The NHL has taken the plunge. Now, they need to figure out how they'll make it work.
On Sunday, the league and the players' association officially announced that they'd signed off on a 56-game season, to begin on Jan. 13.
As expected, the divisions have been re-aligned, including the all-Canadian division. The Vancouver Canucks and the other 23 teams that participated in the summer postseason will report for training camp on Jan. 3, which is 12 days from when I'm writing this on Tuesday.
Given the Canadian 14-day quarantine requirement for travellers entering from foreign countries, hopefully that means most of the Canucks' American and European players are either in town, or arriving shortly. The 10-day training camp, with no exhibition games, is going to be a sprint — and will probably include plenty of scrimmage action, like we saw last summer.
As for roster sizes:
One we get to the regular season, the regular 23-man NHL roster limit will apply, along with a taxi squad of four to six players. They'll essentially be treated as AHL players; they'll need to clear waivers or be waiver exempt to be assigned to the taxi squad.
Players on two-way contracts will earn their AHL salaries when they're on the taxi squad; players on NHL salaries who have cleared waivers will still have any cap hit above $1.075 million count against the salary cap while they're on the taxi squad. Their full cap hit would apply if and when they get called up.
Here's a little more on that,
from Sportsnet:
"One thing that benefits the Leafs and the handful of others teams that are going to be operating right at the cap ceiling -- Vegas comes to mind as a team that's going to be operating in a similar way -- is essentially every day where you're not playing a game you can transfer players to the taxi squad and not have their salary count for the day on the cap," (Chris) Johnston explained. "That might sound trivial or 'what's the big deal here' but I think it's a way certainly for teams to stay under the cap ceiling as the season goes on, but also a way for them to accrue cap space to make trades potentially as they get further into the year and closer to the trade deadline, which should be a benefit for teams that could be in trouble."
So, for example, the Vancouver Canucks could theoretically move someone like Loui Eriksson to the taxi squad after he passes waivers and have a cap savings on his deal by replacing him with a player who is on a league minimum contract for an off-day. This couldn't be done with every player of course, since you always risk losing someone who could get claimed.
Taxi squad players will be permitted to practice with the team, and can travel with them — although they're not required to do so. But all teams *must* carry at least three goalies between their main roster and their taxi squad. That's an interesting wrinkle for the Canucks, who lost their No. 3 Louis Domingue to free agency — to Calgary, where else?
And while Mikey DiPietro was on call in Vancouver for most of the Canucks' time in the bubble, it was Jake Kielly who was recalled on an emergency basis as the No. 3 one day before the Canucks were eliminated by Vegas on Sept. 4, after it was reported that DiPietro had become unfit to play.
The Canucks re-signed Kielly to a two-way deal in mid-October, which pays $700,000 at the NHL level and $85,000 in the AHL. Following three years at Clarkson College, the 24-year-old Minnesota native spent most of last season in the ECHL but was strong in his two games with the Utica Comets, giving up just three goals for a GAA of 1.84 and .923.
Assuming DiPietro is healthy now, I expect that both he and Kielly will come to training camp. With the AHL not scheduled to start play until February at the earliest, my first instinct would be for the Canucks to keep DiPietro on the taxi squad to start, to get him some valuable practice time with goaltending coach Ian Clark.
With the compressed schedule and the likelihood that competition for playoff spots will be very tight in the new North Division, there's a good chance that the No. 3 will see some game action. I don't think the Canucks have enough cap space to try to lure an unsigned veteran like a Ryan Miller or a Jimmy Howard — and players like that would also have to clear waivers to be assigned to the taxi squad, which could end up creating a crazy revolving-door effect around the league.
My guess is that the Canucks will use training camp to determine whether Kielly or DiPietro would give them the best immediate shot at winning games.
As for the 36 skaters we should expect to see at camp...let's start with the returnees from the playoffs — including the extra players.
This list is just going down the last
Canucks roster report from Edmonton, from Game 7 vs. Vegas:
F: Boeser, Miller, Virtanen, Sutter, Roussel, Pettersson, Horvat, Motte, Pearson, Beagle, Gaudette, Eriksson, Bailey, Graovac, MacEwen, Ferland (16)
D: Edler, Hughes, Myers, Rafferty, Benn, Juolevi, Chatfield (7)
That's 23.
Other likely additions, with help from CapFriendly (skaters only, not including Holtby here):
F: Baertschi, Hawryluk, Hoglander, Michaelis, Lind, Lockwood, Gadjovich (7)
D: Schmidt, Rathbone, Woo, Brisebois, Sautner (5)
That gets us to 35.
CapFriendly shows the Canucks with 39 skaters under contract for this season, so I've got four guys off the list, with one slot remaining — forwards Lukas Jasek and Petrus Palmu, and defensemen Mitch Eliot and Josh Teves.
As I wrote in the last blog, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Canucks leave Jasek (and Palmu) in Europe, where they currently have teams — at least until the AHL season starts. Jasek is playing in the Czech league, and Palmu has been loaned to ERC Ingolstadt of the German league, where he has gotten into one game.
As for Eliot and Teves, both were depth defensemen with the Comets last year, and also spent a bit of time in the ECHL.
Perhaps the Canucks will keep that 36th slot open in case they do sign one more player. Otherwise, I think this is a pretty good start on what we'll see on January 3.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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