The Vancouver Canucks enter a crucial offseason with new management, an uncertain direction and a ton of needs — both on and off of the ice.
To this point in the offseason, we’ve been primarily focused on how Vancouver could carve out cap space and high-profile extensions for star forwards and the draft, but we’re now only a month away from Free Agent Frenzy Day. July 13 is just around the corner, which shines something of a spotlight on what the team needs to add to their lineup, with what limited cap space that’s available to them.
This week, The Athletic’s Vancouver bureau is going to go shopping for incoming president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford with a series that will make some suggestions on how Vancouver could address their needs in a variety of obvious areas — more speed, more depth, another top-four defenseman. First up: more toughness, pugnacity, or “sandpaper” as Rutherford put it during an appearance on the DFO Rundown podcast in mid-May.
“We don’t have enough sandpaper,” Rutherford said. “It’s a different game in the West. We have to get some guys — not a lot of guys — but a few guys that are a little bit heavier, to play with some sandpaper.”
We all know that heaviness matters a ton in hockey and anyone that watched the Canucks play last season knows that Luke Schenn could use a hand in the alleys, from someone other than Kyle Burroughs. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that for heaviness to really matter it must be tethered to a high baseline level of skill.
It’s great to have Ryan Reaves on your team, and Rutherford once traded a first-round pick for the New York Rangers heavyweight, but the value of Reaves’ toughness is diminished if he’s scratched from the lineup when the chips are down — as Reaves was during Games 5 and 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.
Additionally, teams have to be very careful about spending assets solely for the purpose of adding heaviness and toughness to the lineup. It’s vital to have players capable of being effective and bringing a rough and tumble style, but it should be part of the puzzle. It shouldn’t swamp all other considerations, lest you find yourself dealing Pavel Buchnevich for Samuel Blais and a second-round pick.
We’ve settled on a list of 10 free-agent forwards for Vancouver’s consideration this offseason. These are players that the club will be able to acquire for zero acquisition cost on July 13 — provided they don’t agree to contract extensions with their current clubs beforehand — save for a contract slot. With the extinction of the one-dimensional heavyweight, they’re all players that can help out in other areas too.
With that preamble concluded, let’s go “sandpaper” shopping.
If you ever Google search for a Swiss Army knife, you might just see Andrew Copp’s name pop up. He’s one of the few pending UFAs that marries legitimate top half of the lineup value with a heavy, gritty style.
Copp initially made a name for himself as an excellent defensive player around 2017-18 on Winnipeg’s checking line with Adam Lowry and Brandon Tanev. That line was tenacious, physical and impeccable defensively, routinely used by Paul Maurice to shut down top offensive players.
In the last few years, Copp’s evolved into a middle-six force that can legitimately drive a line and produce consistent offence, scoring at a 48-point pace over the last two years.
Copp can play literally any role, in any spot of your lineup. He’s just as effective as a beast, two-way third-line centre as he is playing as a second-line scorer on the wing. He proved the latter down the stretch with the Rangers as he notched 32 points in 36 games between the regular season and playoffs on a line with Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome. He’s above average in the faceoff dot and excellent on the penalty kill too.
The 27-year-old is perfectly suited to be a contending team’s high-end third-line centre or a complementary top-six winger. For Vancouver, he’d be an ideal fit literally anywhere on the second or third line, especially if the club decides to monetize some of its other top-six players on the trade market to mine future assets.
Don’t expect Copp to be a wrecking ball. He’s not going to throw thunderous checks or regularly drop the gloves. But he’s a tenacious forechecker, plays a heavy style thanks to his 6-foot-1, well over 200 pounds frame and creates a lot of his offence by getting his nose dirty in front and fighting for chances.
Copp’s going to be one of the most fascinating players to keep an eye on for years to come after this free-agent class. There’s a real chance he’s a late bloomer and maybe his explosive run with the Rangers is a hint of the legitimate top-six value he can deliver. If that’s the case, he could end up providing strong value for his contract, especially since he’ll be one of the younger free agents of this class. On the other hand, there’s also a chance he’s peaked at the right time for a bidding war to emerge.
Valuation will be critical, as always, but Copp ticks a lot of boxes that the Canucks could use in a middle-six forward.
