Right-shot defencemen, centres surely to be high on Canucks shopping list

Vancouver Canucks/Twitter

Can you lend a hand, man?

And in the Vancouver Canucks’ case, make it the right hand.

A few stories out there about handedness, which illustrate how far the Canucks must still go.

First, Daniel Wagner from Pass it to Bulis, who points out that all four NHL conference finalists have drafted a right-shot defenceman.

Now Cal Foote, Evan Bouchard, and Braden Schneider aren’t yet difference makers for their teams, but Cale Makar sure is for the Colorado Avalanche. Still think the Canucks had Makar as their best player available at the 2017 draft. He went one pick before Elias Pettersson.

Sounds like #Canucks may have taken Makar over Pettersson if he was still available. "That would have been a hard, hard decision."

— Rob Williams (@RobTheHockeyGuy) June 24, 2017

As Wagner points out, the Canucks have not drafted a right-handed defenceman in the first round since Brad Ference in 1997. And with pick 15 this year, they’ll likely miss out on the two best righties in this year’s class (David Jiricek and Simon Nemec), both of whom should be gone in the top-10 picks.

So unless the Canucks dive into the John Klingberg or Kris Letang sweepstakes, getting that top-pair righty to play with Quinn Hughes will likely require some sort of trade.

Canucks Army wrote about Nick Jensen, Colin Miller, and Connor Clifton as other UFA options, but they’re not likely long-term solutions.

When you look at the availability both at the draft and on the free agent market, you can understand why our Jeff Paterson says the Canucks must solve the right-shot defence problem in a J.T. Miller trade.

Now to right-shot centre, where Rob Simpson of Vancouver Hockey Now points out that Vincent Trocheck and Miller once played together on a gold-medal winning US junior squad. He does so because Trocheck is a right-hand centre set to hit the free agent market, and there aren’t many like him for a Canucks team that does not have one single right-shot pivot.

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7 right-shot centres Canucks could target this offseason

Trocheck was also one of seven right-shot centres Trevor Beggs outlined as potential Canucks targets for Daily Hive.

Miller, Pettersson, Horvat — even Lammikko and Dickinson… all lefties.

The righty UFA crop is headlined by Patrice Bergeron, who is expected to retire, and Claude Giroux, who is out the Canucks’ price and age range. Next up is Ryan Strome of the Rangers and Calle Jarnkrok of the Flames.

The Canucks could well get a right-shot centre in the draft, but he’d be unlikely to play next year.

All in all, this summer may well be an exercise in trading for right-handedness at two positions.