The Vancouver Canucks were active as the NHL's free agency period opened on Wednesday, but the key to improvement next season will depend on the club's young stars taking another step forward.
"We need those guys to get to the next level and they are capable of it," said Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin when he met with the media on Wednesday at Rogers Arena.
"With Quinn and Petey, my understanding is that missing training camp last year set them back a little bit, so I definitely challenged them.
"I hope they're going to come back here ready for for Day 1 in training camp and just take off."
Allvin and his group went into free agency looking to get bigger, faster and harder to play against — and to improve a penalty-killing unit that, while better in the second half, still finished tied for 30th overall with a success rate of 74.9%.
To that end, the biggest move of the day was signing Ilya Mikheyev to a four-year deal with a cap hit of $4.75 million per season.
The 27-year-old checks in at 6'2" and 192 pounds, and has spent the last three years with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He had a breakout year last season, with 21 goals and 32 points in 53 games, and added another four points in seven playoff games.
That cap hit makes Mikheyev the Canucks' sixth-highest-paid forward. And while Allvin emphasized that scoring wasn't the main reason why the versatile Russian was of interest, he did mention the possibility of power-play time as well as a key penalty-killing role. Not surprisingly, with Toronto's loaded offense, he averaged just 1:04 per game on the man advantage last season — as well as a relatively low 1:24 on the penalty kill. David Kampf, Mitch Marner and Alexander Kerfoot were the Toronto forwards who saw more shorthanded time, with Ondrej Kase just behind at 1:16.
By parlaying his love for soup into an
endoresement deal with Campbell's almost immediately after he joined the Leafs in 2019, Mikheyev quickly ascended to cult hero status in Toronto.
He missed 31 regular-season games in his rookie season following wrist surgery after a bad skate cut, then played 54 of 56 games in his sophomore season, collecting 17 points, and was sidelined for 29 games at the beginning of last year after breaking his thumb in the last game of the preseason.
It's impressive that he went on to carve out a career-best season after that unfortunate start. One big question is whether the improvement in his shooting percentage from 6.5% in 2020-21 to 14.3% last season is sustainable, or if that's one of those lucky streaks which will see him regress to the mean here in Vancouver?
Mikheyev turns 28 in October, and Allvin believes that his speed will hold up for the four years of the contract. And certainly, adding him to the roster along with Vasily Podkolzin and Andrei Kuzmenko should provide a level of comfortable familiarity for all three Russians, which Podkolzin didn't have last year.
Speaking of Kuzmenko and Podkolzin, they're also top-six candidates — who are not included in those top-six forward salaries I mentioned earlier. Podkolzin, of course, is in the second year of his entry-level contract, with a cap hit of $925,000. Kuzmenko's on a one-year entry-level deal that pays him $950,000, with bonuses a possibility for both players.
Also worth noting: because he's already 26, Kuzmenko is set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season — the Canucks hold his rights for just one year. He and Mikheyev are both clients of agent Dan Milstein. I wonder if Allvin and his team are thinking that having Mikheyev in the fold for the long term will help increase their chances of hanging onto Kuzmenko? Assuming all goes well this season, of course.
As the hockey calendar flipped to the 2022-23 season on Wednesday, Kuzmenko's contract has now been officially filed. And in addition to the two Russians, the Canucks also inked two other forwards that they expect to see in the NHL lineup next season.
Born and raised in Salmon Arm, Curtis Lazar offered up his own 'team bedsheets' photo when he inked a three-year deal with Vancouver, at a cap hit of $1 million per season.
The 17th overall pick in the 2013 draft, Lazar just about played himself out of the NHL a couple of years ago before turning his career around. He's a right-shot center — something the Canucks were coveting — and turned heads in Boston this season with his gritty game, including a team-leading 186 hits.
By citing Matt Cooke, Raffi Torres and Rick Rypien as the Canucks players that he admired growing up, Lazar has certainly set the bar high in terms of the physicality that he hopes to emulate — hopefully, without all the dirty hits and suspensions.
Lazar is a Kelowna resident, so Tyler Myers and Luke Schenn are part of his offseason crew.
Allvin also has high hopes for Dakota Joshua. A left-shot center from Michigan, the 26-year-old signed a two-year deal with a cap hit of $825,000 on Wednesday.
It's the first one-way contract ever for Joshua, who has good size at 6'3" and 206 pounds. Originally drafted in the fifth round by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2014, Joshua spent four years at Ohio State University before having his rights traded to the St. Louis Blues in the summer of 2019. He caught the eye of Canucks staffers Ryan Johnson and Trent Cull during a six-game stint with the Utica Comets in the 2020-21 season, when the Canucks and Blues shared the AHL franchise.
"Bigger body, heavier to play against, good speed," summarized Allvin, who added that he likes Joshua's versatility as a forward who can play centre or wing.
"Our belief is that he is capable of doing more, and with more opportunity can become a full-time NHL player," he said.
The Canucks also added to their goaltending depth on Wednesday, inking Collin Delia to a one-year, one-way deal at the league minimum of $750,000.
At 28, Delia becomes the second California-born goalie in the Canucks organization, after Thatcher Demko. He checks in at a solid 6'2" and 208 pounds and was signed by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2017 as a free-agent out of Merrimack College.
Over the past few years, Delia has bounced back and forth between Chicago and the AHL's Rockford Ice Hogs. He has 22 NHL games under his belt, including eight last season, with a career NHL save percentage of .904 and goals-against average of 3.68.
He does offer some insurance for the big club in case of injury, or if Spencer Martin hiccups at all after his outstanding first year with the Canucks organization.
Allvin said Wednesday that he does plan to use two goalies in Abbotsford next season, rather than a three-goalie platoon. It remains to be seen whether that will mean an ECHL assignment for Mikey DiPietro — who is a restricted free agent after receiving his qualifying offer from the Canucks this week. Or, will he be traded before the season begins?
The Canucks also made two other signings for the farm on Wednesday. Forward Phil Di Giuseppe returns on a one-year, two-way contract that gives him a raise to $475,000 at the AHL level next season — up from $450,000 last year. And 25-year-old left-shot defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk joins the team on a two-way deal that will pay him $300,000 at the AHL level. A native of Brandon, Manitoba, Kalynuk is a lanky 6'1" and 180 pounds. He signed with Chicago as a free agent in 2020, following three years at Wisconsin, and had a solid 27 points and 55 penalty minutes in 52 games with AHL Rockford last season.
Wednesday's moves will most likely wrap up the Canucks' free-agent activity — at least until we get closer to training camps, when PTOs come into play. Allvin did leave the door open to trades — and certainly, the defense could still use work. At this point, the only changes from last season on the back end are the ascent of Jack Rathbone to NHL status and the departure of Brad Hunt, who did not sign a new UFA deal on Wednesday.
Not much can happen until the team moves some money off the roster — and Allvin said he's not interested in using sweeteners to help dispose of bad contracts.
He also said he didn't receive any calls on J.T. Miller on Wednesday, and that up to this point there really hasn't been any activity around Miller beyond "tire-kicking."
I wonder if that will change now that Johnny Gaudreau has landed in Columbus? That has left the Devils, Islanders and Flames all in need of a top-line offensive threat, although New Jersey quickly executed a Plan B by bringing in Ondrej Palat from Tampa Bay on a five-year term.
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