs is because there's still lots of other offseason business that needs to be handled after free agency opens — arbitration cases and the like.
Now that we're already into October, it's hard to imagine how the league could get those regular details looked after *and* hammer out a plan for next season in time to get players back for training camp in a month or so. I'm sure the players on the non-playoff teams who haven't seen game action since March are chomping at the bit to get going, but the Lightning and the Stars, and even the Islanders and Golden Knights, are surely going to need a minute to breathe before committing to a new season that's bound to be another strange grind, no matter how it gets structured.
For the record, these are the picks that the Canucks hold in the draft, effective Tuesday morning:
3rd round: Pick 82
4th round: Pick 113
5th round: Pick 144
6th round: Pick 175
7th round: Pick 191
That seventh-round pick was acquired from Anaheim, along with Luke Schenn, in the Michael Del Zotto trade. Side note — it was pretty fantastic to see Schenn play a meanginful role in Tampa Bay's Stanley Cup run, displaying the same physicality and commitment to his team that he showed during his brief time in Vancouver.
The Canucks' own seventh-round pick, No. 206, was dealt to the New York Rangers in exchange for goaltender Marek Mazanec back in February of 2019. His rights were then included in the J.T. Miller trade, but Mazanec went back to play in his native Czech Republic last season.
Two final housekeeping notes:
• the pick that Vancouver traded to the Lightning in exchange for J.T. Miller is No. 20, currently held by the New Jersey Devils as part of the return from the Blake Coleman trade
• the pick that Vancouver traded to the Kings in exchange for Tyler Toffoli is No. 51
Without a pick on Day 1 — unless a huge trade comes down — the Canucks don't even have a media availability planned for Tuesday. Players selected on Wednesday are expected to be made available via Zoom.
Jim Benning also did a Zoom call on Monday. He's a cagey veteran now — the 11th-longest tenured GM in the league — so he's learned not to show many cards.
One interesting note is that forgotten man Josh Leivo is still on the team's radar. He hasn't played since late December after suffering that broken kneecap, and officially becomes an unrestricted free agent on Friday, but could be a value signing on the wing.
Benning also declined to reveal any information about possible buyouts, or about which players have received qualifying offers. He did say that some players have already received their offers but decisions need to be made on others, so they'll all be announced at once.
The deadline to submit qualifying offers is Wednesday at 2 p.m. PT. The question marks most likely apply to Jake Virtanen and/or Troy Stecher, who are both eligible to file for arbitration if they're qualified.
Zack MacEwen and Tyler Motte are also RFAs with arbitration rights, but their cases would not be as likely to cause financial troubles for Vancouver. Adam Gaudette is a 10.2c. That means not only does he not have arbitration rights, he also can't be presented with an offer sheet, so his leverage is even lower than a regular RFA.
Benning also didn't take the bait when asked about Oliver Ekman-Larsson, saying he'd been speaking to lots of teams about lots of players.
The other day, there was talk here about how Benning should give his counterpart Bill Armstrong in Arizona a deadline to complete a deal, because he has other business that needs to be tended to this week — most notably, trying to complete a deal with Jacob Markstrom.
In addition to declining to expand his list, Ekman-Larsson has now issued a public deadline himself, saying that if a trade isn't completed before free agency opens on Friday, he'll just stay put in the desert.
It'll be fascinating to see if Armstrong and Coyotes ownership blink, and perhaps take less than what they're looking for, or if the deadline passes without a trade.
As I've said before, I think this is a great opportunity for Vancouver to offload an unwanted contract or two without having to resort to a buyout or burying somebody in the minors. That part of the equation probably excites me more than the player himself, so we'll see what happens.
Round 1 of the draft goes Tuesday at 4 p.m. PT on Sportsnet, with Rounds 2-7 unrolling Wednesday starting at 8:30 a.m. PT.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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