If you aren’t very familiar with Mason Marchment, we won’t blame you. The six-foot-four left-winger hadn’t played a full NHL season before this year and then randomly broke out with 18 goals and 47 points in 54 games for the Florida Panthers last season.
Marchment’s a powerful, assertive player who isn’t afraid to throw his weight around, in addition to owning a big shot. There are yellow flags to be wary of though.
For starters, it’s hard to know what exactly Marchment would look like away from the Florida Panthers. Florida has a knack for turning nearly every marginalized player into a stud and Marchment’s track record before this season — he never hit a point per game in the AHL, OHL or even the OJHL — has never hinted at top-six upside. He’s also fairly injury prone, skates average at best and spent large chunks of the season with Sam Reinhart and/or hotshot rookie Anton Lundell.
Marchment’s definitely something, it’s just hard to judge what exactly. There’s a flash-in-the-pan risk here which is dangerous considering the kind of price you could end up paying for his top-level production last season. Nevertheless, when you see a 26-year-old power forward producing at a near point-per-game clip, it’s definitely worth conducting some due diligence.
Hailing from the interior of British Columbia, Curtis Lazar’s career path has followed a well-trodden road. Over the course of his NHL career, Lazar has already played for four franchises. He went from a much-hyped first-round pick in Ottawa to a non-tendered player in Calgary, but he rebuilt his value in Buffalo and has now found his game as a pest, physical presence and quality defensive piece with the Boston Bruins.
Oftentimes the best bottom-six defensive-oriented players are the first-round picks that didn’t quite find a way to become big-time scorers in the NHL. Lazar fits that mould. And now he’s an unrestricted free agent.
On a relatively prescribed contract as an unrestricted free agent, Lazar, 27, would seem to be a very good fit in Vancouver as a defensively reliable, agitating element at the bottom end of the Canucks lineup. In Buffalo and in Boston, Lazar’s defensive impact has been spectacular over the past few years. While he’s done it in a fourth-line role, facing bottom-of-the-lineup competition, opponents find it very hard to both breakout and sustain possession when Lazar is out on the ice. He’s an increasingly reliable faceoff man to boot and was a regular contributor on a very good Bruins penalty kill.
In terms of overall toughness, Lazar isn’t a heavyweight or a fighter. He’s just involved and annoying and very effective as a forechecking presence, capable of disrupting the breakout as an F1, F2 or F3. That latter point explains why Lazar led all Bruins players in hits and led all Bruins regulars in hit rate across both the regular season and the playoffs. It’s also key from a Vancouver perspective in considering Lazar because the forecheck was absolutely essential to the club’s success under Bruce Boudreau.
Perhaps most impressively, Lazar finds himself in the mix constantly within games and does so without taking penalties. Living on the line without stepping over it isn’t an easy trick, and provides some sneaky value. For a player with Lazar’s hit rate to only have 18 penalty minutes across 77 regular-season and playoff games — while drawing more penalties than he took — is very impressive.
A natural centreman — and a right-handed centreman, which the Canucks are sorely lacking — Lazar could be a solid, downright sandpapery option for Vancouver’s consideration if they opt to move on from Jason Dickinson or are looking to bring in some competition for the fourth-line pivot spot that Juho Lammikko held down last season.
There’s a particular profile that we often like to look for in assessing bottom-six, defensive-oriented players like Johan Larsson. That’s the profile of a guy that’s played for putrid teams with sturdy defensive results despite being fed to the wolves matchup-wise.
This isn’t scientific necessarily, but we’ve found anecdotally that this profile can be suggestive of an under-the-radar player capable of providing real value in a situation where they’re more appropriately slotted, facing competition that’s more prescribed. A recent example of this line of thinking is David Kampf, and it’s partly why we ranked him so highly among non-tendered players to target last offseason.
This year, Larsson is the player that best fits that description. And we actually saw a short stint — 14 games and six playoff games with the Washington Capitals — in which this theory got a bit of a test run. After a deadline trade sent Larsson from Arizona to Washington, we got the chance to see Larsson play fourth-line minutes on a very good team (although the Capitals often used his line against top competition). And Larsson excelled, contributing eight points across 20 games for Washington, with stellar underlying numbers.
Larsson is — with due apologies to Kevin Rooney — the top bottom-six defensive-specialist centre on the market in free agency. He won’t be expensive, but he’s unlikely to be a bargain-bin option on July 13 — or later on in the summer — with how a lean unrestricted market for centremen is shaping up.
