Confirmed with Link: Canucks sign F Jake DeBrusk to 7-Year, $5.5M AAV Contract

[racerjoe]

I actually like this... I think this is cap rising NHL... while the term seems like it sucks, I think the cap rises enough where this is a nothing contract in 3 years. Plus as others have said, look at the other deals... ugh for so many of them, just with the age difference.

 

[lawrence]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1807815240526028926

https://x.com/i/web/status/1765885104197353793

https://x.com/i/web/status/1765885104197353793

 

[sting101]

29th in goals per 60 the last 3yrs 5v5.
Plays on the inside is good around the net and is fast

 

[Cancuks]

I want to see Garland playing in the top 6 and Joshua and Sherwood together on a smash mouth third line.

 

[orcatown]

Contract is too long and too high. Runs hot and cold and Boston has beeen trying to move him for years. Often put in high scoring positions in Boston to increase his value in trade and pretty obvious Boston was not making a serious effort top get him back.

Seems to me Canucks were set on Guentzel but lost out on him and then scrambbled and over-paid to get de Brusk. Ended up over-terming and over-paying.

Maybe (big maybe) the deal ages well if cap keeps going up but at the moment have a very mid level player at high price.

Agree team is way better off, overall. with Zadorov rather than de Brusk.

Team gets hell of lot smaller.

Probably dumb to reply to your own post but rethinking this all day and think original reaction was too pessimistic and reflected more my regret with losing Zadorov. Do see a fit with Tocchet approach as number suggest a good two way game and de Brusk has shown he can get to the net. I'd say a lot better than many of our forwards. Can see some Garland like comparisons

To me, far from a slam dunk, but enough of a implicit value bet to take a chance here.

 

[Shareefruck]

I love Hog and believe he has more to show, but he shot at 20% last season. That's not sustainable.

The point of that post wasn't to suggest that I think Hoglander's a superstar, the point was to suggest that I think it's pointless/silly to draw too many conclusions from such a stat comparison.

 

[Scumbag Frank]

Lots of net front goals, some tip ins, and goals from in tight, especially on the power play. A lot of these goals look like the types of goals that Boeser scores these days so I'd think it'd be better to put DeBrusk with Pettersson rather than Miller/Boeser.
Looks very fast and can score rush goals too, so probably better off with EP there too.

Not a lot of east-west passing plays in his game it looks like. Very straight-line direct player who does everything at speed

 

[Cancuks]

Does anyone remember the rumor that Canucks were going to flip Lindholm at the deadline to the Bruins for Debrusk? I guess this signing probably proves it was a thing.

 

[Hammer79]

This takes him until he's 34, so it's not like we are buying up a bunch of high risk years by going 7 here. Vancouver has better C depth than Boston had last year, he could post well past 30g playing mostly on JT Miller's and EP's wings.

 

[F A N]

Probably dumb to reply to your own post but rethinking this all day and think original reaction was too pessimistic and reflected more my regret with losing Zadorov. Do see a fit with Tocchet approach as number suggest a good two way game and de Brusk has shown he can get to the net. I'd say a lot better than many of our forwards. Can see some Garland like comparisons

To me, far from a slam dunk, but enough of a implicit value bet to take a chance here.

There's a recent trend of big game/fish hunting but for many years it's been seen as prudent to surround your star players with good players on good contracts. Could we use a 4th star player up front? Yes. But more importantly we need our big 3 up front to be our big 3 up front + Hughes + Demko. It's too bad that Kuzmenko didn't work out here.

Given that we got rid of Kuzmenko and Mik, and unable to re-sign Lindholm or add Guentzel, DeBrusk is as good of a turnaround addition as any. He's also a guy with a ton of playoff experience.

 

[F A N]

Loui Ericsson was originally from Dallas, then had decent success in Boston.
Ericsson knew what he was doing, guy cashed in.

I'm not just talking about Eriksson. I'm talking about other players as well. Former Bruins that actually worked out had some distance between their time in Boston and their time in Vancouver (e.g. Geoff Courtnall and Anson Carter). Lazar, Studnicka, Eriksson, Bartkowski, Halak, Schaller etc. all weren't good acquisitions.

