Patrik Allvin Shuffles the Deck Chairs

I haven't posted here in a long time - but it's sure been a week in Canuck-land, and sometimes, you just gotta write about it.

As fervent deadline-watchers saw, the Canucks did a surprising two-step in the leadup to the trade deadline. They started by moving out Bo Horvat, then Luke Schenn and Riley Stillman, bringing back useful draft picks and youth. It looked, for all purposes, that management was finally admitting they needed to tear things down. That image was reversed quickly when they flipped draft picks to acquire Filip Hronek. As others have said, Hronek is a good player on a good contract, but the Canucks as they currently stand are perhaps the wrong place for him. 

Patrik Allvin announced yesterday that "my expectation is to make the playoffs with the players we have here." As of today, the Canucks are 19 points out of a playoff spot. How much can they really be expected to improve by next season? Yes, their goaltending has been a mess with Demko hurt, and if he is healthy next year, he will make a difference. Aside from Demko, though, injuries haven't been a serious issue for the Canucks this year; none of the team's core players have missed more than a game or two.

Instead, a lot of things have actually gone right for the Canucks this year. Pettersson and Hughes are having the best years of their careers. Bo Horvat was, too, before he was dealt. Andrei Kuzmenko has provided incredible production on a bargain-basement contract, and while some will say JT Miller is having an 'off year', he's still on pace for a 74-point season, which would be the second-highest total of his career. Brock Boeser, also apparently having an off year, is still on pace for 60 points despite reduced PP time.

Which begs the question: where will this team improve? You can't bank on those core players to be much better than they have been. At the end of the day, you have to look at the elephant in the room: the Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Tyler Myers contracts, and the combined $13,260,000 in cap space that they occupy. They dutifully chew up a lot of ice time, but their defensive metrics have been exceptionally bad in the last two years. Can you really bank on them making a major improvement at their age? 

Allvin commented yesterday that clearing cap space isn't so easy. He is right. Is it possible to move their contracts? Maybe, with some combination of paying out draft picks and/or salary retention. Buyouts aren't a real solution either; in the end, the team still has to pay 2/3 of the total cap hit, spread out over double the length of time. An OEL buyout would be on the books until the end of the 2030-31 season.

Allvin is going to be in the difficult position of needing to clear cap space this summer. The Canucks' salary commitments for 2023-24 are, shockingly, already over the cap. JT Miller is getting a $2.75 million raise; Kuzmenko's salary is going up by a eye-popping $4.6 million.

If you can't move Myers or OEL, what are Allvin's options? He will need to trade at least one of Miller, Boeser, Conor Garland, or perhaps Anthony Beauvillier. Subtracting any of those players will make the team worse; all of them can be useful offensive contributors, albeit at salaries that are richer than other teams might want to pay. Once one or two of them are moved out, however, Allvin will be be crossing his fingers that a younger player (Podkolzin, Hoglander, Raty) is able to replace their production in a top-six role. That's a hard bet to win.

Ultimately, you end up back in the same place: with, maybe, a slightly juggled forward group and the same two black holes that OEL and Myers represent on the roster. Yeah, you've added Filip Hronek, who will help, but that's probably off-set by losing Horvat and not having a high-end centre to replace him. No matter what you do, all Patrik Allvin can do is shuffle the deck chairs. There is no way for this team to be a serious contender in 2023-24, and it's hard to bank on them even making the playoffs. Trying to do so is just extending the pain for the franchise.

Canucks Twitter has been loudly calling for a real rebuild. I get that it's a lot harder for Allvin and the organization to commit to one; publicly admitting to one is an admission of failure to the current core. There's no doubt that Hughes and Pettersson would rather have a shot at the playoffs next year than to be told the team is not going to try to win. It's not the kind of thing that will help to sell players on committing to the team in the long term. That being said, players aren't stupid; if they see that there is a real long-term plan in place, they can be convinced to buy in.

Allvin had some serious missed opportunities to help the team's prospects for 2024-25 and onward. JT Miller's value, in particular, is not going to go up, and his no-move clause kicks in with the new contract. He is a useful player now, and can help a team win. By the end of 2024-25, though, he will be 32 years old, with five years left on his deal. It's very possible the contract will look like OEL's by that time, and will be the next anchor that drags the team down through its next young core. The missed opportunity to move him - even for a small return - could end up being a curse for the team through another generation.

