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Canucks make a late night snack run, acquiring Nic Dowd for Jordan Subban

Canucks send AHL defencemen to Kings for centre depth.
Nic Dowd of the Los Angeles Kings

With both Bo Horvat and Brandon Sutter hitting the injured reserve, the Canucks took a cold, hard look at their depth at centre and evidently didn’t like what they saw. While there’s little the Canucks can do to replace a first-line centre like Bo Horvat, they could do something about the bottom of the lineup.

So they did. Late Thursday night, the Canucks traded defenceman Jordan Subban to the Los Angeles Kings for centre Nic Dowd.

The move will incense a certain segment of Canucks fans, who have been clamoring for the Canucks to give Subban a chance to play in the NHL for years now.

In fact, Subban’s primary role with the Canucks was to be brought up any time the power play struggled. He might as well have been called Jordan “Why Haven’t the Canucks Called Up” Subban.

Unfortunately, the reason Subban never got called up from the Comets is that he has significant defensive flaws. Some might argue that Subban’s offensive upside makes up for those flaws, but the Canucks clearly don’t think that’s the case. His biggest issue is that he is actually a below-average passer for someone billed as a puck-moving defenceman.

Subban was even a healthy scratch multiple times this season. Canucks prospects blew by him on the defensive depth chart almost as frequently as opposing forwards blew past him on the rush.

Subban can certainly skate with the puck at an NHL level and he possesses a great shot, but nothing else in his game is NHL-caliber. He was never going to get called up by the Canucks and it’s hard to imagine him getting called up by the Kings either.

In exchange for Subban, the Kings sent Nic Dowd to the Canucks. Dowd played 70 games for the Kings last season, putting up 22 points. He played mostly on the fourth line, though he also played on the second power play unit, where he tallied 8 of his points.

This season, however, Dowd’s ice time is way down in the 16 games he has played for the Kings. He’s averaging less than 8 minutes per game, has just one point, an assist, and was a healthy scratch for the Kings’ last three games. There just didn’t seem to be room in the lineup for Dowd, so it’s understandable that the Kings would try to move him.

Dowd is a legitimate fourth-line forward, capable of grinding along the boards, forechecking hard, and throwing checks, but also has above-average hockey sense and passes the puck well. At the AHL level, he was definitely more of a playmaker than a goalscorer.

Looking at his underlying statistics, Dowd appears to be an effective shot-suppressor at even-strength. Last season, no other Kings forward allowed a lower rate of shots on goal when on the ice at 5-on-5. That led to excellent puck possession numbers: his corsi percentage of 57.61% was second among Kings forwards.

Whether it’s because of the Kings coaching change or some individual reason, Dowd’s underlying numbers haven’t been as strong. He’s still excellent at suppressing shots — he’s allowed the lowest rate of shot attempts on the Kings this season — but it hasn’t been matched by shot generation, giving him a corsi percentage of just 46.23%.

If Travis Green can find the right role for him, however, Dowd could be an effective depth player for the Canucks this season.

But before trying to figure out what role Dowd could play, let’s be clear about what Dowd is not.

He’s not a shutdown centre or a penalty kill specialist. Dowd was primarily deployed in the offensive zone in Los Angeles and hasn’t been used on the penalty kill at all. It’s certainly possible that new surroundings and need could result in Dowd playing on the penalty kill, but fans shouldn’t expect it.

Dowd also won’t help much in the faceoff circle. His faceoff percentage for his career is 48.3%; that’s better than Markus Granlund’s 40.3%, certainly, but he’s a far cry from a faceoff specialist. While Dowd has won 51.9% of his faceoffs this season, that just means he’s won 27 and lost 25.

Also, Dowd is not a prospect. He’s already 27, even if last year was his rookie season. You can’t expect any more development out of Dowd; at this point, he essentially is who he is.

On the plus side, “who he is” is apparently a great guy. While at Saint Cloud State University, Dowd convinced five of his teammates to grow their hair out for over 19 months in order to donate the hair to Locks of Love, a charity that makes wigs for people who have lost their hair.

With that kind of leadership, it should come as no surprise that he was named captain of the Huskies the following season for his senior year.

Overall, your evaluation of this trade likely depends on how optimistic you feel about Jordan Subban. Dowd is an NHL player, but he has a low ceiling: he’s a fourth-line forward who can maybe pick up some power play time in a pinch. If you’re cynical about Subban’s chances, then getting an NHL player for him in a trade is a decent deal. If, on the other hand, you think Subban still has a chance to make the NHL and have an impact, then this was an awful deal that could come back to haunt the Canucks.

In my opinion, the latter is incredibly unlikely.