The Vancouver Canucks are going to take a free-agency run at Carolina Hurricanes winger Jake Guentzel, and if they land him, they’ll have secured one of the plumb talents on the market.
They could also be weakening their team. They’ll have added a championship element but at the cost of a championship roster for the coming season.
Because signing Guentzel for more than $9 million per season means there’s less money to fill the other holes on the Canucks roster. It would get Elias Pettersson the winger he so desperately needs but at the cost of depth.
The Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli says the Canucks are trying to fit Guentzel, Filip Hronek, Nikita Zadorov, and Tyler Myers into their salary cap for next season. That would mean parting ways with free agents Elias Lindholm and Dakota Joshua and finding a taker (possibly at the cost of an asset) for Ilya Mikheyev’s contract.
On the surface, bringing back 5/6 of the defence corps from last season, while adding Guentzel, looks like a win.
But then you look at what that would do to the bottom six.
It likely makes Pius Suter the third-line centre (fair enough) and Nils Åman the fourth-line centre (he’ll need a “big summer”).
It would also sap cap space such that the bottom-six wingers could include a combination of Phil Di Giuseppe, Vasily Podkolzin, Arshdeep Bains, and Linus Karlsson.
Perhaps there’s enough cap space left over to add a minimum-salaried reinforcement or two to that group. The Canucks have done a superb job with pro scouting and finding players on the margins, so they’ll need to produce there again.
But the team would lack depth at centre-ice and the wing and would get away from the strong top-nine group that defined Rick Tocchet hockey in the first half of last season, when the Canucks’ third-line of Teddy Blueger, Conor Garland, and Joshua had success against other teams’ depth players.
You might look to the farm, but if Podkolzin, Bains, and Karlsson are all able to hang as NHL regulars, that would be a massive win in and of itself. More likely, one or two of those guys won’t cut it, further depleting Tocchet’s options, and guys like Max Sasson and Aatu Räty are no more than hope-bets at the moment.
Depth may not be a concern if at full health. But the Canucks got nearly perfect health last season from their top-seven scorers. They missed a combined five games.
What are the chances that’ll happen again?
Look, I agree that finding a winger for Pettersson and having that finishing punch off the flank is supremely important come next postseason.
But you’ve got to get there first, and it’s a long 82-game road when your organization has razor-thin depth.