On Tuesday, the Canucks made two entirely expected cuts, sending down winger Jonathan Dahlen and goaltender Michael Garteig. Neither cut should come as a surprise: Dahlen is coming over from Sweden for his first season in North America, while Garteig isn’t even signed to an NHL contract.
Dahlen was acquired from the Ottawa Senators in the Alex Burrows trade and has the potential to be a top-six forward in the future. The hype came fast and furious when he joined the Canucks organization, with many comparing the trade to the Martin Erat for Filip Forsberg deal.
Like Forsberg, Dahlen put up a lot of points in the Allsvenskan in his draft and post-draft seasons. In fact, Dahlen outscored Forsberg, who has developed into a legitimate goalscoring first-line forward for the Nashville Predators.
Dahlen’s post-draft season, when he scored 25 goals and 42 points in 44 games, is actually one of the best seasons ever by an under-20 forward in the Allsvenskan. That’s encouraging, though it’s noteworthy that most high-end prospects don’t play in the Allsvenskan. When I talked to Dahlen about playing in the second-tier Swedish league this summer, he pointed out that most prospects sign with an SHL team instead and either play in the SHL or with that team’s under-20 squad.
The hype got even more pronounced when the Canucks drafted his Allsvenskan linemate, Elias Pettersson, with some jumping to Sedin comparisons, which aren’t fair to either player, but especially not Dahlen. But even if the comparison is unfair, Dahlen’s ceiling is a 30-goal-scoring, first-line forward.
Even with all that in mind, the 19-year-old Dahlen was a longshot to make the Canucks out of camp considering the other young wingers aiming for the limited spots open on the roster. And that longshot became no shot when Dahlen was diagnosed with mononucleosis and missed almost all of training camp.
The extreme fatigue that comes with mono makes it hard to exercise and keep your strength up, so Dahlen will be behind the eightball even as he reports to the AHL. The symptoms can last for anywhere from a few weeks to several months, so Canucks fans shouldn’t be alarmed if Dahlen gets off to a slow start with Utica.
As for Garteig, he enters the season as the third-string goaltender with the Comets behind Thatcher Demko and Richard Bachman.
Garteig was a teammate of Troy Stecher’s on the record-breaking 2011-12 Penticton Vees and, like Stecher, was an invite to the Canucks’ 2014 prospect development camp. He eventually earned a contract from the Canucks in 2016 after leading the Quinnipiac Bobcats to the NCAA championship game, where he fell short to Brock Boeser and the North Dakota Fighting Hawks.
Along the way, he knocked Thatcher Demko and Boston College out of the Frozen Four, but he had little chance of getting ahead of Demko on the Canucks goaltending depth chart and wound up starting in the ECHL for the Alaska Aces last season. He had a reasonable rookie year with the Aces — his .906 save percentage was right around league-average — but he underwhelmed in 8 AHL appearances with the Comets.
The Canucks chose not to re-sign him to an NHL contract, but did ink him to an AHL deal. He’s likely to start in the ECHL once again, but if one of the four goaltenders ahead of him gets injured, he’ll see time in the AHL.
What might be most significant about Garteig being sent down is that there’s just one player left at Canucks camp on an AHL contract: Darren Archibald. Does Archibald have a shot at once again earning an NHL deal?