Cody Hodgson, Zack Kassian, and Akerlof's Lemons

by Rory Johnston

I've been meaning to write for a while about the trade market in professional sports, and with the depressing monotony of the NHL lockout, now's maybe a good time for it. I've been thinking a lot about the problem of information asymmetry in player trades.

This all stems out of a classic economics paper titled "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism", published in 1970 by George Akerlof, who eventually won a Nobel Prize (shared with Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence) for his work on the subject. In essence, Akerlof's paper describes the "information asymmetry" in the market for used cars.

A "Lemon" is a used car that has hidden problems that are not instantly visible at the time of sale. The seller will often know about the defects, but the buyer does not. This is an "information asymmetry". To the seller, the car might be a piece of junk he'd happily sell at $1000; the buyer feels that a properly working car would be worth $3000.

Buyers, however, will be aware that lemons exist. They might know that there's a 25% chance a car of that particular model and year is a lemon, and thus there's a 25% chance the car is actually worth $1000. If neither buyer nor seller can identify a lemon, the buyer would be willing to pay a price of just $2500, to account for the possibility of a lemon.

Akerlof's paper identifies the problem: sellers will usually know if their car is a lemon. If it's a good car, then he knows it's worth $3000. But the buyer won't pay that price; so the only cars sellers will put on the market are the lemons - and once the buyers figure that out, they're going to want to pay even less. As the odds of getting a lemon increase, the market price will eventually slide down to $1000.

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this. In the sports trade market, teams have a considerable asymmetry of information. It has become clear that the Canucks knew the full details on Cody Hodgson's injury issues, and about his disputes with the coaching staff. What's more, we saw that Hodgson was given premium offensive zone ice time in an effort to boost his trade value. The Canucks knew more about Cody Hodgson than anyone else - and after taking it all into account, they thought he wasn't as valuable as other teams thought he was.


Obviously, comparing hockey players to used cars is an oversimplification. Plenty of "non-lemon" players get traded because team have lineup and financial constraints that require such moves. Nevertheless, GMs should be very wary of trade offers - in any sport - that seem too good to be true, or of players that opposing GMs are overly keen to unload. Scouts can see weaknesses on the ice or on the field, but they don't get as much chance to evaluate a player's makeup or talk to team doctors and training staff to get all the injury details.

When thinking about "lemon" trades, I can't help but think back to the Blue Jays' ill-fated trade for Mike Sirotka in 2001. The Jays gave up a disgruntled David Wells for Sirotka, a left-handed pitcher who had just won 15 games for the White Sox. Although he passed his initial physical, Sirotka was diagnosed with a torn labrum at Spring Training and would never throw another pitch in the majors. It's not clear how much the Sox knew about Sirotka's injury, but there were a lot of suspicions that they had pulled a fast one in the deal.

My interest in the "lemons" issue was revived in the aftermath of the R.A. Dickey trade, when it came out that prospect Noah Syndergaard, who was part of the package going to the Mets, had tweeted a homophobic slur earlier this month. Did the Jays see the tweet and decide it was the last straw? I had been initially surprised the Jays were so willing to include Syndergaard in the deal, but maybe they saw him as a bit of a "lemon" in terms of makeup. Others (regretfully, I can't find a link to where I first saw this) pointed this out and suggested that after the Yunel Escobar incident, it was best to steer clear. On the opposite side, Dickey's Christmas party complaints got a lot of attention and could have helped the Mets' decision to move him. By all accounts, he's a nice guy despite his quirks; or are there other things that the Mets were worried about? For all we know, they may have determined that his 'fast knuckleball' would not age as well as the slow knucklers thrown by Wakefield, Niekro et al.

There are a few conclusions to take from all this:

1. A disproportionately large number of lemons will be available in trade

If a player's problems are known only to the team that controls him, they will be more likely to want to move him while his trade value exceeds his normal value. As a result, there will be an unusually high number of 'lemons' on the market, so buyers will have to be extra-vigilant.

2. It will be a lot harder to acquire non-lemons

Even if trading a player or prospect would make sense in 'hockey' terms (or 'baseball', etc), teams will be reluctant to move players who they aren't worried about. Putting a player on the market will immediately raise suspicions that something is wrong; a team may have a hard time getting full value in trade.

