Confirmed with Link: Canucks sign F Ilya Mikheyev to 4-Year Deal ($4.75M AAV)

[tantalum]

Interesting. I still feel the opposite - like the player, think the contract is perfectly fine for a 27 year old free agent signing with no assets given up.

The process is a bit confusing to me. He's a good complement to the rest of the team and rounds out the forward group from a skillset perspective, but it sort of feels like he fell into their lap and really wanted to play in Vancouver, vs any sort of cohesive plan around his fit on the team and how the other moves (that now *need* to happen) would fall into place. Aside from needing to pull the trigger before another team signed him on Day 1 of free agency, I'm just not sure why this was the first move.

We now have the following wingers all vying for top-9 minutes:

Mikheyev
Miller/Pettersson
Boeser
Garland
Kuzmenko
Podkolzin
Pearson
Dickinson
Hoglander

Let alone the fourth line guys like Lockwood, Joshua, Dowling, etc. who will presumably be next to Lazar.

With no third line center, the same defense, and no cap space.

Unless they have a few options for destinations for at least two, if not three, of Miller, Garland, Hog, Dickinson, and/or Pearson - it seems like this signing is an overallocation of resources to an area that might not be a "strength" per se, but is certainly not the weakest. Either on the roster, or organizationally - over the next few years. the wing is really the only spot where we might see a prospect or two (Klimovich, Karlsson, Lekkerimaki) start to crack the roster. Even compared to Bo needing a new deal, we just committed to Boeser, have Garland for a few years, Pearson and Pod for another, etc. It is the strongest position we had even before this signing - maybe aside from goaltending, but even then, we have a guy with 9 NHL GP in net if Demko goes down. It's also the easiest position in the league to fill. Look what a guy like Balcers just went for.

None of this is a negative take on the signing itself as a standalone. But it makes me question management just a little bit - I'm just not sure we're going to get maximum value added to the team from this signing given how the roster is currently looking. However, a couple savvy moves to round out the stuff above could make this a high value signing.

I don’t feel it’s an egregious contract or anything just a bit much.

On the process I don’t think it matters if the player wanted to play in Vancouver etc or not. The type of player checks many of the needs boxes.

You can look at things and say oh they have a lot of wingers but they don’t have a winger like this player. They do not have a strong two way winger. They have Garland who drives play when the puck is on his stick in the offensive zone but when it isn’t he is essentially invisible. Mikehyev brings a different element that is almost completely lacking on the team and immediately becomes the best two-way winger the team has.

I don't think it’s to add to a supposed area of strength. First it’s really not a huge area of strength for the Canucks as I’m not sure as an organization they have any position that is an area of strength. However, building an area of strength in order to make a deal to address a weakness is a great way to address that weakness. So yes some bodies need to be moved but management has been up front that this is their expectation as well.

 

[TruGr1t]

True regarding his age, but he was a consistent point producer in Russia too. Maybe it took him ~100 games to adjust to North America and now he's got the hang of things in the NHL and will be performing at this level for the next few years? Again it's tough to say, but I think it's a relatively small risk and worth the potential reward.

I think age is probably the most overrated statistic on this board, overall. I think a player's career trajectory, taking age into account, is much more important, and he's a young-ish* player whose play in the NHL seems to be trending in the right direction. That is the kind of player I'd want to take a chance on if I had to sign a UFA (which I agree, would be better to not ever have to sign UFA's and always have players in the system, but what can you do.)

* I mean, 27 makes him seem like an infant compared to all the guys that Benning signed every year. Mikeyev's contract will be up by the time he's the same age Eriksson was when we signed him.

I don't disagree, this could all be true and we'll see when he skates. For me, it's really just the risk profile. If we were a perennial playoff team that was really missing this piece, I could get on board with this contract. It just seems like a drop in the bucket in terms of the Canucks' problems, and with the pending cap issues surrounding the defense and top-six, it also seems like a luxury we probably can't afford.

I mean, you look at the cap situation in 2 years and you just have to hope you can move this contract out.

