Blue Jackets pay the price for Torts
Rebuilding Canucks can use compensatory pick to stockpile talent or wheel and deal on draft day
There was going to be a silver lining in the departure of John Tortorella after an erratic and entertaining one-year reign of error with the Vancouver Canucks.
We just didn’t know when. Now we do.
The Columbus Blue Jackets have surrendered a second-round compensatory draft pick for the October, 2015 hiring of the bombastic coach — a loophole that has since been closed — and they had the option of doing it in 2016, 2017 or 2018. This year made the most sense.
The Blue Jackets know that replicating a franchise best 108-point season, fourth-highest in the National Hockey League, will be difficult. And if they slide back to the pack next season, the compensatory draft pick will be higher than the 55th overall they surrendered on Wednesday, the deadline for getting the paperwork completed before Thursday’s decision.
There was some thought the Blue Jackets might dangle the 2017 pick to the Vegas Golden Knights in pre-expansion draft dealings.
For the Canucks, it now involves some level of intrigue.
They have four picks in the first 64 selections — including No. 5, 33 and 55 — when the draft is held June 23-24 in Chicago. General manager Jim Benning can continue to stock the prospect cupboard, or be bolder, trading picks to move up or down the draft ladder.
“This is a year we can add some more depth into our prospect pool,” Benning said Wednesday from the NHL Draft Combine in Buffalo. “And in having two fourth-round picks (No. 95 and No. 112 in the Jannik Hansen trade for Nikolay Goldobin), we can add to our group.”
Benning has stated an organizational need for a playmaking centre and power play point performer. Depending on how the picks play out — and assuming Memorial Cup champion Gabriel Valardi will probably be gone to the Colorado Avalanche at No. 4 — there are still going to be several centres who should pique the Canucks’ interest to varying degrees.
Cody Glass, Casey Mittlestadt, Michael Rasmussen and Elias Pettersen will all move the curiosity meter, as will defencemen Timonty Liljegren, Cale Makar and Callan Foote, assuming that blue-liner Miro Heiskanen will be gone at No. 3.
And with much debate about player rankings in the second half of the first round, somebody Benning covets could easily slide to the second round. That way, he could satisfy both positional needs.
“We’re not necessarily going to pick them, even though we do need those players (centre, defenceman),” he said. “If it fits those needs, then we’ll address it, but we want the best player available and the rest will sort itself out.”
Then there are the Dallas Stars, who have two first-round picks. The second comes from moving Patrick Eaves to Anaheim and because the Ducks advanced to the Western Conference final and Eaves played in 50 per cent of the games after the trade.
It’s one reason why Stars general manager Jim Nill is willing to move the third-overall selection for an established and impact defenceman. We’re not sure what that means in coach Ken Hitchcock’s world of defence before offence, but the Stars’ window to win is shrinking. And that means defending better.
Offensive catalysts Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin are in their prime and Jason Spezza should still have some pop. But the Stars were ranked 29th defensively in allowing 3.17 goals per game and the penalty kill was a league-worst at 73.9 per cent efficiency. Poor goaltending didn’t help.
Newcomer Ben Bishop should help stabilize the long-standing Stars crease conundrum in an expected tandem with Jere Lehtinen, but if the back end is Job 1, then who can help get that done?
The Canucks are reluctant to trade Chris Tanev, but they should at least listen during draft week. He might not be at the top of the Stars’ wish list, but he could move up.
Benning believes it’s simply too difficult to find mobile defencemen who can also defend, and that’s why he stressed that he isn’t shopping Tanev or bringing up his name in conversations with his peers. They’re calling, but Benning sounds like he would move picks before Tanev.
“We’ll look at all our options, and if there’s something that makes sense to move up higher in the first round or packaging our second-round picks to get a late first-round picks, we’ll look at it,” he said.
“But having said that, we’ve done our due diligence in knowing the players in this year’s draft, and we feel comfortable hanging on to the picks. We’re excited about the player we get at No. 33 because there’s enough in that first round (who may drop).”
Read what you want into all that, but from Nos. 28 to 36, there are three centres and three defencemen rated by several scouts. The Canucks could satisfy obvious needs before they make two fourth-rounds picks.