Vancouver Canucks thoughts: Ryan Johnson’s comments, Manny Malhotra’s contract and the Ilya Safonov bet
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Vancouver Canucks have a large contingent of scouts and management in Buffalo, N.Y., this week for the NHL Scouting Combine.
The team’s new leadership triumvirate, meanwhile, is scattered across the globe. General manager Ryan Johnson was in Buffalo, but is now en route back to Vancouver to formally introduce head coach Manny Malhotra in a Thursday morning news conference.
The Canucks have a lot on their plate at the moment. There’s a critical draft getting closer, a front office staff to add to, trade talks and free agency to prepare for and a coaching staff to fill out.
So, as combine week opens in Western New York, let’s unpack some of the news around the Canucks.
The Manny Malhotra negotiations
There were moments last week where Vancouver’s always fated hiring of Malhotra appeared to the public to drag.
“I know perception was maybe that this was a long, drawn-out process, but from our standpoint it really wasn’t,” Johnson said Tuesday. “At the same time, I’m navigating draft and free agency and in-house decisions with finding support for myself, the impact of coaches, and how that might impact the Abbotsford staff. I wanted to go through this process and make sure I was clear with Manny. And that’s when he jumped into it, he jumped into it with both feet.”
Asked later on whether he could confirm the financial terms of Malhotra’s agreement, Johnson declined to comment.
CHEK TV’s Rick Dhaliwal has reported that Malhotra signed a three-year contract. To this point, The Athletic has been unable to confirm the precise dollar figure.
What I have heard about negotiations between Vancouver and Malhotra, however, is that Malhotra’s camp had pegged his former Toronto Maple Leafs colleague Spencer Carbery’s first contract with the Washington Capitals as a comparable. Carbery’s exact compensation was never released or reported, but he signed a four-year deal.
According to a league source, the Canucks upped their offer to Malhotra in terms of compensation late last week. It would stand to reason that once Vancouver came up a bit on the money, the two sides were able to reach a compromise on the term.
Three big-picture reactions to Ryan Johnson’s commentary this week
The Athletic took part in the video briefing that Johnson held this week, as he walked the local media through the team’s decision to hire Malhotra.
It was a meaty session, and three big-picture takeaways leapt off the screen as Johnson discussed the organization’s process in hiring Malhotra and touched on a variety of offseason hot-button topics across over 30 minutes.
Let’s unpack them one by one.
1. Vancouver will go to bat for Elias Pettersson now, but isn’t necessarily committed to him
Johnson, of course, was asked about having a preliminary conversation with struggling Canucks centre and significant local flashpoint Elias Pettersson. The incoming Vancouver general manager didn’t mince words or hide that he’d taken the opportunity to speak directly to Pettersson.
The message, at least in terms of what Johnson communicated to the media, presented something of a fascinating dichotomy. On the one hand, it was probably the most supportive message the team has publicly communicated about Pettersson in years — and that includes Daniel and Henrik Sedin’s commentary about Pettersson’s preparation, comments which echoed some of the club’s criticism of its fading star centre during the Jim Rutherford era — on the other, the message also felt decidedly noncommittal about the organization’s plans for Pettersson.
“I think the biggest thing, whatever happens here moving forward,” Johnson said, offering up a significant qualifier that was very easy to read into, “is I just wanted him to know that I am very comfortable with him just being himself. I told him, whatever communication, I’m not going to ask him or put an expectation on him to be something other than what he is, and that’s OK. And that he and I can work together in any capacity. We may ask things of him, but we’re not going to ask him to do anything outside of (who he really feels he is at the core).”
Listening to Johnson speak, I thought the most apt takeaway was also the most common-sense one. The Canucks will likely explore their options in moving Pettersson’s contract this summer, but given the full freight of the deal, Pettersson’s control over the situation with a full no-move clause and where his value is likely to be pegged at currently, the most probable outcome is that Pettersson will remain with Vancouver.
Given that likelihood, Johnson wanted him to understand that the club has his back. That he should feel comfortable being himself, and that the Canucks intend to support him, even as they intend to ask more of him, and fundamentally need more from him, given the massive contractual commitment the organization has made to him.
2. The Canucks certainly sound like they’re prepared to dismantle this roster to an even greater degree
There was a lot of commentary from Johnson this week that seemed to indicate that the organization has accepted that there will be real pain in the months and years that lie ahead as the Canucks go through this rebuild.
“We all, having the opportunity to do this, we wanted to do it with the right people,” Johnson said. “We know how tough this is going to be; there’s going to be some tough days.
“(People think that) because there’s a connection between Daniel and Henrik, myself and Manny, that it’s like a bunch of buddies getting together, but no, this is more of a mission. This is an opportunity to build a franchise, do it the right way and get it sustainable.”
