Same Day Analysis: Johnson, Canucks, Landeskog and Yandle
Tampa Bay continues to get its salary cap issues resolved and Chicago accelerates the rebuild. What are the Canucks doing? Avs and Landeskog are meant for each other. Yandle keeps chugging along
With free agent season just moments away, time to get up-to-speed with some of the NHL’s bigger transactions. Will check in again at the end of the day after all the dust settles:
LIGHTNING AND BLACKHAWKS HELP EACH OTHER
Nice to see the Tampa Bay Lightning are getting cap compliant in the dead of summer when no games are being played, as opposed to in the middle of the playoffs when the most important games of the season are being played.
The Lightning, of course, did nothing wrong and played everything by the book. So, if you’re angry, get mad at the book, not the Lightning. Oh yes, and all those Canadiens fans during the Stanley Cup final who accused the Lightning of cheating, perhaps you’re not aware that your team has won about half of its Stanley Cups in large part due to the fact that it had unfettered access to the best players in the world for about 50 years. The NHL allowed that to happen, too.
Back to the Lightning, genius GM Julien BriseBois continued to get the Lightning out of salary cap hell when he traded Tyler Johnson and his $5 million cap hit for the next three seasons to the Chicago Blackhawks. All it cost the Lightning was a second-round pick in 2023 and Brent Seabrook’s dead-money contract. Seabrook carries a $6.9 million cap hit for the next three years, but that contract will stay on the long-term injured list for the rest of his career. So the Lightning will be able to replace him with a player or players whose salaries add up to the amount. And the Lightning game the system again. Remember, they didn’t make the rules.
There are a couple of interesting points here. First is, will the Lightning be able to contend for a third straight Stanley Cup next season? Think about it. When Blake Coleman signs (likely somewhere else) today, the Lightning will have lost their entire third line, plus their fourth-line center and someone who could move up and down the lineup as needed. You may think those types of players are interchangeable, and from a hockey standpoint, BriseBois will likely find a creative way to replace them.
But all the guys the Lightning lost were culture guys. They were missing an element before they went out and got Coleman and Barclay Goodrow in 2020 and they seemed unable to win without it. Yanni Gourde and Johnson were Jon Cooper favorites, players who were both undrafted and plucked from free agency and developed into very good NHL players by the organization. That’s not easy to replace.
The second is, the Blackhawks appear to be accelerating the rebuild with no guarantees it will actually work. They’ve parted with both Duncan Keith and Seabrook and have added the Jones brothers Seth and Caleb, Johnson, Marc-Andre Fleury (if he decides to report) and Jake McCabe. If Jonathan Toews returns healthy next season, the Blackhawks should be a playoff team.
VANCOUVER FOLLIES
So if I have this straight, last summer the Vancouver Canucks traded a third-round pick in 2022 to get defenseman Nate Schmidt, signed Braden Holtby to a two-year deal with a $4.3 million annual cap hit and signed Jake Virtanen to a two-year extension.
This summer, they traded Schmidt, again for a third-round pick in 2022, and bought out both Holtby and Virtanen. If anyone out there has any clue what the heck Canucks GM Jim Benning is doing, and more importantly what his short- and long-term visions are for this team, please let me know.
LANDESKOG LANDS AT HOME
Despite an enormous amount of saber rattling on both sides, Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog signed an eight-year extension to stay in Denver with a team-friendly average annual salary of $7 million.
No surprise there. Unless this was about only money, Landeskog was always going to stay with the Avalanche. Because both of them need each other. If Landeskog truly wants to win a Stanley Cup, and everything he has done to this point in his career indicates that, there was no team out there that gave him as good a chance to do that as the one for which he currently plays. That doesn’t mean the Avalanche will definitely win one, but they’re set up to be serious contenders for the foreseeable future and in today’s NHL, that’s all you can ask.
The Avalanche meanwhile, know they have a finite time to win a Stanley Cup. And they’re in the middle of it. There is no possible way they get any closer to that goal if they allow Landeskog to leave, regardless of his replacement.
Good on both sides for realizing the fit was there.
IRONMAN TO PHILADELPHIA
On the night of Jan. 18, the Philadelphia Flyers play a home game against the Detroit Red Wings. And assuming defenseman Keith Yandle plays in every Flyers’ game to that point in the season, that will be the night he becomes the NHL’s all-time ironman by playing in his 965th consecutive game. If he stays healthy all season, he’ll become the first player in league history to play 1,000 consecutive games when he steps on the ice for the Flyers’ April 21 road game against the Montreal Canadiens.
But when it comes to Yandle and his one-year deal with the Flyers, it’s not just about the games. It’s about continuing to contribute. With the Flyers, it will likely be as a bottom-pair defenseman, but for $900,000, there is no risk on the Flyers’ part. Yandle can still contribute offensively and will ensure that the likes of top prospect Cam York don’t feel as though they’re being handed NHL employment. The question is, did the Flyers sign Yandle with the guarantee that they’d play him in every game if he’s healthy?
With the off-season additions of Ryan Ellis and Rasmus Ristolainen, the Flyers’ blueline is beginning to take a new shape and it’s actually looking pretty solid.
I think Jim Benning is in a win-now mode. Their offseason in 2020 seemed to revolve around players they lost (Jacob Markstrom, Chris Tanev being the big ones), and also being dependent on the core of Petterssonn, Hughes (whose contract needs to be extended), J.T. Miller, and maybe Thatcher Demko. But at the end of the day, people will look back at them as the team that signed Holtby and Virtanen instead of Tyler Toffoli. Great piece as always.
Short term plan, Jim has swung for the fences. Its next two seasons for the Canucks or pretty much bust. Long term plan, there isn't one (next GM's problem). Not a fan of it but it's pretty ballsy