Same Team but Lundqvist for Markstrom

Team: 2020-21 Vancouver Canucks

Initial Creation Date: Oct. 1, 2020

Published: Oct. 2, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

The Rangers' buyout of Henrik Lundqvist's last year presents an interesting opportunity for Vancouver. Stepping off into the deep end by letting Jacob Markstrom walk, relying on Thatcher Demko to be their goalie of the future, and signing Lundqvist to back up Demko solves most of Vancouver's problems with the expansion draft and the challenges of re-signing Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes to their second deals. I've also constructed two deals that create additional cap space.

The New Jersey deal: The Devils have only two RWs in their system under contract (including 2021 UFA Kyle Palmieri) plus RFA Josh Anderson, with no one to promote from within. I think that they could use a rental RW and PKer. They get to move a third from 2021 to 2020 while paying a very late fourth for Brandon Sutter with 20% retention.

The Anaheim Deal: Modeled on the Backes acquisition, this exchange gives the Ducks a B-prospect RD plus a 2021 first. Vancouver gets an expansion-draft-exempt B-prospect center (where the Canucks have virtually no one), a homeboy and relief from 75% of Loui Eriksson's cap hit, as well as a fourth-round pick next June.

I'm assuming, as some Vancouver supporters have stated, that Pettersson will get a long-term deal for $9 million (i.e., $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 that Vancouver would have to come up with at least $13 million in new money for those two players.

Next off-season the Canucks have the following amounts 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 promotion of Juolevi and Rafferty to replace the two outgoing defenders.

Note that Ferland's cap hit is included in the $81.3 million total shown for this team. If he were to go onto the LTIR list, that would leave his cap hit to sign a replacement free-agent forward.

GM Jim Benning might prefer to promote Juolevi, Rafferty or Rathbone rather than re-sign Oscar Fantenberg.

Some of my free-agent figures may seem a little high, but this is primarily a budgeting exercise because I don't think that this team needs drastic changes; Vancouver is (unfortunately for me) on the upswing. I predict that they'll be in the playoffs next year.

1.

2.