Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s scratch, Canucks’ Rick Tocchet rumours and more

The biggest story for the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday had nothing to do with what happened in their 5-4 loss. It had everything to do with Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who didn’t join the rest of his teammates on the ice at Amalie Arena against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bruce Boudreau has healthy scratched big-name players before. He sat Conor Garland on Oct. 18 against Columbus. Andrei Kuzmenko watched from the press box on Nov. 13 against the Bruins. Brock Boeser was going to be a scratch on Dec. 3 versus the Coyotes, before a last-minute injury to Dakota Joshua drew the former back into the lineup. Ethan Bear was scratched on Dec. 22 against the Kraken.

This one is different, though. Garland, Kuzmenko and Boeser are important players, but none of them wear an “A” on their jersey like Ekman-Larsson. OEL’s the highest-paid Canucks player by total salary for this season and has earned his stripes as a veteran in this league. Most head coaches around the NHL are very careful about scratching veterans in this position, even if their play warrants it.

Just look at Brian Dumoulin on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Dumoulin’s a shadow of the defender he once was and has been awful for the Penguins. No matter how passionately fans in Pittsburgh have pleaded for Dumoulin to get scratched, Mike Sullivan hasn’t used that card, even with his club in the thick of a dogfight playoff race in the East.

The two situations obviously aren’t perfectly alike. Dumoulin’s played for years under Sullivan and won Cups as a stalwart on the blue line while Ekman-Larsson and the Canucks haven’t had anywhere close to that level of longevity or success as a partnership. But it’s still not an easy decision to sit a player with Ekman-Larsson’s pedigree, age and pay grade even if it was 100 percent justified given his recent form.

It shows that Boudreau isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers, perhaps in a last-ditch effort to wake this Canucks group up and demand accountability. OEL’s scratch and all the headlines about it also wave a flag around the NHL as if to cement the blockbuster trade for him and Garland — which saw the club surrender three draft picks, including the one used to select Dylan Guenther while also dumping the final years of Loui Eriksson, Jay Beagle and Antoine Roussel’s contracts — as an unmitigated disaster in case the rest of the league didn’t already know.

Ekman-Larsson’s contract, which carries a $7.26 million cap hit for four years after this season as well as a no-move clause, is untradeable. A buyout doesn’t make sense yet — if the Canucks pull the trigger on that this summer, they’ll be saddled with a dead cap hit until 2031. Why create cap disadvantages that span into the next decade just to have more flexibility for next season, when you aren’t going to be contending for a Stanley Cup in 2023-24 anyway?

The best thing the Canucks can do is learn how and why this catastrophic mess happened in the first place. Don’t let the same philosophy doom the future.

Vancouver made this trade because it lacked patience and wanted a shortcut. The Canucks needed to squeak into the playoffs now, so instead of waiting just one year for Eriksson, Beagle and Roussel’s combined $12 million cap hit to come off the books, they searched for an immediate fix. They weren’t OK with short-term pain and were willing to sacrifice their long-term foundation for it. That’s why they’re in this mess.

The Canucks need to keep the failed corner-cutting philosophy that led to his disastrous trade in mind as they chart their future. Don’t enter this offseason with an approach that prioritizes making the playoffs next season. For years, the Canucks have operated like an amateur investor who just downloaded Robinhood and naively thinks they can get rich right away trading options while their peers have spent years responsibly investing for the future with an actual long-term strategy.

This organization needs to etch the disappointment of seeing one of their highest-paid players as a healthy scratch in their minds as a reminder to never look for the get-rich-quick scheme again.

Maximizing OEL’s value

The Canucks will be stuck with Ekman-Larsson for a while so they may as well figure out how to put him in the best position to succeed. One of OEL’s biggest weaknesses right now is how slow he is to retrieve dump-ins. He can’t pivot and win loose puck races quickly enough to help exit the defensive zone.

How much of a head start would Ekman-Larsson need to beat Kapanen in a footrace? pic.twitter.com/AJaELIFmOT

— Cam Charron (@camcharronyvr) October 29, 2022

Ekman-Larsson’s biggest weakness just so happens to be Ethan Bear’s best asset. Cam Charron’s tracking data has proven it. Play them together, instead of expecting OEL to fit with Myers, who isn’t agile either. OEL and Bear have logged 215 five-on-five minutes together, in which they actually have a plus-two differential for shots on goal. They’ve essentially played to a stalemate in possession and scoring chances. Without Bear, Ekman-Larsson’s results are much worse.

On second thought, maybe keep them apart for the sake of team tank.

The Rick Tocchet rumours

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported Thursday that the Canucks re-engaged talks with Rick Tocchet: “The best way I can put it right now is I think it’s in the Canucks’ hands. Do they want to do it or not? I don’t think it’s imminent. I think if they make a change, it’s still probably a couple of weeks away.”

This isn’t the first nor is it probably the last time we hear a candidate thrown out as a potential successor for Boudreau, whose contract expires at the end of this season.

Tocchet, a national studio analyst for TNT, was Pittsburgh’s assistant coach during the first half of the club’s back-to-back championships under Jim Rutherford. He’s renowned for getting the most out of enigmatic personalities — in Pittsburgh, Sullivan delegated the responsibility of extracting the most out of Phil Kessel to Tocchet after he realized how great their relationship was. That could be appealing to the Canucks given their need to get more out of J.T. Miller.

After the Penguins’ first Cup win, Tocchet took over as the Coyotes’ head coach. He’s a tough, masculine leader, who can crack jokes but also play the disciplinarian role, which management could find valuable given how much they’ve criticized the club’s preparation and habits under Boudreau. Tocchet inherited a Coyotes roster with a lack of high-end talent and asked them to buy into an airtight defensive structure. They became a team that tried to grind out 2-1 wins and under Tocchet, they made the playoffs one out of four years.

Do the Canucks have the intelligent, two-way personnel necessary to excel in a tight-checking defensive environment? Would a coach like Tocchet have to change his style to adjust to the roster?

It’s also worth noting and widely believed that Tocchet and Ekman-Larsson weren’t always a great fit together in Arizona.

Patrik Allvin has every right to pick his first bench boss — moving on from Boudreau, whether it’s midseason or in the summer, is totally defensible.

Whether it’s ultimately Tocchet or somebody else, a coaching change shouldn’t be viewed as the silver bullet for fixing this team, though. Boudreau is a career .629 coach over a sample of more than a thousand games. His playoff record is flawed, but he’s one of the best you can find in terms of regular-season success. If Boudreau can’t successfully guide this Canucks team, that says more about the roster than it does him.

When the Canucks eventually pick their next coach, hopefully, they make that decision with the development of young players and a long-term vision at the forefront of their priorities.

(Photo of Ethan Bear controlling the puck against the Lightning’s Anthony Cirelli in the first period Thursday: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)