Two of the Canucks’ centres are sitting on the shelf with injuries and Alex Burmistrov couldn’t stay in the lineup.
It’s a situation that likely leaves neither the Canucks nor Burmistrov happy and after his latest healthy scratch — sitting in the press box while the Canucks juggled seven defencemen instead — Burmistrov’s agent has informed us that the young Russian forward has retired from the NHL.
Alexander Burmistrov of Vancouver Canucks has retired from the NHL. Announcement on future will follow in the coming days.
— Dan Milstein-Hockey (@HockeyAgent1) December 24, 2017
It’s a surprising decision — it’s unusual for a 26-year-old to retire in the middle of the NHL season — but perhaps it’s less of a surprise when you listen to Burmistrov’s own words.
Before the start of the season, the Canucks hyped up Burmistrov’s ability to play on the power play, with Henrik Sedin specifically mentioning his skill with the man advantage. He had connected with Newell Brown on the power play with the Coyotes, and with the power play coach back in the Canucks’ fold, it seemed possible that Burmistrov would get more of an opportunity in Vancouver than he did elsewhere.
““They just gave me a chance to play,” he said of his time with the Coyotes. “[Winnipeg] didn’t look at me as a power play guy, a score-goal guy, but Arizona, they told me to play my game and I just played my game.”
Burmistrov didn’t play much on the power play, with fewer than 16 minutes total with the man advantage, but when he did get a chance, he produced. Among Canucks’ forwards, Burmistrov was third in points-per-hour on the power play, behind only Brock Boeser and Thomas Vanek.
But it seemed that the Canucks didn’t necessarily see Burmistrov as “a score-goal guy.” When the Canucks reoriented their power play units in mid-November, Burmistrov was on the outside looking in, and, when the power play started clicking at a league-leading percentage, he had no chance to get back in.
The bigger issue was that they couldn’t find a spot for him to play at even-strength.
“I wasn’t coming here to be a fourth-line player,” Burmistrov told me during training camp, but that’s where he ended up when he was in the lineup.
Burmistrov had the lowest average ice time on the Canucks other than Utica call-ups like Jayson Megna, Michael Chaput, and Reid Boucher. The fact that he couldn’t get in the lineup with Bo Horvat, Sven Baertschi, Brandon Sutter, and Derek Dorsett all out speaks volumes.
The final straw may have come on Thursday against the San Jose Sharks. Burmistrov got benched after Timo Meier’s 2-1 goal. On the shift leading up to the goal, Burmistrov got caught out of position several times, leading to two good scoring chances before the goal itself. Those were some of the details that Travis Green constantly preaches, and, in Green’s words, “they ****ing matter.”
Burmistrov expressed his frustrations with his role on the Canucks earlier in the month.
“The frustrating thing is you know you can play at this level and every day and every night you walk into the dressing room and you don’t know if you’re playing or not,” he said. “You kind of want to know you’re playing or be sure to be confident in yourself and feel like you’re part of the team.
“Then you walk into the dressing room and you’re not playing and you’re thinking: ‘What is it going to be like tomorrow?’ I’m trying to work hard but this is hard.”
But Burmistrov didn’t want anything handed to him. He said it before the season — “I’ve just got to earn that spot, you know?” — and he made it clear again.
“The worst thing is to see Bo hurt and then you’re back in, but you basically didn’t earn that spot,” he said.
Green claimed he had been clear with Burmistrov: “It’s the same message I’ve given all year: play a strong 200-foot game and be a guy who’s reliable that I can play in any situation and be strong on faceoffs and the penalty kill. And if we get injuries, we bump him up on the power play. Those kind of players are invaluable who can play in your bottom six and, if you need, in your top six. That message has been very clear since Day 1.”
Burmistrov won 48.1% of his faceoffs — better than Henrik Sedin, Markus Granlund, and Nic Dowd — but just 44.6% of his faceoffs in the defensive zone, the lowest percentage on the Canucks. Green likely felt he couldn’t rely on Burmistrov for those key draws, an element missing from the lineup with Horvat and Sutter on the injured reserve.
On top of that, Burmistrov struggled on the penalty kill. What had been a strength of his game early in his career turned into a liability: among Canucks’ penalty killers, Burmistrov allowed the highest rate of unblocked shot attempts and the highest rate of goals against.
Green wanted Burmistrov to be a player he could rely on “in any situation,” but he couldn’t. Overall, is he a better player than Nic Dowd? Absolutely. But Green wanted him to be reliable in specific situations to earn more offensive opportunities.
It’s tempting to look at this situation and see the Russian factor — the Canucks don’t have the best history with Russian players and Nikita Tryamkin bolted for the KHL this past off-season — and that raises questions about Nikolay Goldobin’s future with the team. The talented young winger has been in and out of the lineup since getting called up from the Comets. Are Burmistrov and Tryamkin a sign that there is a bigger problem in the Canucks organization? Are Russian players made to feel unwelcome by the Canucks?
That said, you can see from Burmistrov’s own words that he wanted to earn offensive opportunities — to be a “score-goal guy” — and you can see from Green’s words and the statistics that he didn’t really accomplish that goal. Could the Canucks have given him more chances to prove himself? Perhaps. But Burmistrov didn’t necessarily want to be gifted ice time. This could just be a situation with an individual player.
The retirement leaves Burmistrov free to sign back in Russia and, if Russia hadn’t been banned, to play in the Olympics. It seems likely that at 26, his NHL career is permanently done.
