We've reached an early lull in the offseason, where the most exciting news around the Canucks is the introduction of a new set of hats, called the Player Design Series.
After a stop-off in Minnesota to spend some out-of-the-bubble vacation time with Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson has made it back to Sweden for the first time in about a year. In addition to the scenic photos that he regularly posts on his Instagram Stories, he has also been teasing his EP40 hat.
Given how much he talks about his love for fashion, it's not surprising that he has seized the opportunity to take a hands-on approach.
The Canucks' Twitter feed also has video of Thatcher Demko going through his design process.
I like Demko's Outkast
Stankonia t-shirt. Crazy to think that he was not quite five years old when that album came out late in 2000.
There's a third design in the set, also, from Quinn Hughes. He has pretty much gone off the grid since the season ended, but his design video dropped on Sunday morning.
I find it interesting that Demko is included in this project along with Pettersson and Hughes. I think it speaks to the organization's investment in all three as the most important players in their young core going forward. Even when Jacob Markstrom was playing his best hockey in his final two years with the Canucks, I don't recall him being showcased in promotional undertakings like this. Do you?
Of course, Demko is the only one of the three who is already locked up for next season. The five-year contract extension for the 25-year-old was announced on April 8, while the club was in the midst of its Covid pause.
Meanwhile, Pettersson and Hughes are both due new deals this offseason. Coming out of their entry-level contracts, Hughes is in the 10.2(c) category, which means he can't be signed to an offer sheet. Pettersson can — although that's something I'd be more concerned about if we weren't dealing with such a tight economic setting throughout the NHL. As we saw last year with the Tampa Bay Lightning, it was clear that they would have been vulnerable if another club had been able to convince one of the club's RFAs to sign an offer sheet, but it still didn't happen — although I can also see why it's extra-tough to lure a player away from a Stanley Cup winner, no matter how much money you might be able to offer.
Pettersson's injury probably gives the Canucks a little extra negotiating leverage, too. Though the wrist issue he has dealt with this year is something that could have happened to anybody, I have seen and heard some people suggesting that Petey is now 'injury prone.' I think that narrative has been advanced by the same people who thought he was too small to succeed in the NHL when he first came over to North America as a 19-year-old.
The five-day discussion window before the opening of free agency has been eliminated in the new CBA. And it's just as well, because the free-agency period is set to begin on July 28 — just four days after the draft wraps up. That's also when players are free to sign offer sheets, if they choose to do so.
The August long weekend is usually a dead zone for hockey activity. This year, it's going to be chaos.
I did a search on
CapFriendly, sorted by points this season, to see which other players will be in the same positions as Pettersson and Hughes this summer.
On the defensive side, Cale Makar and Miro Heiskanen jump out. But they're both straight RFAs, which makes their negotiating positions a little stronger.
Up front, the biggest names are Andrei Svechnikov from Carolina and Brady Tkachuk from Ottawa. Both were drafted a year after Pettersson and jumped straight into the NHL. But while Petey leads his own 2017 draft class with 153 points in 165 games, these two are in a somewhat similar ballpark. Svechnikov has 140 points in 205 games with the Hurricanes, and Tkachuk has 125 in 198 games with the Senators.
The only other player with over 100 points in Pettersson's draft class is Nico Hischier, who signed a seven-year extension with New Jersey before the pandemic, with a cap hit of $7.25 million a year.
And while I'm feeling like Brady could well be on his way to proving that he's the better of the Tkachuk brothers, perhaps Matthew's current contract is also instructive — a three-year bridge deal signed during training camp of the 2019-20 season, with a $7 million cap hit.
Since the Tkachuk and the Hughes families are so close, I was thinking they might also share representation, but they don't. As has been well documented, Quinn and now Petey are repped by Pat Brisson at CAA. The agent for Brady and Matthew is Craig Oster at Newport Sports.
Brisson also reps two other players from the Canucks' 2020-21 squad. Marc Michaelis is now a restricted free agent with arbitration rights after getting into 15 games with the Canucks this season — where he was pointless and a minus-five. And Justin Bailey is now a Group 6 unrestricted free agent after getting into three games this season — and also going pointless — before suffering the injury that required season-ending shoulder surgery.
Another interesting name on the Brisson roster: Seth Jones, who is probably going to be traded after indicating that he won't be re-signing with Columbus when his contract expires at the end of this season.
I don't think the Canucks have the assets or the cap space to get into the Jones sweepstakes — although I wrote about how I like the possible fit
in Philadelphia in my alternate identity as a Flyers writer. It's another interesting storyline to watch in the lead-up to the expansion draft, the draft and free agency.
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