Lots of bits and pieces to report today, so let's get to it!
First off, if you missed it, the Canucks and Reid Boucher have avoided their August 1 arbitration date after settling on a new one-year contract. It's a one-way deal that'll pay him $687,500—exactly the same as what Michael Chaput received a couple of weeks ago. Chaput was the other Canucks player that filed for arbitration.
Boucher told Jake Jeffrey of Around the OHL that he "loved playing in front of the fan base" in a Canadian market like Vancouver.
Boucher, who turns 24 in September, finished last season with five goals and seven points in 27 games with the Canucks. He also had a goal and two assists during his 12 games with New Jersey and Nashville earlier in the year.
Willie Desjardins didn't seem to trust Boucher's defensive game last season, but he's one of the better natural shooters on the team.
The Canucks now have 14 forwards signed for next season, with Bo Horvat and Brendan Gaunce still to be inked to new deals. It'll be interesting to see what kind of value Travis Green places on Boucher's skillset in training camp—the first thing to watch will be whether he's assigned to the group that will travel to China for those two preseason games, presumably with Green at the helm.
Boucher isn't a social media guy, so I'm afraid I have no updates to share on his summer workout regimen or which hockey weddings he has been attending. Bummer.
The second big bit of news that came down on Tuesday was the announcement that we've been expecting for awhile—former Vancouver Canucks coach Willie Desjardins has been named coach of Team Canada for the 2017-2018 season, with Sean Burke as general manager.
Dave King will serve as one of Willie's assistants. Now 69, King was the longtime Team Canada bench boss in the days before NHL players were included at the Olympics, including at the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympics. He was brought back into the Hockey Canada fold as an assistant during last spring's World Championship, where Burke served as assistant GM under Ron Hextall.
Burke served as a scout for the Montreal Canadiens organization last season but was also the GM for Canada's 2016 Deutschland Cup and Spengler Cup entries, so he has already done some solid legwork that'll help him when it comes to uncovering non-NHL players for this year's Olympic roster.
Another member of the Canucks organization, Scott Walker, has been named as one of Willie's assistants. Walker was drafted by the Canucks in 1993 and played 197 games here over four seasons before being claimed by Nashville in the 1998 expansion draft. He has been an assistant coach with Canda's world junior team on a couple of different occasions, and re-joined the Canucks organization as player development coach in 2015. Seems like he and Willie must have hit it off!
The pre-Olympic calender kicks off with two tournaments in Russia in August:
Plenty of ex-Canucks on those rosters!
Sochi Hockey Open (Aug. 6-9): Andrew Ebbett, Brandon McMillan, Mason Raymond, Linden Vey
Tournament of Nikolai Puchkov (Aug. 14-17): Andrew Gordon, Derek Roy, Cam Barker, Marc-Andre Gragnani.
"We're going to play these two events in August, hopefully find out a lot of things that we have. But we're going to have to also find out some of the things we don't have," said Sean Burke at the press conference on Tuesday. "Any player that's eligible, whether he's playing in North America on an AHL contract or in college, junior, we don't want to leave any stones unturned."
Before those Russian tournaments, we have the World Junior Summer Showcase on tap, which starts this Saturday.
The Canucks will have Jonah Gadjovich, Kole Lind and Michael DiPietro repping for Team Canada, as well as Elias Pettersson for Team Sweden.
Here's the rundown of the schedule:
If you're really committed to checking out the prospects for the 2018 World Junior tournament, the first three days of action are available via live stream through Hockey TV, which is a subscription-based platform.
TSN will be broadcasting the last three days of action, starting August 2—after Team USA and Team Canada make cuts to pare down their rosters from two squads to one.
As we heard previously, Olli Juolevi will not be attending for Finland.
Juolevi's agent also reiterated to Rick Dhaliwal that his client's goal this fall is to make the Canucks. If that doesn't happen, it sounds like returning to the London Knights for another year is out of the question.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»