Vancouver Canucks would be foolish to sell low on Soucy
J.T. Miller is gone but trade rumours persist for the Vancouver Canucks.
Elias Pettersson is reportedly off the trade block (for now, anyway), but a new name has popped up in reports. Carson Soucy is apparently available, with both Elliotte Friedman and Rick Dhaliwal mentioning his name on Tuesday.
After enjoying an excellent first season in Vancouver, Soucy has struggled mightily in year two. The 30-year-old blueliner went from playing matchup minutes against Connor McDavid in the playoffs to being a healthy scratch on Sunday.
Instead of playing top-four minutes like the Canucks banked on coming into this season, Soucy played just 13:45 in a third-pair role on Tuesday.
“I know I’ve got more to give, especially coming from last year. I think just a tough start has led to not my best play,” Soucy told reporters after practice on Wednesday. “[I need to] get that confidence, get that aggressiveness back.”
Among Canucks regulars, the native of Viking, Alberta, ranks last in plus-minus (-15) and Corsi (42.47 CF%) and second-last in expected goals (43.55 xGF%) per Natural Stat Trick.
So you can understand why Canucks management might be happy to let Soucy go. And if Vancouver gets a good offer for him, by all means, pull the trigger on a trade.
But what will offers actually look like for Soucy, whose value is lower than it has been in years?
The Ian Cole decision and recency bias
The name of the game for a general manager isn’t trading the players who are struggling the most; it’s figuring out who’s on a downward trajectory and who is likely to bounce back.
The Ian Cole example should serve as a warning.
Rather than bring back the 35-year-old veteran, Cole signed with Utah in free agency on a one-year, $3.1 million contract. Cole was coming off a dreadful playoff performance, in which he was banged up and playing on his off-side.
Predictably, Cole has bounced back, playing 20:54 a night in Utah. He’s not a flashy player, but he’s a big part of their impressive penalty kill this season.
And certainly, he’s giving Utah more bang for their buck than Vincent Desharnais did for the Canucks on a two-year contract worth $2 million per season.
The case for keeping Soucy
Soucy is under contract for this season and next at a $3.25 million cap hit, so there would be some cap savings by trading him.
But the price for defencemen in free agency isn’t going down. The salary cap is set to shoot up from $88 million to $95.5 million next season and $113.5 million by 2027-28.
The Canucks also aren’t in cap hell anymore, with PuckPedia projecting Vancouver having $12.25 million in trade deadline cap space. So they can easily afford to keep him.
Rookie defender Elias Pettersson has drawn rave reviews, but the 20-year-old has appeared in just four NHL games in sheltered minutes. It’s probably too early to bank on him as an everyday player at this stage. They have Derek Forbort, though he’s often injured and set to be an unrestricted free agent in the summer.
But there is more competition for minutes than there was a couple of months ago.
“You gotta be ready to fight for your spot in the lineup, you gotta elevate your play, and that’s something I gotta do,” Soucy said.
The addition of Marcus Pettersson changes things in that it clearly pushes Soucy to the third pair, but that’s not a bad thing. The Canucks don’t exactly have an embarrassment of riches on the back end after Quinn Hughes.
The best solution here is also the most boring one: stay patient.
The 6-foot-5 defender thrived in Rick Tocchet’s system before, and he was solid the previous two years with the Seattle Kraken. A reduced role should help Soucy settle in and rediscover his confidence.
If he bounces back, you’ve got a high-end third-pair defenceman with great size that you can use on the penalty kill and in matchup minutes.