Vancouver Canucks: Etem Waived, Skille to Be Signed
The Vancouver Canucks have set their opening night roster ahead of Saturday’s season opener against the Calgary Flames.
The debate over who will start with the Vancouver Canucks has finally come to an end as the Vancouver Canucks appear to have set their opening night roster ahead of Tuesday’s 11 AM deadline.
Forwards Tuomo Ruutu and Emerson Etem did not make the roster in favour of Jack Skille and Brendan Gaunce. On defense, Troy Stecher will be starting the year in Utica while Nikita Tryamkin remains with the big club. In goal, they will be going with a tandem of Ryan Miller and Jacob Markstrom. Anton Rodin will be starting the year in Vancouver as well, but is currently rehabbing from a knee injury.
Most of these moves aren’t very questionable. Richard Bachman was never going to make the Canucks, so it makes sense he would go to Utica. Nikita Tryamkin has a European assignment clause and that alone gave him an edge over Stecher. Stecher will be logging top-two minutes in Utica which he likely would not get here. Ruutu had a decent camp, but didn’t really do anything to separate himself from the rest of the group. Gaunce, on the other hand, had an impressive showing in camp and showed all sorts of improvements from the player we saw in 20 games last year.
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That only leaves the decision to waive Etem and keep Skille. Etem did not have a good camp by any stretch of the imagination while Skille knocked everyone’s socks off. However, with the injury to Rodin, a player like Etem becomes more valuable than Skille. With Etem, you’re getting a guy that still has offensive potential, even though he hasn’t shown it at the NHL level. In Skille, you get a guy who does everything right for a bottom-six forward but doesn’t really have a lot of offensive upside.
If Rodin was healthy, Etem would have been on waivers in order to keep Gaunce around and there wouldn’t be much to question about the decision. However, with Rodin injured you could keep Etem and Gaunce, at least for the time being. Instead the Canucks elect to waive Etem and keep a 29-year-old Skille who has 38 goals in 313 NHL games.
Skille deserves an NHL contract after his camp with the Canucks. However, it should not be with the Canucks and it should not be coming at the expense of Etem. Now Canucks fans need to hope that Etem’s lacklustre showing in camp is enough to scare the other 29 NHL teams away so they can get him down to the American Hockey League’s Utica Comets.
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