We still don't know when the new NHL season will start, or what form it will take. But by all indications, Loui Eriksson will still be around when the puck is dropped.
On Sportsnet 650 earlier this week, Canucks general manager Jim Benning said what we've all assumed — that he has tried to trade Eriksson and his $6 million cap hit, but had no takers.
"We tried to get him a new team, a new opportunity, a fresh start. That didn't happen," Benning said, as transcribed by The Score.
"As of right now, Loui is under contract with us. When he plays he can still kill penalties for us, he's a good defensive player. We wanted him to score more when we signed him, that hasn't happened. But he's still part of our team, part of our group. He's an experienced guy."
Now 35, Eriksson has two years left on that six-year free-agent contract that he signed on July 1, 2016. One especially jarring note from The Score's article: a two-time 30-goal scorer, including the season right before he came to Vancouver, Eriksson has collected just 38 goals in total during his four years with the Canucks. Sigh.
Of course, there has been talk that maybe Eriksson could be assigned to the AHL this year. It's hard to speculate on whether that would happen, given that we have no idea how the AHL will operate this season. But financially, there's a disincentive for the Canucks to do so. As Harman Dayal of The Athletic points out, players in the minors are not subject to NHL escrow (currently 20 percent for this season) or this year's 10 percent salary deferral. So Eriksson would be owed significantly more real dollars if he plays for the Comets than he would if he plays for the Canucks — even if a demotion would open up a small amount of additional cap space for Vancouver.
Sportsnet hasn't been going out of its way to promote the classic games that it has been running in slots where live NHL hockey should be on its broadcast schedule right now, but there has been quite a bit of good Canucks content lately, and Eriksson has made appearances in some of those games.
The other day, I caught part of the Team North America vs. Team Sweden game from the 2016 World Cup of Hockey — the instant classic that ended with Nathan MacKinnon's overtime winner against Henrik Lundqvist and, I would say, was really the watershed moment for the beginning of the NHL's 'new era' where the league is ruled by the speed and skill of the young guys.
Of course, that tournament came just before Petey and Quinn's time. J.T. Miller was on that squad, but got into just one game. I can't recall whether or not he was injured.
Anyway, my primary point here is that Eriksson played with the Sedins in that tournament — as he had done in the past at World Championships. The Swedes made it to overtime of the semifinal before falling to feisty Team Europe. Loui had one goal in four games, Daniel had two assists and Henrik had three assists.
I was also surprised to see a 21-year-old rookie Loui pop up in a Dallas uniform during the broadcast of Game 1 of the Canucks' 2007 first-round series against the Stars — the quadruple-overtime classic that, I'd forgotten, was Roberto Luongo's first-ever NHL playoff game.
What a way to start. Luongo faced 76 shots that night in 137:53 of action — more than two full games' worth. Shots were 40-24 for Dallas after regulation, with the game tied 4-4. To their credit, the Canucks mostly held their own once they got into sudden death — the final shots were 76-56, so that would have been 36-32 through the nearly four complete periods of overtime. OT No. 2 was rough — Vancouver was outshot 12-3 in that frame.
Eriksson ended up getting into four games of that seven-game series, and picked up one assist — on Trevor Daley's goal that tied the score 2-2 in the second period of Game 1.
The Canucks' lineup for that game is fascinating. The high-minute man was 25-year-old sophomore Kevin Bieksa, who played 54:27 despite also taking four minor penalties during the course of the game — including one early in that second overtime that eventually led to a 5-on-3 for the Stars when Lukas Krajicek joined him in the box.
It was such a time of transition for the team — the first season for Alain Vigneault as well as Luongo and Willie Mitchell. The Sedins were coming into their own and Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows and Alex Edler were emerging, along with Bieksa, as the next wave. Jannik Hansen even made his NHL debut that year in the playoffs. Meanwhile, franchise stalwarts like Mattias Ohlund, Sami Salo, Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison and Trevor Linden were still doing plenty of heavy lifting, and the roster was also dotted with the 'Oh yeah' players like Jan Bulis, Rory Fitzpatrick and Jeff Cowan. I don't know if the facts bear this out, but I feel like this would have been around the time that we really started consuming sports on the internet in a meaningful way.
I do know that I started my Twitter account in 2008 and really started using it when I arrived in the press box in 2010 and saw how reporters were using the platform to tweet out real-time info and stay abreast of action around the league.
If you're jonesing for live games, you could do worse than to spend some time with this video. At more than three and a half hours, I think it's pretty complete, even if it is the U.S. game broadcast.
Other Canucks content I've caught on Sportsnet this week has included Game 5 of the 1994 Western Conference Final, where the Canucks knocked out the Leafs in double overtime: "Greg Adams! Greg Adams!"
Last night, it was Game 1 of the 2019-20 season — the 3-2 loss to the Oilers that opened the season in Edmonton and started Leon Draisaitl on his run to the Art Ross Trophy.
Even though that was barely a year ago, a couple of things really jumped out at me:
• Rogers Place looks a lot different with fans in the stands!
• I'd completely forgotten that the Oilers signed Markus Granlund as a UFA for $1.3 million on July 1, 2019. He was long gone by playoff time, put on waivers for the first time just after Christmas and shuttling back and forth between Edmonton and Bakersfield after that. In the end, he managed just three goals and one assist in 34 games in an Oilers uniform, but he's having a decent season this year in the KHL — second in scoring on UFA with 28 points in 26 games.
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