That might be too much for what Vancouver is looking for, however, and Larsson lacks the right-handed faceoff man that the Canucks roster is screaming out for. Depending on how the Canucks’ higher-profile items shake out ahead of the NHL Draft if the club is looking for a defensive-oriented pivot that could maybe do more than log minutes on the fourth line, Larsson is likely the best bet available.
We tried to tell everybody!
Last season Maxim Mamin returned to the NHL after several years in the KHL, and while he only appeared in 44 games across the regular season and the playoffs and wasn’t a regular for a Florida Panthers side with outrageous forward depth, he made his impact felt with seven goals and 14 points — several of the eye-popping variety.
To our eyes, Mamin’s feel for the offensive side of the game appeared to have improved overseas in the games he played and there could be more to give in that area. He’s also still a massive athlete, standing 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, and a plus skater with a very imposing frame.
The big Russian winger didn’t drop the gloves last season, but that’s absolutely in the tool kit, as is playing an imposing physical game — both when controlling the puck beneath the hashmarks and throwing hits.
There might be more potential in Mamin than we’ve seen so far. The burly winger is 27, but he’s only appeared in 73 NHL games to this point in his career. Without question, there’s a ton of raw talent here, if an organization is capable of unlocking it.
Mamin is an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career this summer and he would bring size, strength, skill and speed to Vancouver’s bottom six. At the right price, he should be high on Vancouver’s list.
If you could design an ideal fourth-line centreman from scratch, there’s a good chance the player would look a lot like Nico Sturm.
Sturm has tons of size and plays an energetic, physical style. He owns an intelligent, mature game away from the puck which drives strong defensive results. He’s a 52.2 percent career faceoff man and provides shorthanded value too. On and off the ice, he’s got an excellent reputation for his work ethic. He’s an above-average bottom-six play driver.
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There’s even a little bit of offensive pop in his game as he picked up 11 goals and 17 points in 50 games in 2020-21 for the Wild. Speaking of Minnesota, Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau has some familiarity with Sturm. Sturm wasn’t a regular under Boudreau as he was mostly learning the professional ropes in the AHL after being signed on the heels of a Hobey Baker finalist season, but he did get a handful of games. Sturm also left a fantastic impression on Boudreau at his first development camp.
The 6-foot-3 German isn’t right-handed so he’s not quite a perfect fit for the Canucks but he’s still a high-end fourth-line pivot worth considering.
Tyler Motte showed Canucks fans that you don’t need to be the tallest player to make a meaningful physical impact. Colin Blackwell is wired in a similar way — he’s under six feet but built like a fire hydrant.
Blackwell is an effective bottom-six winger who can provide low-end third-line value or fit in as a high-end fourth-liner. He’s reliable at both ends of the ice, provided consistent secondary scoring at even strength before his trade to the Leafs and can platoon on the penalty kill.
Blackwell’s had to scratch and claw every step of the way to reach the NHL as a former seventh-round pick and it shows in the scrappy way he plays. He routinely gets under the skin of opponents and former teammates describe him as “a little wrecking ball.”
What’s appealing about him from the Canucks’ standpoint is his modest offensive upside. This is where he distinguishes himself from most run-of-the-mill fourth-liners. When you lose three or forwards to injury like Vancouver almost always does toward the end of the season, you can feel confident about him holding down a third-line role. Blackwell chipped in with eight goals and 17 points in 39 games with the Kraken prior to being traded and had 12 goals and 22 points in 47 games for the Rangers the year before. Even when you factor in his cold stretch with the Leafs, he’s scored 22 goals in 105 games over the last two seasons, a 17-goal pace over 82 games.
Blackwell has played less than 150 career NHL games so he doesn’t have an extensive track record or playoff reputation that would drive up his price — he should pretty inexpensive.
While many players on this list provide size and a heavy brand of hockey, none of them are as tough and scary as Deslauriers. One of the rare enforcers still left in the league, Deslauriers is one of the NHL’s most imposing fighters. He doesn’t hit to disrupt on the forecheck, he hits to punish and he’s ready to answer the bell anytime, anywhere. Everybody on your team stands a little taller when you know Deslauriers is in the lineup.
