Let's start today with some followup on the Olympic hockey schedule.
I want to thank @scorethepuck for reaching out on Twitter to let me know that the hockey schedule as it currently appears on
Olympics.com is incomplete, on both the men's and women's sides.
Only the elimination games have been slotted in so far. But the
IIHF website does say that the tournament format will be the same as it has been in the last three Olympics.
The 2022 Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament will be played according to the same format used in PyeongChang 2018, Sochi 2014 and Vancouver 2010 with three groups of four teams each. The best four teams from an overall 12-team ranking – the group winners and the second-ranked team with the best record – will advance to the quarter-finals while the other teams will play a qualification playoff game.
It doesn't explicitly state that there will be a three-team round-robin in the Group Stage, but I guess it's implied when they mention the "group winners."
I also found another site called
2022BeijingOlympics.com. It seems to be primarily intended for fans to book travel, but it does have a more complete hockey schedule. That shows the women's preliminary-round games getting underway on Feb. 3 and the men starting on Feb. 9.
That's still enough time to get everybody over to China after All-Star Weekend in Vegas on Feb. 4-5, although it doesn't leave much of a window for quarantining and practice. Perhaps the schedule can still be structured so the countries with NHL players on their rosters get an extra day or two before their first games? And perhaps that's part of the reason why more schedule details haven't been relased yet?
Bottom line for now — I'm breathing easier about the idea that the top teams will get to play more than three or four games if they advance into the medal round. And I think the math still works, that players will be able to do both All-Star and the Olympics, if all the other variables align.
As far as those variables, and how the NHL schedule could be impacted if Olympic participation doesn't happen, it'll be complicated, according to
this article from Greg Wyshynski at ESPN. For now, some NHL teams are proceeding cautiously with single-game ticket sales, not sure if dates are truly locked in. It's suggested in the article that a final decision will need to be made, one way or the other, by the end of August. But one NHL team executive acknowledged to Wyshynski that expectations have changed in our post-Covid world:
"If this were three years ago, we'd all be rightfully crying about it. But with all the cancellations and delays we've all suffered through over the last 18 months, we're not that upset about it.
"If you have to change, you change."
After I got a pretty positive impression of the Canucks' 2021-22 schedule when I analyzed it in the last blog, wouldn't it be just their luck that it gets completely reconfigured and they end up getting the short end of the stick again??
One place where the Canucks did do well this week is with Olli Juolevi's new contract.
The team announced on Tuesday that the 23-year-old restricted free agent has inked a new one-year deal with a cap hit at the league minimum of $750,000. Certainly, it's not where he'd like to be, five years after being drafted. But the low cap hit does offer him a competitive advantage if the Canucks find themselves tight to the cap during the season. He's a cheaper option than Jack Rathbone, at $925,000, and even than Brad Hunt at $800,000. Hunt is a lefty who tends to play on the right side, though, so they may not be competing for the same lineup spot.
Also, while the rookie Rathbone can easily be stashed in Abbotsford, Juolevi is also no longer waiver exempt.
That being said, Travis Green generally finds a way to ice his best possible lineup. Rathbone will get a good opportunity to try to outplay Juolevi at training camp and during preseason games, so this is shaping up to be a real roster battle.
On the not-so-good front, there's still no news on deals for the Canucks' remaining unsigned players, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes and Jason Dickinson.
Wednesday was supposed to be the first day for this summer's arbitration hearings, but all three players scheduled for Day 1 reached agreements with their teams beforehand.
In fact,
all players scheduled up to August 16th have settled as of Wednesday morning. The next names to watch are Kevin Fiala with Minnesota, a team-elected case that's scheduled for Aug. 17, and Juuse Saros of the Nashville Predators on Aug. 18.
Dickinson's up right after that, on Friday, August 20.
Meanwhile, there's nothing new to report on progress on the Pettersson and Hughes contracts.
Twitter's in a bit of a tizzy on Wednesday thanks to these Petey quotes to a Swedish reporter.
It's not exactly "I'm going to sign an offer sheet" or "I'm going to play in the KHL," but I think it is the first whisper we've heard that Pettersson would, at some point down the road, consider playing somewhere else.
With the way salaries for young defensemen have exploded this summer, I've been more concerned that Hughes' escalating market value is what has held up the negotiations, since the pair's reps at CAA have said that they're looking to do twin deals like they've done in the past with Crosby and Malkin in Pittsburgh and with Kane and Toews in Chicago.
Out of their entry-level deals, all four of those players signed five-year deals before going long on their third contracts. The second deals for Kane and Toews were for $6.3 million, signed in December of 2009 before the 2010-11 season. Crosby and Malkin's were both $8.7 million, with Crosby signing his extension a year before the 2008-09 season and Malkin before the 2009-10 season.
The salary cap was a lot lower then, and those deals were all signed before those players won any Stanley Cups.
CapFriendly is showing the Canucks with $13.3 million in cap space, with 23 players on the roster. So about $3 million in room will be created when Dickinson, Petey and Hughes are slotted in instead, and they've got Micheal Ferland's $3.5 million in LTIR cap space to play with as well.
So, they can squeeze out close to $20 million in room for the three players if they use every penny of available space. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out.
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