Later on in his availability, Johnson touched on what the club would be looking for in assistant coaches. In listing the critical questions that he’d ask himself as they went about filling out Malhotra’s staff, Johnson dwelled on the concept of patience and the reality that during a rebuild, the interests of an assistant coach and the organization itself can end up in partial conflict.
“Are they going to be on board with the rest of us, who are very connected, and are they going to have the patience for how long this is going to be?” Johnson asked, rhetorically.
That’s a very telling concept. Of course, any ambitious assistant, with their eyes on potentially moving further up the ladder and advancing in their career, is going to be preoccupied with their penalty killing percentage or power-play percentage. On being perceived to have done their job well at an elite level.
Focusing instead on player development, even at the expense of results, is going to be necessary in the years ahead for the Canucks. And that Johnson is already explicitly considering what that means, even at the level of an assistant coach, felt like a very serious tell about what direction this offseason is poised to head in.
To my ears, in any event, Johnson sounded very much like a general manager preparing to continue to dismantle this roster.
3. The Canucks are more than just considering Caleb Malhotra with the No. 3 pick
The case for selecting Caleb Malhotra with the third pick is a reasonably compelling one, and it’s one the Canucks are clearly considering.
If previous Canucks management wasn’t sold on the idea of pairing a father-son duo between the Canucks’ next head coach and their target with the third pick, Johnson has now made it crystal clear on two separate occasions that he’s not willing to make that sort of “sacrifice.”
“It’s a great question, and I’m going to answer it honestly,” Johnson began, on the topic of selecting Caleb with the third pick after hiring Manny to serve as Vancouver’s bench boss. “In the initial discussion with Manny, on this position, it was very clear that each component, hiring and drafting, that none would impact the other.
“I had to be honest and clear with Manny, that I want him as the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, (but) the Vancouver Canucks also sit in a position where his son is a possible (consideration) with where he sits and how the evaluating has gone on with our group. It’s a possibility, what percent I can’t tell you, that the Canucks select Caleb.
“I wanted to make sure we weren’t sitting there June 20, and Manny was saying, ‘I wish I’d really known that there was more clarity and that this was a scenario’ … I wanted to make sure he had time to talk with his wife and his family, understanding that this would be a possible scenario, and that there was no hesitation on him (in factoring that into) his decision.
“We’ll make our decision based on who the best player available is when we pick, and there isn’t going to be an outside influence changing who that might be.”
There’s a lot of chatter around the combine that the Canucks are very high on the big Brantford Bulldogs pivot, whose draft-year breakout season has been one to behold. Johnson’s commentary on the matter certainly won’t do anything to turn down the temperature on that industry-wide speculation.
The Ilya Safonov bet
Earlier this week, the Canucks signed hulking KHL centre Ilya Safonov to a one-year, two-way contract. The Athletic confirmed on Wednesday with a league source that the deal includes a European out clause.
Safonov, 25, was originally a sixth-round pick of the Chicago Blackhawks and was acquired by the Canucks last summer for future considerations. This season for Ak Bars Kazan, Safonov managed 16 goals and 33 points in 67 games, a relatively pedestrian point total, but one that gives him a high enough points baseline to potentially play some bottom-six minutes in the NHL.
Generally speaking, we don’t often see NHL players spend their age-24 campaign in the KHL — although it does happen, with Alexander Radulov and Ilya Mikheyev being among the most notable examples. When those players have typically spent their age-24 season in the KHL and gone on to become impact players at the top level of North American professional hockey, they’ve generally scored at a higher rate than what Safonov managed.
In Safonov, however, the Canucks aren’t necessarily betting that they’re getting a future impact player. This is a lottery ticket that the club acquired without acquisition cost, and that they haven’t even committed a guaranteed NHL salary to. If Safonov doesn’t make the team out of training camp, he may return to the KHL, or at the very least, he’ll have the right to make the decision either way at that point as a result of his out clause.
What the club is betting on in inking Safonov is that he’s a big centre who can potentially eat some minutes and play physical hockey in a bottom-six role. At 6-foot-5, and with solid hands at the net front, that’s a reasonable bet.
There are a variety of examples of players with similar age-24 KHL scoring profiles — Leo Komarov, Juho Lammikko and Maxim Tsyplakov chief among them — who have ventured over to the NHL at 25 and have been solidly productive, or even very good, as bottom-six role players at that age. Safonov fits into that mold.
Safonov plans to come to Vancouver in early August. His English language skills are somewhat limited, so the club will have to prepare to make sure that he’s able to benefit from the instructional environment that new management is seeking to build.
If he’s able to be a big third- or fourth-line centre in this lineup, then that’s found money. If not, then at least the price was right for Vancouver to roll the dice.