No Markstrom

Team: 2020-21 Vancouver Canucks

Initial Creation Date: Sep. 18, 2020

Published: Sep. 19, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Stepping off into the deep end by letting Jacob Markstrom walk and relying on Thatcher Demko to be the Canucks’ goalie of the future solves most of Vancouver’s problems with the expansion draft and the prospect of re-signing Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes to their second deals.

I’m assuming, as some Vancouver fans have stated, that Pettersson will get a long-term deal for $9 million ($8 million more than he’s making now) and Hughes $6 million ($5 million more than he’s making now) for a shorter-term deal. That means the Canucks will have to come up with $13 million in new money for those two players.

Next off-season Vancouver has the following coming off the roster shown here:

Edler = $6 million
Pearson = $3.75 million
Benn = $2 million
Spooner = $1.033 million
Baertschi = $0.966 million
Sutter = $0.875 million

That’s $14.625 million: enough for the two young stars plus promoting Juolevi and either Woo or Rafferty to replace the outgoing two defenders. Moving one of Beagle or Roussel (or, even better, Eriksson) would then provide enough capital to replace Pearson, though probably not enough to re-sign him.

Some of the free-agent figures may seem a little high, but this is essentially a budgeting exercise.

Benning might prefer to re-sign Oscar Fantenberg for up to $1 million rather than go with Rathbone or someone else as the seventh defenseman.

To me, this team is an early favorite to make the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2021.