The Vancouver Canucks hosted their annual Dice and Ice Gala at Rogers Arena on Tuesday night, and are taking Wednesday off before hosting the streaking Ottawa Senators on Thursday.
Ottawa is now on a four-game winning streak after a 4-1 win over Edmonton on Tuesday and has climbed within four points of an Eastern Conference wild-card spot. Can the Sens repeat their amazing surge from last season and make a push into the playoffs again this year?
I imagine a lot of you won't mind if streak continues at Rogers Arena on Thursday. The Canucks remain stuck in 24th place overall as the teams below them in the standings continue to lose.
Sounds like Ben Hutton stole the show at the gala with his lip-sync performance of Aqua's 1997 classic "Barbie Girl."
Hutton hasn't scored yet this season at Rogers Arena. I wonder if this is his goal song?
The team has promised to unveil more video from the event later today. Judging from their outfits, it looks like Jake Virtanen, Jared McCann and Sven Baertschi had some fun in the rookie lip-sync battle as well.
On the ice, Markus Granlund made his debut with the team at practice on Tuesday, wearing No. 60. We'll get a chance to see how he fits on Thursday, as he's expected to line up at centre between Linden Vey and Emerson Etem.
The fourth line will probably look like this.
If you missed it, Radim Vrbata didn't practice with the team on Tuesday.
At this point, it's hard to say how this will impact Vrbata's potential trade value or options. There's a chance that the Canucks might be erring on the side of caution, making sure he doesn't get banged up more before he can be dealt.
Elliotte Friedman suggested in his
30 Thoughts column on Tuesday that he could envision a deal that sends Vrbata back to Arizona.
I could see Vrbata being willing to be moved there. He had his most successful seasons during two separate stints with the Coyotes before his 63-point career year in Vancouver in 2014-15 and his family was happy there, according to
this Sportsnet article from Shannon Proudfoot, talking about his move to Vancouver:
Vrbata and his family loved the years they spent in the sunny warmth — and relative NHL anonymity — of Arizona. It was all Krystof knew of life in North America, and the couple’s younger son, Oliver, was born there last year. “It was like a second home away from Czech,” Vrbata says.
That article also reminds us that Vrbata made the decision to leave the NHL and go back to the Czech Republic for most of the 2008-09 season when his wife was going through a high-risk pregnancy with their first child. Petra is currently pregnant again—I believe she's not due until May, but I think part of Vrbata's concern this time 'round is the possibility of being away from her during the playoffs.
In that respect, Arizona's a good fit for him, since their chances of making the postseason are nearly as bleak as Vancouver's. He probably wouldn't fetch as much as might be offered by a playoff contender, but the Canucks could probably get something for him, from a team he'd be willing to join—and might very well be interested in re-signing with next season.
On the Dan Hamhuis front:
I respect the fact that Hamhuis is willing to admit that he's thinking about the possibility of being moved. The situation would have to be right for him and his family, of course, but it sounds like he's being realistic and not necessarily digging in his heels.
Washington had been mentioned as a possible fit for Hamhuis, but they made the move they could fit into their salary-cap structure on Tuesday when they acquired defenceman Mike Weber from Buffalo in exchange for a third-round pick in 2017—and had the Sabres retain half of Weber's $1.7 million cap hit.
Like Hamhuis, Weber will be a free agent at the end of the season and is primarily a defensive defenseman. He has good size at 6'2" and 217 pounds and is just 28 years old. Doesn't have Hamhuis' pedigree, but that's a solid pickup for the Caps, I think.
Dallas still looks like it could be a good fit for Hamhuis, but it'll be tricky getting a deal done between those two sides.
A couple of technical notes on salary retention to wrap up today:
• NHL teams are only allowed to retain salary on a maximum of three players at any time. That leaves two slots for the Canucks, who have $800,000 a year committed to Roberto Luongo until the 2021-22 season.
Click here for a complete list of teams that are holding retained salary from traded players, from CapFriendly.com. You'll see that even though they still have an outside shot at the playoffs, the Flyers are now limited in the moves that can be made because they're already retaining on three players with active contracts—Luke Schenn, Vincent Lecavalier and Nicklas Grossman.
•
CapFriendly does a nice job of outlining the other restrictions of retained-salary deals. Most importantly, a team cannot retain more than 50 percent of a player's salary/cap hit in any deal.
• Total retained salary cannot exceed 15 percent of the salary cap ceiling. That's well over $10 million this season, so I don't think the Canucks are in any trouble there!
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