Patrick Johnston: Elias Pettersson trade chatter, Brock Boeser and Kevin Lankinen need new contracts, are the Canucks at a crossroads?
They came into the season as obvious locks for the playoffs. As of Wednesday afternoon, before their faceoff in Washington against the Capitals, they are in a playoff position — but just barely.
And then there’s the coach, whose contract is up at the end of the year.
Where there was some kind of certainty, there really only seems to be questions.
Will winning make these questions go away? Some, maybe, but it’s hard not to think that most, especially the contract ones, will continue to linger.
• What’s going to happen with Pettersson and Miller? There has been plenty of noise on the hockey rumour hot-stove in recent weeks about both players, but given how the Canucks came into the season committed to both, believing they would be key players in a dream march to the Stanley Cup, it’s hard to fathom either actually being traded away, even if relations between the two are frosty.
But as I always say, “In hockey, you should never say never until it happens, and even then, wait a moment to make sure it’s real.”
• Demko appears recovered, but his recent bout of back spasms reminds you how fragile any team’s goaltending situation is, even before one has to rehabilitate an exceedingly rare injury. The Canucks have a great netminder in their fold — but going forward, is that necessarily Demko?
We ask this question because of the performance of Lankinen. He doesn’t appear to be able to carry a full-time starter’s load, but given the appropriate load, he’s a very solid option to have in a goalie tandem. And he’s clearly going to get a raise after this season.
But where?
• Boeser isn’t really that much of a surprise, because even if the Canucks were winning, he’d be a future question mark. He’s a winger. His contract is going to be solid. He is proving to finally be pretty consistently productive, and he’s become a quality two-way player.
Is he a toss-up to be retained? Or is Jonathan Lekkerimaki the heir apparent? Or is there a way to have both in the lineup?
This season hasn’t been easy for the veteran coach. He’s needed more from just about every one of his players at one time or another. His squad has faced injury after injury. It’s been a true coach’s test.
And so, yeah, if he rights the ship, not only is that good for the team, but it would be good for his resume too.
There’s a mutual option on his contract, The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun reported on Wednesday. That’s similar to the Bruce Boudreau situation, where the veteran coach could have been paid out at the end of his first half-season in charge. Instead, the Canucks elected to retain the coach for the following season, but ended up firing him anyway.
It’s hard to imagine Canucks management pulling the trigger on Tocchet next season if he were to be renewed. At the same time, it is not hard to imagine Tocchet choosing to hit the coaching free agency market this summer.