It’s going to be a very interesting offseason for the Vancouver Canucks.
The team surpassed all reasonable expectations coming into the 2023-24 season, winning their division and thrilling fans on an entertaining playoff run that saw them as one of the final five teams left standing.
But there’s a lot of work to do.
The Canucks have nine pending unrestricted free agents, plus two restricted free agents in Filip Hronek and Arturs Silovs.
The UFA list includes four forwards (Elias Lindholm, Dakota Joshua, Teddy Blueger, Sam Lafferty), four defencemen (Nikita Zadorov, Tyler Myers, Ian Cole, Mark Friedman), and one goaltender (Casey DeSmith).
Lindholm, Joshua, and Zadorov look like they’ll be the most difficult to re-sign, given the money and term each one should be able to command on the open market. Hronek is due a big raise also.
Clearing cap space has been a goal of Canucks management since Jim Rutherford was hired two and a half years ago. The team doesn’t have as many regrettable contracts on the books as they used to, but there is one that stands out.
Ilya Mikheyev is signed for two more seasons, making $4.75 million annually. The contract is a liability, given the 29-year-old Russian just had a dreadful season.
Ilya Mikheyev is gonna want that one back 😫 pic.twitter.com/0sqhCprPoc
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) May 21, 2024
Mikheyev scored just one goal in the final 50 games of the regular season, and went without a point in 11 playoff games. The 6-foot-2 winger did tally 31 points in 78 regular season games, but those numbers appear to be inflated by playing much of the season on Elias Pettersson’s line.
Mikheyev wasn’t often relied upon to kill penalties, ranking seventh among Canucks forwards in shorthanded ice time per game during the playoffs.
He does do the little things, but it’s giving Loui Eriksson vibes.
To be fair to Mikheyev, he was recovering from a torn ACL suffered the previous season and appears to have lost a step.
Heading into this offseason, GM Patrik Allvin will need to decide if he thinks Mikheyev can bounce back or if the winger will merely be a shadow of his former self going forward.
He’ll also need to decide if it’s worth buying him out.
It’s not a straightforward decision, even if the Canucks decide that Mikheyev will never have the same kind of success he had with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
That’s because buyouts come at a cost.
The Canucks would save $3.6 million on the cap in 2024-25 by buying out Mikheyev and $2.6 million in 2025-26, according to CapFriendly. But instead of being rid of the Mikheyev money in two years, the Canucks would have to deal with $1.55 million of dead cap money in 2026-27 and again in 2027-28.
CapFriendly.com
Allvin bit the bullet last year and bought out Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s contract. But that was moving off a contract that Jim Benning brought into the organization. Mikheyev’s contract is one that Allvin signed off on.
But he also held onto Brock Boeser and Conor Garland, rather than dumping their salaries when their value was low, and was rewarded for it.
What’s the right call on Mikheyev?