VANCOUVER – The costliest loss a team can suffer in free agency is not the departure of any one player. As the Vancouver Canucks discovered in 2020, after their last breakthrough season, the most dangerous loss is a team’s identity.
That’s why Thursday’s re-signing of Dakota Joshua is important to the Canucks.
The late-blooming, 28-year-old winger with size, speed and physicality allows Vancouver to play to the identity coach Rick Tocchet demands. And Joshua is one of those “glue guys” who brings teammates closer, not only because he is amiable and inclusive but because he is capable and selfless on the ice.
There is value in Joshua beyond the four-year, $13-million extension the American signed on Thursday, less than 24 hours after the impressive offloading to Chicago of Ilya Mikheyev and 85 per cent of his salary gave the Canucks an additional $4 million of spending room under the salary cap.
The team stepped up in negotiations to get Joshua re-signed, and general manager Patrik Allvin, president Jim Rutherford and senior staff were grinding away Thursday afternoon in negotiations on the Canucks’ other unsigned players ahead of this weekend’s entry draft in Las Vegas and Monday’s opening of free agency.
“The intention was always to try and work something out with the Canucks,” Rich Evans, the Vancouver-based agent for Wasserman Hockey, told Sportsnet of Joshua. “For him, Vancouver is the fit where he knows his role, and it’s a perfect role for him. The coaching staff believes in him, and that’s an important component to this as well. At the end of the day, the thought that was first and foremost was trying to make arrangements with the Canucks to return.”
Joshua was a low-cost, low-risk gamble for the Canucks when Allvin signed him in free agency two years ago for two seasons at $825,000.
After Tocchet publicly expressed disappointment with Joshua’s conditioning at training camp last September and healthy-scratched him Nov. 2 in San Jose, the powerful left winger responded by elevating his game and becoming a key role player and penalty-killer for the Canucks while driving an effective third line alongside Teddy Blueger and Conor Garland.
Blueger, an experienced centre who sets an example in practices and games, was re-signed Wednesday to a two-year deal worth $1.8 million annually.
Despite missing 18 games late in the season due to a broken hand, injured in a fight after Garland was bulldozed by MacKenzie Entwhistle in Chicago, Joshua set career-highs with 18 goals and 32 points in 63 games. He was ninth in the NHL with 244 hits, then third in the playoffs with 74 hits despite playing only the first two rounds. Joshua had four points and four assists in 13 games during his first real Stanley Cup tournament experience.
Tocchet said it was like Joshua covered five years of development in one season.
The player was unavailable to the media on Thursday but told Sportsnet last month that he believes he still has a higher ceiling than he showed.
“The ability to see and realize my growth as a player did me well,” he said. “It gave me the confidence to eventually get to where I was at the end of the year. Just knowing what it takes and what to really expect to be a good player in this league, I’ve grown a lot in that sense. Confidence is big at this stage of my career and I do expect to build off this year and get better.”
He made it clear then that he wanted to remain with the Canucks.
Joshua’s initial signing-bonus installment of $2 million is nearly as much money as he grossed during his first five seasons as a professional. The Toronto Maple Leafs selected the six-foot-three winger from Dearborn, Mich., in the fifth round of the 2014 draft but did not sign him. After completing four years at Ohio State University, Joshua signed as a free agent with St. Louis in 2019. He made $70,000 in the minors his first season.
“When he first started his career, he spent some time in the East Coast League,” Evans said. “And now here he is playing in the playoffs, top-six minutes on a 100-point hockey club. I think he’s still got more to give here, so we’re looking forward to Canucks and him working together to do that.”
If he simply repeats what he did this season, scoring at 20-goal, 40-point clips while killing penalties as one of the league’s most physical players, Joshua’s $3.25-million cap hit will be a bargain. Of course, he must prove that the season was not an outlier and that the Canucks didn’t just commit $13 million to a fourth-line energy player.
Either way, Joshua probably could have earned more money and/or term as an unrestricted free agent. The Canucks made a sound bet on re-signing him, just as they did giving Joshua a chance two years ago to prove himself at the NHL level.
It was only four years ago, after the Canucks’ emergence from the abyss of their rebuild with a three-round run in the pandemic playoffs in Edmonton, that the team was crushed in free agency by the departures of Chris Tanev, Tyler Toffoli, Jacob Markstrom and Troy Stecher.
It wasn’t the salary-cap value of any one player that former GM Jim Benning miscalculated, although he did mishandle negotiations on Toffoli, but the overall impact on the Canucks’ leadership group and team identity.
In this regard, Joshua was an important re-signing, as was Blueger. And it’s why the Canucks should do everything they can to bring back physical defenceman Nikita Zadorov and respected leader Tyler Myers ahead of Monday’s deadline.