 

[GreatSaveLuongo]

I'm okay with overpaying good and hardworking players rather than pay trash, this signing is alright

 

[Burke's Evil Spirit]

Those charts litterally account for Quality of team mates and competition, but go off.

They absolutely do not. They try, but they fail. The best way to see this is to look at Cedric Paquette's 20-21 chart when he was with Ottawa, and when he was with Carolina. He somehow magically transformed from a sub-replacement-level player to a 4th-line defensive stud on the flight south. Those charts are trash.

They're okay for comparing players on the same team, but that's about it.

 

[AppleHoneySauce]

They absolutely do not. They try, but they fail. The best way to see this is to look at Cedric Paquette's 20-21 chart when he was with Ottawa, and when he was with Carolina. He somehow magically transformed from a sub-replacement-level player to a 4th-line defensive stud on the flight south. Those charts are trash.

They're okay for comparing players on the same team, but that's about it.

Why are you lying? He was awful that year and slightly worse this year? He was never a defensive stud in 20-21 according to those charts.

Edit: Oh my fault i misread what you said. Disregard what i said. You are correct.

Edit 2: Wait looking at it how do you get defensive stud from his Carolina card? He is basically the same as this year which is a poor defensive 4th liner that wont accomplish much of anything.

 

[CherryToke]

Conor Garland is not great defensively. He has good defensive numbers on a useless JFresh chart because he’s playing incredibly soft offensive minutes. Bo Horvat would look like a defensive god in those minutes.

I never said he's great defensively but he's better than a guy who has a go to move of standing still in the dzone while everyone skates circles around him

 

[Nick Lang]

He's still not in the top 4 wingers here so he's still behind so many players.

I think you need to regress any single season shooting percentage heavily toward the mean, which I think is around 9-10%

Mikheyev has a career shooting percentage of 10% and averages 200 shots per 82 games. Those both seem reasonably sustainable and if so make him a 20 goal scorer. Looks like a reasonable baseline.

He’s done that playing tough minutes with relatively weak linemates too, so seems like there is more upside than downside in terms of scoring.

Agree that ideally this is the type of player you develop internally and get on a better value deal, though.

The think with Mikeyhev is he'll be playing in the top 6 for us well as we're atrocious there. BB plays Garland on the 3rd line, Podkolzin is just figuring it out and Kuzmenko hasn't played a shift in the NHL. Currently we have Boeser and Petterson/Miller as top 6 wingers and then a bunch of fillers.

 

[MS]

Those charts litterally account for Quality of team mates and competition, but go off.

They're absolute garbage.

Every player who plays soft offensive minutes is great. Every player who plays for a good team is great.

Every defender who plays high leverage minutes for a bad team is one of the worst players in the NHL.

All they do is measure effectiveness in a player's role. They're a more advanced +/- stat.

That guy thinks he's measuring WAR and the overall quality of the player. What he's actually measuring is whether a player sank or swam given the situation they were put into. They're absolutely useless without context.

Tyler Myers is a solid mid-pairing NHL defender. When he's over-leveraged and playing above his station as a top-pairing shutdown guy, he's going to struggle in those minutes on a bad team. If you put him in #5 minutes on TB, his JFresh card would looked like a goddamned superstar.

 

[Michael Dal Swolle]

They're absolute garbage.

Every player who plays soft offensive minutes is great. Every player who plays for a good team is great.

Every defender who plays high leverage minutes for a bad team is one of the worst players in the NHL.

All they do is measure effectiveness in a player's role. They're a more advanced +/- stat.

That guy thinks he's measuring WAR and the overall quality of the player. What he's actually measuring is whether a player sank or swam given the situation they were put into. They're absolutely useless without context.

Tyler Myers is a solid mid-pairing NHL defender. When he's over-leveraged and playing above his station as a top-pairing shutdown guy, he's going to struggle in those minutes on a bad team. If you put him in #5 minutes on TB, his JFresh card would looked like a goddamned superstar.

I stopped caring about those charts when I realized they had McDavid at a 0th percentile ES player (in 19-20) and Barkov at 30% the year he won the Selke, which is like 10% better than a replacement player.

