Today, let's run through a grab bag of news and notes surrounding the Vancouver Canucks.
First off, Henrik Sedin made an appearance on Breakfast Television on Monday, to promote Jeans Day coming up this Thursday and talk a bit about his team.
Henrik sticks with the party line when talking about the draft lottery, asserting that the Canucks will be able to pick a good player despite falling to the fifth spot in the draft. He also remembers having "dust-ups" with Travis Green on the ice during Green's playing days.
Nearly a week after he was first introduced, Green is still in town, talking to the local media. He was a guest on CTV Morning Live on Tuesday. During TSN1040's draft lottery broadcast last Saturday, Green had a chat with Jeff Paterson and Matt Sekeres, which Paterson summed up in an article for Canucks Army.
We never heard Willie Desjardins, John Tortorella or even Alain Vigneault talk analytics, so Green's turning over a new leaf when he says he's excited to see what he can learn from the plethora of data that's now available to him at the NHL level.
“I don’t think you coach off of it (analytics), but I think it does prove theories within how I feel about the game and how it’s played and the way it’s going today,” Green told Paterson. “And I’m definitely going to use the information that we can get.”
Green also said that he has conducted his first round of meetings with the Canucks who are still in Vancouver during the offseason. He'll soon head back to Utica to get his move organized. We'll likely see him next at the draft on June 23, then at the Canucks' summer development camp. That usually runs during the first week of July.
After being very quick in promoting Green to the job in Vancouver, it sounds like the Canucks will take their time filling the coaching vacancy in Utica. So far, all we know is that the hire will come from outside the organization.
Linden says there are "5 or 6" candidates to coach @UticaComets that they have to "dig in" and find out more about. List could expand also.
One other fairly significant bit of news surfaced on Monday. Sounds like we won't be seeing Nikita Tryamkin around these parts anytime soon.
3 year deal on Tryamkin in the KHL. Vorky is my main man for KHL news. Sad news that makes me cry, but up to date KHL news nonetheless. https://t.co/vjwk5KgJVf
It's unclear at this time if there's any sort of North American out-clause in Tryamkin's contract.
@CanuckSyko@tryamkin94 Dont know if there are out clauses. If no out clause, a player can buyout his contract when pays 2/3 of the rest of contract to his team.
Back on April 24, Ed Willes delivered this assessment in The Province.
Spent a couple of days poking around the Nikita Tryamkin story and came to this conclusion. The rift between the player and the organization is not irreparable. Wouldn’t say it’s an absolute lock but the sense here is he’ll be back in Vancouver at some point.
We'll have to wait and see if Willes' conclusion is correct, or if he ended up putting too much weight on one side of the story while he was digging around.
The Canucks also lost another defenseman from their system today.
The translation says Tom Nilsson has returned to Sweden. Nilsson was limited to 17 games with Utica in 16-17 https://t.co/6krQIAbFCY
Around these parts, Tom Nilsson is probably best remembered as a mysterious name that lingered on the Canucks roster while the numbers were being cut during last year's training camp. Nilsson was signed as a free agent by the Canucks last May and suffered an undisclosed injury during camp.
The Canucks weren't able to assign him to Utica until he was fit to play, which meant he was part of the pomp and circumstance of the opening-night player introductions at Rogers Arena last October.
Nilsson was assigned to the Comets in early November. He had three assists, 10 penalty minutes, and was a plus-seven in his 17 AHL games.
On a cheerier note, let's wrap up for today with this report of a Swedish interview with Canucks prospect Jonathan Dahlen.
— The Hockey Writers (@TheHockeyWriter) May 1, 2017
Dahlen found out that he was going the other way in Ottawa's Alex Burrows trade just like the rest of us—on Twitter.
“It felt quite unreal,” Dahlen recalls. “I was on the bus. It was trade deadline, and I have enjoyed that every year since I was eight or nine. So, I scrolled through my social media feed as usual. Then I saw that Ottawa would acquire Alex Burrows. My dad texted me and said that it would be fun to see what Ottawa would do at the trade deadline, and I replied that they had signed Burrows. He asked me who they would send away, but I had no idea of who it could be.”
“I kept going through Twitter and saw that a reporter had written, ‘They are sending Jonathan Dahlen’. I was kind of baffled. And soon after that, I started to get new followers on Twitter who wrote ‘Welcome to Canucks’ and stuff like that. It truly was an experience.”
I remember, there was a pretty significant lag that day between the announcement of the Burrows deal and the word that Dahlen had been dealt to Vancouver.
Now that his entry-level deal is signed, Dahlen is planning to spend the month of May in Vancouver. “I will stay there for about a month to work out and get myself acquainted with the environment. After that, I’m going home. And then I head back there for the development camp along with the other prospects.”
As far as his goals for next season, "Of course, I’m going to Vancouver with the ambition to make the team. You can’t have any other mindset when you are there.”
If he doesn't make the big club, he's not sure if he'd be better off staying in North America and playing for the Comets, or using his out-clause to return to Sweden for another season.
“I don’t know really. That’s a future question. We’ll see if the AHL or Sweden is best for me in that case.”