Canucks mailbag: The vibes are good, plus a lingering Roberto Luongo thriller

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After a busy week that includes Roberto Luongo being added to the Ring of Honour and the Vancouver Canucks successful 4 house video games in a row, allow us to take into account two questions that handle these two massive objects from the week that was.

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Canucks followers are having fun with the trip. Their group has gained 20 instances in 30 video games this season. They’re beating groups effectively under them within the NHL standings, however these days they’ve overwhelmed some excellent squads within the Carolina Hurricanes, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers.

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I’m shopping for the vibes, sure. The fact, no. They’re making us all comfortable by enjoying method above what they really are. There’s nonetheless a playoff look of their future this season however they may want continued nice luck to get rather more than an look.

— Vibrant Burro by BlueSky

This can be a new sort of vibe: wins are one factor, they really feel good. However wins over massive groups? That’s a complete different degree.

The Canucks’ goaltending is robust and it’s going to stay so. The probabilities being given up are principally not so dangerous.

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It’s about the place issues settle with this offence. They’ll rating, there’s little question. They’ve accomplished job of discovering the additional objectives that flip the knife into the opposition, like the 2 objectives within the second interval on Thursday towards Florida, which got here after Panthers celebrity Matthew Tkachuk missed an open purpose.

These objectives, by Dakota Joshua and Brock Boeser, sealed the deal for Vancouver.

However what occurs when these objectives are a bit more durable to come back by? The gamers do appear to be studying how you can dig a bit deeper — however they, and their coach, hold noting they’ve obtained to maintain engaged on how they shut out video games.

That’s yet one more vibe — and that’s the vibe they’ll wish to trip into the playoffs.

Roberto Luongo stated Thursday the retirement versus long-term-injured-reserve (LTIR) query wasn’t his name. How was it not his name?

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— Chris J. by Twitter

That query has lingered for me too. Sadly with how the format of the information convention labored, I wasn’t capable of follow-up on the query and no different reporter who requested after sprang on the likelihood.

However ultimately, you’re left with the most-likely reply: it was virtually definitely Dale Tallon’s name as Florida Panthers common supervisor. There was a urgent want within the second for cap house as Tallon wished to signal two gamers to massive contracts: Sergei Bobrovsky, who he obtained and remains to be Florida’s goalie to at the present time, and Artemi Panarin, who signed in New York as an alternative.

By retiring, Luongo gave up on about US$3 million in actual money. If he had not formally retired, however had been dominated unable to play by docs, which appeared probably, he nonetheless would have collected the money.

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Due to how his contract was structured, his cap for the 2019-20 season would nonetheless have been about US$4.5 million. However when the Panthers made his retirement official, beneath upside-down math of the NHL’s ludicrous cap recapture system, Luongo’s contract referred to as for a penalty to be utilized to the Panthers and the Canucks’ wage cap construction, with the majority of that burden shifted to Vancouver and away from Florida.

Beneath recapture, the Panthers carried a penalty of about US$1 million on their cap by 2022. The trick was if Luongo’s contract remained energetic, they wouldn’t have been capable of slide Luongo’s deal onto LTIR till the brand new season and that will have sophisticated Tallon’s efforts to make most twin bids to Bobrovsky and Panarin.

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Certain, Tallon might have sought to commerce Luongo’s deal again to the Canucks and there’s little doubt that Vancouver would have moderately lived with Luongo’s deal on LTIR as a result of at the least there’s nonetheless cap manoeuvring you are able to do, not like the cap recapture penalty, which simply sat on the books as lifeless cash.

Or possibly they may have shovelled Luongo’s deal onward, prefer to Arizona who’ve taken on a couple of contract over time for a participant who had retired however who was nonetheless accumulating paycheques.

However they didn’t even get the prospect to strive. It’s not clear Tallon ever referred to as Vancouver to debate a deal.

What Vancouver did focus on was with the NHL. They identified to the league that many different gamers over earlier seasons had introduced retirements in all the things however identify solely. In observe it appeared cap recapture wasn’t a passionate place for the league, why else would they tolerate Henrik Zetterberg saying he couldn’t play anymore, regardless of having not missed a sport in three seasons? Regardless of the claims, to the outsider, it certain appeared just like the Detroit Pink Wings had been simply dodging round cap recapture.

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Heck, Chris Pronger labored for the NHL for 3 years whereas his enjoying contract was nonetheless energetic; not solely did the CBA prohibit such twin contracts, however there have been apparent conflicts of curiosity in him being technically an worker of a group whereas concurrently working with the division of participant security.

None of it made any sense and it definitely didn’t should be like this.

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