 

[MS]

I stopped caring about those charts when I realized they had McDavid at a 0th percentile ES player (in 19-20) and Barkov at 30% the year he won the Selke, which is like 10% better than a replacement player.

They'll take a guy like Seth Jones - who is a pretty good #2-3 defender being mis-cast as a 26 minute/game #1 shutdown defender on bad teams - and announce he's like a 2nd percentile NHL defender. And people just blindly lap it up. It's just such total garbage.

It's the mirror reflection of dumb dinosaur hockey guys blindly taking 6'5 coke machines because they make boards go boom. Stat nerds who don't understand math just blindly taking stupid charts at face value and making terrible evaluations based on them.

 

[AppleHoneySauce]

Barkov at 30% the year he won the Selke,

Because as we all know the NHL award voters are the true arbitrators of the skill of players and never make mistakes in voting.

 

[MS]

Because as we all know the NHL award voters are the true arbitrators of the skill of players and never make mistakes in voting.

I'd take the people watching games who recognized an obvious top player as a top player over some guy doing bad math in his basement who doesn't even seem to realize that his life work isn't measuring what he thinks it's measuring.

 

[quat]

I get the sense he's a player that wants to prove he can do more and he's going to get that opportunity with the Canucks. His speed and tenacity will most certainly make for a more exciting on ice product. Shawn Matthias?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i don't know this player at all

and at first you definitely get sticker shock when you realize, hey that's what we signed dan hamhuis for and it's a four year commitment

but obviously the cost of doing business has risen over the last twelve years

and it is also definitely surprising given our glut of wingers, especially when we're so up against the cap that if a team were looking at garland, for example, they would have us a little over a barrel.

but offensively, jt miller (whose acquisition i totally hated at the time) was a similar player in similar minutes when we acquired him, a little less goals, a little more points, albeit miller was both younger and much more established. but who knows?

i'm also trying to be optimistic here. i also went into our last regime change with an open mind, but very quickly i was dismayed at the kesler trade, virtanen pick, vey trade, dorsett trade, and ryan miller signing all over a few days.

without a giant flurry of total stupidity, i'm willing to wait and see. but this signing doesn't exactly breed confidence either.

 

[MS]

i don't know this player at all

and at first you definitely get sticker shock when you realize, hey that's what we signed dan hamhuis for and it's a four year commitment

but obviously the cost of doing business has risen over the last twelve years

and it is also definitely surprising given our glut of wingers, especially when we're so up against the cap that if a team were looking at garland, for example, they would have us a little over a barrel.

but offensively, jt miller (whose acquisition i totally hated at the time) was a similar player in similar minutes when we acquired him, a little less goals, a little more points, albeit miller was both younger and much more established. but who knows?

i'm also trying to be optimistic here. i also went into our last regime change with an open mind, but very quickly i was dismayed at the kesler trade, virtanen pick, vey trade, dorsett trade, and ryan miller signing all over a few days.

without a giant flurry of total stupidity, i'm willing to wait and see. but this signing doesn't exactly breed confidence either.

I like the player but obviously would have preferred to home-grow this type of player and not pay a UFA premium.

The biggest reason I'm positive is that it - FINALLY - shows some concept of understanding the problems with this roster and this roster's construction.

I've been banging a drum for basically the last 5 years that this is a slow, soft, small ES pushover of a team. Any/every success we've had has been based on PP and goaltending. A few guys (Boeser, Garland) are pretty good but mostly it's been an endless parade of Erikssons/Gagners/Baertschis/Granlunds and this has been a team with no identity and no pushback and no ability to take the play to the opposition at ES.

Yesterday's signings were all big guys who play a heavy game and can skate. And I love that we can now throw a look at teams with two guys like Mikheyev and an improving Podkolzin at other teams in our top-9 or top-6. Something like Mikheyev-Horvat-Podkolzin would be an absolute load of a high-leverage line.

It's obviously far from a finished deal and a lot more needs to happen, but I think these signing show a positive direction.

 

[Michael Dal Swolle]

Because as we all know the NHL award voters are the true arbitrators of the skill of players and never make mistakes in voting.

