It seems certain the Vancouver Canucks will go down to the wire Monday in making their final roster decisions.
As it stands on Saturday afternoon, following the demotion to AHL Abbotsford of checking forward Nils Aman and third-string goalie Nikita Tolopilo, at least three more players will have to be cu. In other words, final decisions remain on Max Sasson, Victor Mancini, Tom Willander, Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Braeden Cootes.
Those are the five players still in camp who don’t need to clear waivers to be reassigned to the minors. (Plus Elias Junior Pettersson, but it’s hard to imagine him not making the big club after a solid pre-season.)
Suddenly this roster has two things going for it: a pretty good top end and a very interesting group of youngsters taking up space below. And even if the veteran depth needs shoring up, there are still decisions to make with the kids. For years, this is what a variety of Canucks managers have wanted. Finally it’s here.
Even as well as Mancini has performed in this pre-season, the math for him is simple: assuming Pierre-Olivier Joseph is the team’s seventh defenceman to start the season, would Mancini really play over either Derek Forbort or Junior Pettersson? If not, it surely makes more sense to send him to Abbotsford where he would play a ton and would be ready for a call-up should another Canucks blueliner be injured.
Willander, on the other hand, needs time in the AHL before he’s NHL ready. That’s the main takeaway from training camp, where we saw good moments of athleticism but more often struggles with the pace of the pro game. And as great a character as Sasson is, he didn’t do anything in camp to say he’s a must-keep over the likes of Cootes.
Which leaves us with the fun conclusion: both Lekkerimäki and Cootes starting the season on the NHL roster. Lekkerimäki has clearly come in better prepared physically this season, and has shown spatial smarts gained out of last season’s up-and-down North American debut. The Canucks need depth scoring and their 2022 first-rounder could — nay, should — be a homegrown solution to that problem.
And then there’s Cootes, who played in four of the Canucks’ six pre-season games, tallying two goals and two assists. But more importantly than the counting stats, it’s how he played that matters: He made an impact every time he was on the ice. He’s only 18 and so still has plenty of physical maturing to do, but he’s already a strong skater and smart with his body positioning and angles. He looks set to be the first 18 year old to make the Canucks out of training camp since Petr Nedved in 1990.
Nerves? “No, not really,” he told me, smiling, on Friday.
The nerves were at the beginning, he said. Now it’s just learning something new every day.
He’s shown not just to the bosses, but to himself he can play. He knows there’s still lots to learn. But it’s clear that he’s ready for pro hockey. He’d be perfect for the AHL at this point, but the NHL-CHL agreement prevents healthy development of players like him, so he can’t go play in the minors Good thing he also looks ready to at least get a taste of the NHL.
This time it’s different
It’s stood out to me how quickly Arshdeep Bains’ spot on the team cemented into place, and how quietly that happened.
The Surrey kid — after Friday’s game he called 21-year-old Lekkerimäki a “kid,” but I quipped to him that isn’t he also still one at 24? — has just showed up for work every day, as he always has, and just gone about his business.
He skated with Filip Chytil and Conor Garland on Friday and didn’t look out of place. He’s more likely destined for a grinder’s role on this team, but that he’s just clearly in the lineup is a remarkable story for a guy who wasn’t drafted in junior and wasn’t drafted in the NHL.
Sounds like another guy from 20 years ago, doesn’t it? Bains just needs to bump his number up one digit.
Shame on FIFA
For the first time, FIFA is allowed uncapped scalping to take place on its official resale site. The Athletic reported Friday that ticket prices are by far the highest in history — and on top of this, FIFA is going to take $30 out of every $100 paid through its official re-sale service.
The rationale here, FIFA claims, is that even if they’d capped re-sale prices, people would have gone to other services to scalp their tickets … a funny thing to say in a world of digital tickets where you can securely control the transfer of tickets.
Bottom-line, this is pure money grab and yet another reminder of what happens when too much money gets consolidated in too few places — the body public loses.
And finally … Those Canuck Place patches the Canucks wore on their shoulders on Friday night? The red rim on them got me wondering if these were vintage items and I was able to confirm that, yes, the patches were decades old. If “you never know” isn’t a mantra for equipment managers the world over, it should be!