The Paper Feature is a weekly column and sidebars that appears in the Vancouver Courier newspaper. Track it down!
The Vancouver Canucks season will end on April 7th, 2018 against the similarly sad-sack Edmonton Oilers. That won’t be the end of the hockey season for some of the Canucks, however, as the team’s AHL affiliate is playoff-bound, with the playoffs kicking off on April 16th.
The Canucks’ top goaltending prospect, Thatcher Demko, is a big reason why the Comets are in playoff position, as the team doesn’t get much goalscoring. When they did, it usually came from Reid Boucher, who still leads the Comets with 25 goals and 46 points in 45 games. Unfortunately for the Comets, he got called up by the Canucks and will now require waivers to be sent back down.
Fortunately, Demko should be joined by Nikolay Goldobin and Tyler Motte from the Canucks, who were both “sent down” on paper last month to ensure they were eligible for the AHL playoffs. Despite spending chunks of the season up with the Canucks, Goldobin is still second on the Comets in scoring with 30 points in 28 games. Motte, meanwhile, had 9 goals and 11 points in 17 AHL games with the Cleveland Monsters before he came over to the Canucks organization in the trade for Thomas Vanek.
Several top Canucks prospects will also join the Comets for the playoffs.
“When all our young players have completed their season, whether they’re in junior or Europe, they’re going to join Utica at the end of year,” said Jim Benning after the trade deadline.
He didn’t mention the NCAA, but Adam Gaudette could be part of that group. He is having a fantastic season for Northeastern University, leading all of college hockey in goals and points. He’ll likely want to follow in Brock Boeser’s footsteps and sign with the Canucks as soon as his season ends so he can play in the NHL and burn a year of his contract, but if his team makes it to the Frozen Four, that could complicate matters. The Frozen Four final is on April 7th, leaving him no time to get in a game with the Canucks. If that happens, he’ll end up in Utica.
Two of the Canucks’ picks from 2017 playing in Major Junior, Kole Lind and Jonah Gadjovich, should both be Comets-bound, but how soon will depend on how deep their teams go into the playoffs. The Memorial Cup runs in late May, so if Lind or Gadjovich make it that far, then the Comets would have to go on a long playoff run of their own for either of them to play in the AHL this year.
Finally, there are the Canucks’ prospects in Europe who could potentially make the jaunt back to North America: Olli Juolevi, Petrus Palmu, Jonathan Dahlen and possibly Elias Pettersson, who might be more likely to play for Sweden at the World Championships instead.
This would be important experience for Juolevi and Dahlen, both of whom have eyes on making the Canucks out of camp next season, while Palmu is a bit of a wildcard. Both Juolevi and Palmu play for TPS in the Finnish Liiga, whose regular season wrapped up this week. Their playoffs run until the end of April.
Dahlen’s Timra IK has a distinct chance of going all the way and earning promotion from the Allsvenskan to the SHL, which is a big reason why Dahlen stayed with Timra for the entire season. That should wrap up around the end of March, giving Dahlen plenty of time to play for the Comets.
That’s eight forwards and one defenceman who could potentially help the Utica Comets go deep into the playoffs, though they’ll likely still be dependent on Demko to do so.
Here’s a potential lineup if every available player reports to Utica, keeping in mind that it’s more likely that a few don’t end up in Utica and that new players will cycle into the lineup rather than wholesale replace the players that got Utica to the playoffs.
Stick-taps and Glove-drops
I’m dropping the gloves with the hockey gods for taking Brock Boeser and Sven Baertschi out with season-ending injuries. Baertschi suffered a separated shoulder against the Nashville Predators, while Boeser fractured a piece of vertebra when he hit the open bench door awkwardly after a collision with Cal Clutterbuck of the New York Islanders. That removes some serious entertainment value from the Canucks lineup.
A tap of the stick to Brendan Leipsic, who has been lights out in his first few games with the Canucks. His excellent performance has taken some of the sting out of a lacklustre trade deadline, as his acquisition for Philip Holm looks like a clear win for Jim Benning.
Big Numbers
56 - Canucks prospect Elias Petterson finished his Swedish Hockey League season with 56 points in 44 games, passing Kent Nilsson for the all-time SHL record for points from a junior (under-20) player.
59 - Heading into the weekend, Adam Gaudette also had 56 points, leading the NCAA. Over the weekend, he added three more points as his Northeastern University eliminated the University of Massachusetts in the quarterfinals of the Hockey East playoffs. He now has 30 goals and 59 points in 36 games. He and fellow centre Pettersson provide some hope for the Canucks down the middle in the future.
