Pressure's on slumping Mikheyev to start producing for Canucks

Bob Frid/USA TODAY Sports

Our friend Patrick Johnston wrote a piece for The Province Friday blaming it on Tucker Poolman’s contract. And, yes, minus that poison pill from the Jim Benning era, the Vancouver Canucks’ salary cap predicament would be better.

But there’s another guy screwing up their cap, and this one is of their own doing.

Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin had to have Ilya Mikheyev. Despite needing defencemen and centres more urgently, their first free-agent signing was the Russian winger for four years and $4.75 million per season in July 2022.

And so on Friday at the NHL trade deadline, the Canucks were capped out and missed out. Couldn’t get that top-six winger they coveted. Couldn’t get that right-side defenceman.

Heck, didn’t even get depth players.

The good news is that Mikheyev has looked better over the last week, as well he should playing with J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser.

I like the makings of that line since Boeser requires a defensive presence on his opposite flank (Miller occasionally does as well), and preferably a guy with speed. Mikheyev’s ACL injury of last season has robbed him of the electric speed that was his calling card, and while the surgery wasn’t to his failing hands, it does give him some reason to explain sagging production.

Still, no goals in 34 games after netting 10 in his first 28 has us rightfully wondering: how much Mikheyev can contribute in the playoffs? Especially since he’s now played 62 games, eight more than his previous career-high, with still 16 regular season games left before the postseason.

That $4.75 million in cap space could be better deployed. And Mikheyev’s slump prevented Canucks management from doing more at the deadline, including trading him out for a better winger.

I hear Poolman’s contract, and I hear Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s buyout, as cap culprits. But let’s not forget Mikheyev, and minus those deadline additions, the pressure is on him to live up to his deal.

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