 

[VanJack]

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

 

[Sophos]

Lots of net front goals, some tip ins, and goals from in tight, especially on the power play. A lot of these goals look like the types of goals that Boeser scores these days so I'd think it'd be better to put DeBrusk with Pettersson rather than Miller/Boeser.
Looks very fast and can score rush goals too, so probably better off with EP there too.

Not a lot of east-west passing plays in his game it looks like. Very straight-line direct player who does everything at speed

I mean this with all due respect, but listening to that video gave me a f***ing stroke. I'm glad Jack retired, jesus.

Excited about Debrusk, though. As long as he can leverage the skill of Pettersson/Miller, I'm confident we'll see a superb, all-situations forward come to the fore over the next few years.

 

[Big zZz]

There's a recent trend of big game/fish hunting but for many years it's been seen as prudent to surround your star players with good players on good contracts. Could we use a 4th star player up front? Yes. But more importantly we need our big 3 up front to be our big 3 up front + Hughes + Demko. It's too bad that Kuzmenko didn't work out here.

Given that we got rid of Kuzmenko and Mik, and unable to re-sign Lindholm or add Guentzel, DeBrusk is as good of a turnaround addition as any. He's also a guy with a ton of playoff experience.

Seems to be a theme with the players we signed today. All have playoff experience.

 

[Ladyfan]

Good luck to him and good luck to you all when his number one fan starts posting over here.

It is not me. I would have rather the Bs kept Danton Heinen.

I like Jake but am not sad he is gone. He can be very good but also is so inconsistent that he drove me nuts.

IMO, he pouts if he isn't on the top line and needs players to make him better.

He was one of the better players for the Bs in the playoffs but if they had gotten past round 2 who knows.

He seems like a good kid but a bit odd. I wish him well and hope Vancouver is a good fit for him

 

[kanucks25]

A couple years ago I never thought he'd get a deal like this but he's rounded out his game quite well.

Been a whipping boy for a lot of Boston fans for most of his career but seems like a lot of them wouldn't have minded keeping him now which anecdotally suggests he's turned it around a bit.

He had his best year last season in which he paced for 64 points playing alongside Bergeron and Marchand for the most part. Took a step back this season but played mostly with Coyle and a down-season Marchand, and was strong in the playoffs. So if with a better center like Pettersson, he ends up being somewhere in the middle (55 points) while being good defensively, this will be a fine signing.

Definitely a UFA contract, I don't know if there's any surplus value here unless he and Pettersson find some insane chemistry or something. This signing kind of has a Mikheyev feel to it where he checks all the boxes on paper but don't exactly know what to expect in practice. Although, to be fair, Mikheyev was very effective pre-surgery and his story here could have been very different had it not been for that injury.

 

[Grumbler]

This is risky.

 

[Soups On]

30-30 this year while being an elite PKer. Playing with Petey will do wonders for him. Love that Debrusk is such a threat on the PK.
Debrusk, Suter, Bleuger, Joshua, PDG, Miller, Pettersson - all of these guys can PK well and having depth there goes a loooong way. Makes life for Demko easier and the team absolutely needs Demko at full capacity in the playoffs.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

when everything is perfect in his world he'll actually show up and put in effort on the ice. but if his coffee is too cold or someone gives him a dirty look on the street he's gonna pout and be a floater out there

 

[sandwichbird2023]

He’s the kind of player that is useful, coaches will love him, and his cap hit will be fine going forward. The term doesn’t bother me as he’ll be 34 when it’s over. There’s a good chance he actually provides full value. He also seems to be a good locker room guy and wants to be in Western Canada.

My main complaint is I’d rather use that cap space on an actual true goal scorer.

Sure, but who was available though? Reinhart and Guentzel never even made it to UFA, and I don't want anything to do with Stamkos' or Marchassault's contract. Perron is old. Tocchet probably wouldn't like Duclair's game. There isn't much else.

Unless you are thinking of the trade market, but aside from Laine, who is even available?

