It's just the second day of the 2015 NHL offseason and already the news cycle has slowed to a trickle.
Let's start with news on a certain former member of the Canucks' coaching staff:
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins have been coached since 2010 by John Hynes, who just left the position to take over behind the New Jersey Devils' bench.
After retiring as a player in 2002, Sullivan spent one year in the AHL as coach of the Providence Bruins before moving up the parent club in Boston for two seasons on either side of the 2004-05 lockout.
Sullivan's last three jobs have been as an assistant to John Tortorella—here in Vancouver and, before that, with the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning. It's interesting to see that he may strike out on his own—and makes me wonder where Torts might fit into the equation. You might recall, earlier in the year we heard that the two of them were working to develop their own new advanced-stats metric.
Though I don't miss the havoc that Torts and Sully wreaked on our team, I sure do miss the drama that surrounded their hiring right about now!
Instead, let's take a look at Damien Cox's mock draft over at
Sportsnet.ca.
There's zero analysis for his selection of Jakub Zboril of the Saint John Sea Dogs at No. 23, but Cox does seem to be on board with the idea of the Canucks picking a defenseman.
Elite Prospects offers a tidy summary of Zboril's game, and suggests that the 6'2" Czech projects to a Keith Yandle type of defenseman.
Jakub Zboril is a smart, fleet-footed two-way defenseman that plays to his strengths in all three areas of the ice. While he doesn't aim to impress, he does all of the little things right and plays with an edge...All-in-all, a complete defenseman that is relied upon to offset any oncoming attacks, as well as create chances in the opposing end. (Curtis Joe, EP 2015)
Last season was Zboril's first in North America after coming over from the Czech Republic. His 33 points in just 44 games were enough to rank him third among Saint John defensemen in scoring and—this is interesting—included a team-leading 10 power-play goals.
Zboril was named to the QMJHL's All-Rookie team last season, despite missing eight weeks with a mid-season knee injury that he suffered in January.
Most scouts are projecting Zboril as an early-20s pick. TSN's
Bob McKenzie ranks Zboril all the way up at 14th, likening him to a Niklas Hjalmarsson, while
Craig Button ranks him 26th. Though he'd be several years away from helping the Canucks, he seems like quite a good fit for the team's current needs if Jim Benning decides to draft a defenseman in the first round.
Buyout Window Opens Tonight
One other player personnel note to wrap up today. The NHL's annual buyout window opens tonight, 48 hours after the Stanley Cup was awarded:
The two-year window for get-out-of-jail-free compliance buyouts after the last lockout has now closed, so any players that are bought out now will still impact a team's salary cap going forward.
The name that's been bandied around that's of greatest interest to Canucks fans is former Vancouver first-round pick Cody Hodgson of the Buffalo Sabres.
For general manager Tim Murray to publicly muse on the idea of a buyout, one would think that Hodgson's relationship with the Sabres is now irreparably damaged, just as it was before he was dealt away from Vancouver.
And yes—skating and conditioning continue to be Hodgson's two biggest hurdles.
The Sportsnet article gave me pause when it referred to Claude Lemieux as Hodgson's agent. I distinctly remember Ritch Winter being the counterpoint to Mike Gillis in the war of words after Hodgson was traded out of Vancouver in 2012.
With a little digging, I found
this piece from Terrance Gavan of The Hockey Writers from the summer of 2011—while Hodgson was still with Vancouver—talking about his conditioning work with both Gary Roberts and with Lemieux as a "personal coach."
Winter and Lemieux are both listed as employees of 4Sports Hockey on
this website. I don't know if Lemieux has been coaching Hodgson every summer since 2011, but his client is now thisclose to playing his way out of the NHL.
At 25, Hodgson has four years and $17 million left on his current contract, according to
General Fanager. Because he's under 26, Hodgson's buyout would only count for one-third of the contract's value, spread over twice the length of the contract, according to this FAQ page from (the sorely-missed)
CapGeek.
In Hodgson's case, that'd be a $5.67 million total cost, spread over eight years—about $708,000 a year against Buffalo's salary cap. Reasonably small potatoes.
The age cutoff helps to explain why the Sabres would consider making a move on Hodgson now. He'll turn 26 in February, at which point the buyout would go up to two-thirds of the value of the contract. These next two weeks will be Murray's only opportunity to cut ties with Hodgson at his current discounted rate, so it probably will be "Bye-bye, Buffalo" for Cody.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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