VANCOUVER — At the tail end of a lost season, the Vancouver Canucks managed a 2-1 comeback victory in overtime Monday night at Rogers Arena.
It was a game that didn’t matter much. And a game that Vancouver was expected to win given that it was facing the San Jose Sharks, who were winless in their previous nine.
The Sharks had surrendered an eye-popping 46 goals during their skid. Alexandar Georgiev, who owns an .872 save percentage on the season, the lowest mark among all NHL netminders who have started at least 40 games, stopped 35 Vancouver shots to stymie and frustrate the Canucks throughout the night.
And while it was a game that underlined the extent of Vancouver’s offensive power outage, exacerbated by the quality of the lineup, which has cost it so dearly this season, it was also a night when Quinn Hughes made history. With an assist on the overtime goal, Hughes tied the franchise record for all-time points among defensemen — matching Alex Edler, who took an awful lot longer to set the benchmark of 409. Edler played 925 games and Hughes is at 432.
Let’s get into observations and the latest on where things stand between the Canucks and Tom Willander in our three postgame takeaways.
The latest on Tom Willander
When we’re discussing unsigned draft picks playing at the NCAA level and the likelihood of them turning pro, there’s a tendency to engage in hand-wringing and undue dramatics.
This is the legacy of Aug. 15 unrestricted free agency and the route selected in the past by Kevin Hayes, Jimmy Vesey and Justin Schultz to spurn the teams that drafted them. In truth, however, such cases are the exception. They’re a rarity relative to the far longer list of Canucks and NHL prospects, the vast majority of whom end up signing with the teams that drafted them.
Let’s stripe out the drama and sense of impending doom from the discussion about Boston University defender Willander and the Canucks, who find themselves still locked into something of a slow-motion stalemate.
Tom Willander could have leverage if he returns to school but would gain valuable experience if he goes pro. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Imagn Images)
Willander, whose NCAA season ended last weekend, went home to Boston from St. Louis over the weekend and resumed his normal student life. He didn’t fly west to begin his professional career, even though just about everyone knows he’s ready to compete at the NHL level (or at least the AHL level).
Contract talks aren’t really progressing as hoped for by both sides, and at issue, primarily, are the Schedule A bonuses.
The Canucks have a relatively strict, somewhat below market value team structure that they use in signing prospects to entry-level contracts, and they’re unwilling to bend at this juncture. As an illustration of this, Jonathan Lekkerimäki was the 15th pick at the 2022 NHL Entry Draft and his ELC contains $475,000 worth of potential Schedule A bonuses per season — which comes in below 2021 15th pick Sebastian Cossa ($850,000 worth of potential Schedule A bonuses per season) and 2024 15th pick Michael Brandsegg-Nygard ($500,000 worth).
Both sides seem to largely agree that Willander is ready to begin his professional career. Both sides are largely in agreement that the contract can start with the 2025-26 campaign, with Willander then having the option to sign an amateur tryout and join the Abbotsford Canucks.
On the bonus structure, however, Willander’s camp is looking at the market price for comparable players — and the maximum bonuses that prospect Zeev Buium signed for with the Minnesota Wild over the weekend — and asking for a commensurate deal. Vancouver, however, is unwilling to bend on its internal ELC structure.
The deal could well get done this week, but as of Monday night, there was no agreement in place, contrary to reports. And to this point, negotiations appear to be slow-moving.
Willander is back in Boston. He’s demonstrating that he’s willing to remain at college, which would certainly enhance his leverage. The Canucks, meanwhile, are refusing to blink.
Meanwhile, in Abbotsford, Vancouver’s AHL affiliate is playoff bound and its season is winding down. The club will have a week of practices after the regular season and prior to the playoffs, so there’s still time for a deal to get done and for Willander to get acclimated to a new system and the realities of professional hockey.
If the deal gets done, Vancouver can get Willander up and running for the postseason push with Abbotsford. And give him an opportunity to gather additional experience and prepare to make the NHL club in the fall.
First, however, there needs to be movement. First, the two sides need to find a way to hash out a deal.
Notes on the debutants
The best thing about Kirill Kudryavtsev’s Canucks debut was that you barely noticed him. He looked steady and not remotely out of place holding down third-pair minutes in his first NHL game.
The undersized, responsible, 2022 seventh-round draft pick has been pressed into action by an accumulation of injuries on defense — with a fractured orbital bone sustained by Derek Forbort on Saturday forcing him into the lineup on an emergency recall basis — and he performed solidly. He wasn’t spectacular, he didn’t stand out, but he did his job ably. Vancouver outshot the Sharks in his minutes, and he was on the ice for Vancouver’s only five-on-five goal.
It was a promising, if unspectacular debut.
As for the first-time goaltender, Nikita Tolopilo, he surrendered only one goal against on an absolutely lethal Macklin Celebrini power-play wrist shot in the second period, but he was otherwise up to the task. Vancouver kept it pretty clean in front of him and dominated the puck throughout the game.
It’s just one game, of course, and we’ll see performance levels vary from young, untested players finding their legs at the NHL level. Linus Karlsson and Elias Pettersson, for example, have probably held up the best among the auditioning Vancouver players getting extended looks down the stretch. Victor Mancini, on the other hand, has seen his form fade significantly — a reality punctuated by the three minor penalties he took against San Jose.
Macklin Celebrini is the truth
Born in North Vancouver and the son of a former Vancouver Whitecaps player who was a longtime Canucks employee in player health and performance science, Celebrini is one of the best 18-year-old players I’ve ever seen play at the NHL level.
It wasn’t just his goal — his first scored in the building he grew up in — but it was the repeated sorties through the neutral zone. It was the collection of 50/50 puck battles won along the wall against much older professional players. It was the edge he showed throughout the contest, even getting into it at length with the likes of Conor Garland and Pius Suter.
There’s a maturity, strength and uncanny level of professionalism that’s already evident in his game. When you combine those factors with his absurd skill level, you have a bona fide elite young talent.
(Top photo of Macklin Celebrini chasing Quinn Hughes: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)