92/100 professional hockey writers collectively identified Barkov as one of the top 5 defensive players that season, but we're supposed to believe he's not even in the top two thirds of the entire league and barely better than an AHL call up? The awards voters aren't infallible but this just doesn't make sense, and I'm not obligated to take a computer model seriously when it tells me nonsense just because it's theoretically based on math.

 

[MarkMM]

Because as we all know the NHL award voters are the true arbitrators of the skill of players and never make mistakes in voting.

Both can be wrong, but while NHL Awards are debatable, these metrics are laughable. (And I say this as a huge fan of analytics.)

 

[MS]

92/100 professional hockey writers collectively identified Barkov as one of the top 5 defensive players that season, but we're supposed to believe he's not even in the top two thirds of the entire league and barely better than an AHL call up? The awards voters aren't infallible but this just doesn't make sense, and I'm not obligated to take a computer model seriously when it tells me nonsense just because it's theoretically based on math.

One of my favourites here was a couple summers ago when a couple posters here were loudly proclaiming that Bo Horvat was a negative-value sub-replacement level player because this WAR website (not JFresh in this case) had told them so, when one look at the 'math' (and that's being generous to call it that) could tell you that the calculation hadn't even remotely properly adjusted for his unlucky PDO and on-ice save% that season.

 

[MS]

Both can be wrong, but while NHL Awards are debatable, these metrics are laughable. (And I say this as a huge fan of analytics.)

Analytics are great if you understand the context they are generated in.

The problem is that people are lazy and just want a number to tell them if a player is good or bad without any further investigation or understanding. And the result is that it's no different than some guy 30 years ago deciding that someone was good or bad based on his +/- stat, just with different stats and bigger sample sizes.

 

[AppleHoneySauce]

What more context? i would like to know so i can modify my understanding of the game. Quality of Competition and Teamates are both included. Time on ice is included. Whether they PP or PK is included (and their theorytical skill). What other context is needed? stop just saying "contextless" and then saying he doesn't provide context when the context you say isn't on it is right there.

 

[MS]

What more context? i would like to know so i can modify my understanding of the game. Quality of Competition and Teamates are both included. Time on ice is included. Whether they PP or PK is included (and their theorytical skill). What other context is needed? stop just saying "contextless" and then saying he doesn't provide context when the context you say isn't on it is right there.

The math when they try to put context into numbers absolutely blows.

 

[AppleHoneySauce]

The math when they try to put context into numbers absolutely blows.

k. Being serious how would you change it? Or is it just unquantifiable?

 

[m9]

This is still such a tough signing for me to get behind. The team needed a player or two like this, so I get it.

On the other hand, I hate spending this kind of money on middle-six wingers. I also won't ever get behind giving term to depth guys that we haven't seen in the city/system/etc - it goes wrong more than it goes right.

If the team can move out their glut of other wingers for positive assets & Mikheyev plays well then it starts to look a bit better. But for now, I'm not there.

 

[Zippgunn]

This one is a real crapshoot IMHO. He's scored more than 8 goals once so this seems like a ridiculous overpayment at first until you remember that we always have to go that extra mile to attract players to this franchise. He seems to have a lot of intangibles but he's also Russian which may or may not turn into a problem in the future. He could be the next Vlad Krutov. Or Artem Chubarov. Or Roman Oksiuta. Also he's an ex-Leaf which means I have to hate him, right?

 

[F A N]

You can look at things and say oh they have a lot of wingers but they don’t have a winger like this player. They do not have a strong two way winger. They have Garland who drives play when the puck is on his stick in the offensive zone but when it isn’t he is essentially invisible. Mikehyev brings a different element that is almost completely lacking on the team and immediately becomes the best two-way winger the team has.

I don't disagree with this but they key to this deal is definitely his offensive production. If he's scoring anything close to the 21 goals in 53 games pace he put up last season while providing that two way play you are talking about then yes he'll be full value. If he was playing anything like he did in 20-21 and scoring at a 7 goals in 54 game pace then f***...