Canucks intrigued by uneven Pedan
‘Relatively young’ prospect defenceman has shown enough to keep Vancouver interested
Remember The Pedan Plan?
It didn’t rank with The McCann Plan, The Virtanen Plan or even The Horvat Plan, but there has always been a curiosity about Andrey Pedan. The Vancouver Canucks prospect defenceman has teased of National Hockey League potential and a one-year, two-way contract extension for the towering Russian — it pays $750,000 US in the bigs — is a ’show-us’ deal because he’ll be a restricted free agent again after next season.
A motivated Pedan could play into the roster formation with the departure of Nikita Tryamkin and how other back-end dominoes could fall. It’s up to Pedan, who turns 24 in July, because a roller-coaster American Hockey League season was the concern of his old boss in Utica, who is now the new boss in Vancouver.
“I thought he had an up-and-down year,” Canucks coach Travis Green said Thursday. “I just found that he had some really dominating games and some that weren’t great. In his good games, he was really good. He was hard to play against and moved the puck well, and that’s what he has to strive for — consistency in every game.
“He’s such a good skater that he can skate himself into trouble. Sometimes the aggressiveness in gets him into trouble. He’ll dump the puck and he keeps going when he doesn’t have to. He gets himself up into areas that he doesn’t need to be. And sometimes that’s just a product of feeling good.
“I remember telling Alex Biega, who was flying all over the place, that he looked like a million dollars, but was playing like one dollar because he was making mistakes by getting out of position and doing too much. Sometimes less is more.”
The 6-foot-5, 213-pound Pedan was recalled three times this season, but didn’t play a single NHL game. He had five goals and five assists in 52 games with the Utica Comets and displayed the same game as the 2015-16 season when he appeared in 13 games with the Canucks. He would do something spectacular on one shift and then do something confusing on the next.
This season, Pedan fought in back-to-back AHL games in March, and it’s an added element the Canucks are lacking. And on April 12 against the Hartford Wolf Pack, he unleashed a heavy shot to score a crucial short-handed unassisted goal in the second-to-last game of the regular season to keep the Comets’ slim playoff hopes alive. But he was also a healthy scratch late in the year.
Unlike Jared McCann (who was traded), Jake Virtanen (who was purposely schooled in Utica), and Bo Horvat (who rocketed up the roster), the mere mention of Pedan usually brings a scratch of the head and the shrug of the shoulders.
He has all the tools with size, speed, shot and a willingness to fight. But does he have the tool box? Or is this just part of the process where defencemen take long to mature, especially if they’ve switched organizations or have come from another country?
“He’s still relatively young for a defenceman,” said Green. “Sometimes big guys think they don’t have to think their way around the ice as much, but his good games this year were better than last year. He needs to improve his D-zone reads and there are times when he has puck-watched a little bit, gets out of position and lets guys get behind him.
“I’m excited and anxious. There are some guys who have developed and they are what they are and we’re waiting to see where he (Pedan) is at.”
Amid trade speculation (Chris Tanev) and an expansion-draft claim possibility (Luca Sbisa) — and whether Olli Juolevi can be groomed at this level next season — there may be added incentive for Pedan to play more games in Vancouver than Utica. After all, he went from having his training-camp attitude questioned two years ago by former Canucks coach Willie Desjardins to someone willing to do anything to win.
In his first NHL game on Dec. 1, 2015 in Los Angeles as a winger, he promptly dropped Dustin Brown with a crushing corner-boards hit.
“That day I couldn’t sleep after the coach told me I might be in the lineup,” he recalled. “I was laying in bed and my heart was beating so fast because I was picturing every play. I came to the rink and I was so fired up. But I knew right away I could play at this level. Everybody on the ice just seemed like normal humans. It’s just how you mentally prepare to play.”