Trevor Zegras raved about Deslauriers’ impact on the Ducks locker room to colleague Michael Russo when the heavyweight was traded to Minnesota at the deadline.
“I could talk all day about this guy, man,” said Zegras. “I mean, people obviously see the way he plays on the ice: big, strong, heavy guy, obviously likes to fight. But he’s just one of the best teammates I’ve ever had. I mean, he was probably the fan favourite in our locker room all year.”
Deslauriers’ impact between the whistles is a bit more limited though. He can take a regular shift and absorb some secondary PK minutes but don’t expect any offence or for the needle to be moved in any other way.
Still, if the Canucks are looking for a tough customer to stick up for teammates and help off the ice, it’s hard to do much better on a fourth line than Deslauriers.
Zach Aston-Reese, 27, is a classic, speedy defensive winger.
He’s a genuinely stellar defensive winger. A safe, low-event option that keeps a sky-high hit rate, kills penalties reliably and makes a massive defensive impact on his team’s game at five-on-five. His details on in-zone coverage are top-notch and his disruptiveness as a forechecker are really good.
Aston-Reese isn’t remotely undersized and while he isn’t a burner and wouldn’t replace the verticality of Tyler Motte’s game, he’s a good skater, and plenty fast enough to punish mistakes on the counter. He can handle matchup minutes in a pinch and play up the lineup competently in a defensive-oriented role.
He’s also willing to drop the gloves and has fought five times in his NHL career, matching up willingly with bigger players like Tage Thompson and Anders Lee. He’s an “honest player” in precisely the way that old hockey bromide is intended.
There’s a history between Aston-Reese and Rutherford, who was the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins when the club signed Aston-Reese out of Northeastern. One wonders if a familiar face might register for new Canucks management, as they look to upgrade the depth, gumption and reliability of their bottom-six wing group this offseason.
Yes, we’ve come to a third Panthers forward on our list.
This isn’t just an exercise in classic Drance bias. The Panthers had an especially difficult lineup to crack last season, particularly for forwards.
The Presidents’ Trophy winners even relegated players like Frank Vatrano to fourth-line minutes last season, only for the undersized sniper to demonstrate how dangerous he can be in a larger role in the Stanley Cup playoffs with New York. We saw something similar — albeit at lower stakes — play out with Lammikko in Vancouver, a player bound for the American League in Florida quickly established himself as an everyday player (and occasional third-line centre) on arriving to play in a far thinner Canucks lineup.
Whether it’s Mamin, Marchment or a bounce-back candidate like Noel Acciari, there are several Panthers free agents that might be capable of more in elevated roles with another organization.
Acciari wasn’t a regular player for the Panthers this past season. The veteran 30-year-old pivot battled a myriad of upper-body injuries that kept him out of the lineup for the first four months (and change) of the campaign, and he was re-injured again in late March, missing another month thereafter. By playoff time, however, Acciari was a fixture on the Panthers’ fourth line, appearing in nine of Florida’s 10 playoff games.
During his tenure in Florida, Acciari became something of a cult hero with a 20-goal campaign during the pandemic-abbreviated 2019-20 season. He was also used rather dramatically as a specialist, starting an extreme number of his shifts in the defensive end of the rink. In fact, only 10 NHL forwards that logged at least 1500 five-on-five minutes over the past three seasons had a lower offensive zone start percentage than Acciari.
Despite his Marcus Krueger-style deployment in Florida, Acciari is, in fact, a bit underrated as an offensive contributor in a bottom-of-the-lineup role, even if he’s unlikely to ever recreate that 20-goal level of offensive output again.
What Acciari would really bring is a hardworking blue-collar presence and another right-handed faceoff option for the Canucks’ bottom six. There’s of course a significant level of injury risk considering that Acciari is 30-years-old, has earned his living in the NHL the hard way and missed so much of last season with injury — not to mention that he uncharacteristically struggled in certain facets of the game, including in the circle, after returning to the lineup.
There’s also a significant upside, particularly because Acciari can meaningfully score goals. Not to mention that because he missed so much time last season, Acciari is likely to be the most economical of the four natural centremen options we’ve included on this list. And if that’s the case, he would be well worth placing a low-risk wager on as a bounce-back candidate for next season.
(Top photo of Andrew Copp: Danny Wild / USA Today)