3. Teams have to do their homework

The Blue Jays got a lot of flak for missing Sirotka's injury in his initial physical; teams should be very wary of trading for players who have been recently injured, suspended, or had his role on the team change. Is the player being 'showcased' to pump up his value, as Hodgson was?

4. Don't advertise your lemons

Shopping a player around will immediately raise suspicion among savvy GMs that he might be a lemon. Teams would do better to invite the other GM to ask for the player. For example, I can picture Alex Anthopolous on the phone with the Mets:

"Not enough? I'd be willing to add a pitching prospect to the deal. No, not Aaron Sanchez... Syndergaard? Gee, we really thought of him as untouchable, but for you..."

5. Buyer beware

As fans, we all like to see trades and get excited at the thought of seeing our team add the final piece of the puzzle. Yet so many trades turn out to be disappointments. Teams should rely on trades sparingly because of the chance that the player acquired won't turn out to be exactly as advertised.

Follow Rory Johnston (@rnfjohnston) on twitter: twitter.com/rnfjohnston

‘Toronto Syndrome’ is Catching On in Vancouver

Canucks fans have a favourite habit of pitying the Maple Leafs from afar; it’s a happy distraction from the misadventures of the home team. Losing is easier to take so long as someone else is worse.

I’ve argued the position in recent years that the Maple Leafs are trapped in a self-sustaining state of mediocrity created by their need to compete each season. Toronto fans are notoriously demanding, and their high expectations have controlled the way the team is run. Unfortunately, the Leafs sit in an impossible position: they’re just good enough to compete for a playoff spot, but haven’t had the talent to be a serious Stanley Cup contender since they won the division in the 1999-2000 season. Since then, they’ve finished 8th, 4th, 6th, 4th, 9th, 9th and 12th last season.

Consistent middle-of-the-pack finishes have meant that the Leafs have missed out on top drafting positions for several years running, and they’ve also had to trade away several early-round picks to patch together a respectable lineup each year. While some teams (the Red Wings in particular) have managed to collect star talent in the late rounds, most of the NHL’s best players were drafted in the first five picks. Beyond that, it’s a lot of future second- and third-liners. In the salary cap era, stockpiling low-salaried young talent is the most reliable way of building a winner; the current editions of the Penguins and Blackhawks are prime examples of teams built in this way. Besides, the new NHL is a young man’s game. With the revised obstruction rules, speed is king and youth is served. Compare last season’s top ten scorers to the 1999-2000 season leaders:


Powerhouse lineups have their price, though; the Pens and Hawks both spent years in the basement while they collected draft picks. That would never fly in Toronto, hockey’s biggest market. Building a Cup contender through free agency is only possible with an already-present core of young talent.

As much as this Vancouverite likes to ridicule the Leafs, I’m starting to see this phenomenon afflicting my beloved Canucks. The Canucks haven’t picked in the top nine since 1999, the year they picked the Sedin twins. Since then, the team has held up reasonably well thanks to the lopsided trades that brought in legit front-line talent in Naslund, Bertuzzi, Luongo and Morrison. Even with the stars gond, expectations have remained high in Vancouver: fans want to see a team in playoff contention every year and aren’t willing to wait for rebuilding. With a lack of serious offensive talent on the team’s prospect list, the Canucks look like a team that will be putting up a string of mid-table finishes that will keep them squarely out of the Stanley Cup picture. Every year it happens will prolong the cycle; the Canucks have too much money to ever roster a bad team.

With the increasing likelihood that the Canucks will miss out on the Mats Sundin sweepstakes this year while other Western Conference powerhouses like Detroit, Anaheim and San Jose show no signs of slowing, the Canucks look like they’re headed for another season in the league’s also-ran middle class.

All-Time Canucks Goon Squad

Posted over at the Canucks.com forums this morning...

Brashear Odjick Williams
Momesso Ruutu Hunter
Walker Sandlak May
Langdon Cowan Antoski

Brookbank Snepsts
McIlhargey Dailey
Murzyn Malkoc

Cloutier
Garrett

That team would beat the hell out of any of your sissy-boy teams. Pretty sure we've got healthy cap room too.