The questionable status of a couple injured Canucks could force the team into long-term injured reserve this season, something they really don’t want to do.
They want to be under the cap limit so they can use the cap savings later on to improve their roster.
The health status of each will determine whether the Canucks can start the season with some wiggle room left under the salary cap limit.
Suter, meanwhile, is day-to-day with some sort of upper-body injury.
NHL teams are required to submit their opening day rosters by next Monday at 2 p.m. PT. Suter sounds like he will be fit and ready to begin the season — he took a couple days off practice after getting banged up in Monday’s game in Edmonton. If Hirose hasn’t been cleared to play by the team’s doctors by then, he can’t be sent to the minors and will have to start the season on the NHL roster.
And if he’s on the NHL roster, he’s going to force the Canucks to go into LTIR.
Canucks GM Patrik Allvin isn’t putting together a $88-milllion roster, rather he’s working on putting together a $75-million budget to start the year.
Obviously, that’s not the roster plan Allvin drew up this summer. But here we are.
To get to a 21-man roster that is cap compliant, some moves have already been made, like accepting that Jonathan Lekkerimaki being waivers-exempt was more important than him being nearly ready for NHL action, or that popular and hard-working Phil Di Giuseppe would have to be risked on waivers — he did clear — and re-assigned to AHL Abbotsford.
Both young forwards are waivers-exempt, so sending them done presents no problems.
The Canucks would like to keep both, but both have enough utility in their differing games — Juulsen hard as a rock and somewhat adept as a penalty killer, Friedman known more for calm, steady play — that they might entice a team to grab them off waivers.
One will have to land on waivers to be sent to the AHL to start the season.
And there’s your 21-man roster, with about $90,000 to spare under the salary cap.
If Suter is hurt and can’t play next Wednesday, the Canucks still ice an 11-forward, seven-defenceman roster. But if Hirose remains in concussion protocol on Monday, meaning he can’t be sent back to the AHL, the Canucks will have to put a contract on LTIR, which allows them cap relief.
And oddly enough, they could start the season with more than 21 players on the active roster if they do have Poolman on LTIR. If they were to do that, they could keep Raty or Bains and not have to waive one of the aforementioned defencemen.
All this said, Allvin could yet zag. He’s not been shy about making eve-of-the-season trades: in 2022 he traded away Jason Dickinson and added Riley Stillman, while last year he picked up Sam Lafferty for a draft pick.
So conceivably he finds a way to do something like trade away Poolman’s contract. He’s not interested in paying to get rid of Poolman’s contract, but has his ever-evolving hierarchy of needs — in this case optimizing his cap space further — shifted that position?
Never boring, these Canucks.