Our first trade of the 2022 offseason went down on Wednesday, and it has some implications for the Vancouver Canucks and their fans.
The Los Angeles Kings acquired scoring winger Kevin Fiala from the Minnesota Wild in exchange for defense prospect Brock Faber and the Kings' 2022 first-round draft pick (No. 19).
Then, Los Angeles reportedly signed Fiala, a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, to a seven-year contract which carries a cap hit of $7.875 million per season.
According to CapFriendly, the soon-to-be 26-year-old will have trade protection in the last six years of the deal — a full no-move clause in Years 2-4, then a modified no-trade clause in Years 5-7, although the details are not yet publicly available.
On the ice, the deal makes the Kings more dangerous offensively than they were last season — a division rival addressing an important need. They were the team that beat out the Canucks for the third playoff spot in the Pacific Division this year, finishing with 99 points compared to 92 for Vancouver. But they struggled to score, finishing 29th in the regular season with an average of just 2.43 goals per game. And after getting a 3-2 edge on Edmonton in their first-round playoff series, the Kings came up empty when the chips were down — scoring just two goals in Game 6 and shut out by the Oilers in Game 7.
Fiala brings a good stick, and hit a career high in Minnesota this year with 33 goals and 85 points. He's fast, and while he's not tall, he's pretty rugged at 5'10" and 204 pounds.
Drafted 11th overall by Nashville in 2014, the Predators dealt Fiala to the Wild at the 2019 trade deadline as his entry-level deal was expiring, in exchange for Mikael Granlund. At the time, it looked like a risky move, dealing a young player with upside for an impending UFA. But Granlund has remained in Nashville. He's now signed for three more seasons at a reasonable $5 million cap hit, and put up 64 points himself last season — just five points off his career high. And he's a centre; Fiala plays wing.
Fiala's also an interesting comparable for Brock Boeser. He's one year older, and last year he was an RFA with arbitration rights, as Boeser is now. Fiala was coming off a two-year deal with a $3 million cap hit, and a season where he put up 20 goals and 40 points in 50 games. The two sides ultimately settled on a one-year deal with a cap hit of $5.1 million.
Boeser, of course, is coming into his RFA summer with a qualifying offer of $7.5 million, after averaging $5.875 million a year for the last three seasons. Even though he had a bit of a down year, he still put up 23 goals and 46 points in 71 games. And while has has cracked the 20-goal mark in four of his five seasons, his high-water mark remains his 29 goals in his rookie year.
With 121 goals and 256 points in 324 career games, Boeser has averaged 0.37 goals and 0.79 points per game in his career.
Fiala has 124 goals and 283 points in 419 career games. His averages are 0.30 goals and 0.68 points per game, both lower than Boeser's.
So the Kings appear to be banking on the fact that Fiala's 85 points last year are more indicative of what he'll be able to bring for the next seven years. And Canucks management should be reminded of how the value (and cost) of a player in that age cohort can spike after one strong season.
But even though the Wild are in a terrible cap crunch, they did well with the return they received for Fiala. For the next three seasons, they've got huge hits of dead space from the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter: more than $12.7 million next season, then $14.7 million in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
So perhaps the most valuable part of the package is that they picked up assets that won't be on their cap ledger immediately. The first-round draft pick will most likely continue his development outside the NHL, and Brock Faber is a soon-to-be 20-year-old who just completed his sophomore year at the University of Minnesota. Back in April,
it was reported that Faber plans to return to Minnesota for his junior year. And he was part of Team USA at the abbreviated World Junior Championship last winter, so he may get another crack at that tournament this August.
The Canucks also have one more connection to Faber. The Kings acquired the 45th pick that they used to draft him in 2020 by bundling the 2020 second-round pick that they acquired from Vancouver in the Tyler Toffoli trade (No. 51) with a fourth-round pick (No. 97).
The latest word in the gossip mills is that the Canucks and Boeser's reps have yet to come to any sort of meeting of the minds.
Fiala's new contract is not great news for the Canucks, but the return the Wild received from the Kings is definitely solid. If the Canucks were offered something similar for Boeser, that should certainly capture their attention.
As for J.T. Miller, the latest buzz surrounds Carolina as a potentially interested party, and Martin Necas as potentially part of the return.
I like Necas as a centre who was also part of Elias Pettersson's 2017 draft class. That fits with the braintrust's stated goal of building around the existing core. And that's an idea that Joe Sakic executed brilliantly with the Colorado Avalanche. When they raised the Stanley Cup last Sunday, they had five players from the first two rounds of the 2013 draft on their roster: Nathan MacKinnon (No. 1), Valeri Nichushkin (No. 10), Andre Burakovsky (No. 23), J.T. Compher (No. 35) and Artturi Lehkonen (No. 55).
I wonder if the Canucks might be able to execute a similar acquisition strategy with players from Petey and Hughes' draft years?
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