I actually really like this signing. A prime-age 20ish goal scorer that brings speed, forecheck, and PK utilities is very valuable for this team. Sure he can be inconsistent, but if he was consistent he would've been a 30ish goal scorer looking for $7.5m+. He has always seem to be uncomfortable in Boston, probably due to the pressure of being the only NHL player from that 2015 first round for the Bruins. I'm not sure what happened behind the scene but it was enough for him to ask for a trade out at one point. I wouldn't be surprised if he has more to give in a more stable situation.

We were able to dump Mikheyev's 2 x $4.75m contract in a $87m cap world for a 2nd rounder, if the last couple years JDB becomes a cap dump in a $100m+ cap world, I'm sure it won't be the end of the world, so the 7 years term doesn't scare me. He would only be 32-34 by year 6-7 of the contract, so he won't be ancient and shouldn't be unplayable.

 

[Regal]

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

Both terms are the same and Guentzel is only 2 years older than DeBrusk. It’s also 60% more money, not double, but Guentzel has averaged over 70% more production in the playoffs. Both their AAVs are pretty decent for their value imo

 

[TruGr1t]

According to Drance, DeBrusk was their primary target all along:

The Canucks never attempted to trade for Jake Guentzel’s signing rights.

While Canucks brass loves the player and would’ve found a way to make it work if Guentzel had made it to free agency, and been open to coming out West, the club was concerned with how adding a $9-$10 million cap hit to the books might impact the team’s balance. All along they preferred the younger, more affordable option of Jake DeBrusk to punch up their top-six forward group.

Obviously the Canucks kept a tight lid on information surrounding their intentions in free agency, to the point of breaking nearly all of their own signings themselves, but multiple team sources indicated to The Athletic once the dust settled on Monday that one of the reasons Vancouver didn’t try to trade for Guentzel’s rights is that DeBrusk was their primary top-six forward target all along.

 

[Jerry the great]

Sure, but who was available though? Reinhart and Guentzel never even made it to UFA, and I don't want anything to do with Stamkos' or Marchassault's contract. Perron is old. Tocchet probably wouldn't like Duclair's game. There isn't much else.

Unless you are thinking of the trade market, but aside from Laine, who is even available?

I actually really like this signing. A prime-age 20ish goal scorer that brings speed, forecheck, and PK utilities is very valuable for this team. Sure he can be inconsistent, but if he was consistent he would've been a 30ish goal scorer looking for $7.5m+. He has always seem to be uncomfortable in Boston, probably due to the pressure of being the only NHL player from that 2015 first round for the Bruins. I'm not sure what happened behind the scene but it was enough for him to ask for a trade out at one point. I wouldn't be surprised if he has more to give in a more stable situation.

We were able to dump Mikheyev's 2 x $4.75m contract in a $87m cap world for a 2nd rounder, if the last couple years JDB becomes a cap dump in a $100m+ cap world, I'm sure it won't be the end of the world, so the 7 years term doesn't scare me. He would only be 32-34 by year 6-7 of the contract, so he won't be ancient and shouldn't be unplayable.

The difference between DeBrusk this year and DeBrusk in 22/23 (when he scored at a 35g/82 clip) is what I've been looking at and two things stood out:

skating data was weaker this year

HD shots/GP were down massively to .89 in 23/24 vs 1.38 in 22/23

Not sure there's much to be gleaned from the skating data.

Re HDS generation: one big difference this year vs last is QOT. He went from playing mostly with Bergeron as his ES C, to playing mostly with Coyle....which probably isn't a positive. If Debrusk goes more aggressively to the net, we probably have the distributors to get him the puck there a lot.

He was not really a primary target of mine leading up to the frenzy, but all things considered I don't mind the signing for the same reasons a lot of others have already talked about (digestible cap hit, age, utility, abrasiveness, speed). I do think there may be a decent sized sliver of hope for upside if he meshes well with Pettersson. I can absolutely see him working well with Miller and Boeser. Or Garland.

I really like the work Alvin did yesterday. Brought in a lot of guys that have (at least on paper) a lot of 2 way utility and grit. Lots of interesting line combos seem plausible.

I love the idea of going into the season without being in the LTIR penalty box.

 

[I am toxic]

Love the age, don’t mind the cap or the term, I think it’s a pretty decent deal.

Looks like this was Plan B

Going from "ran out of time" to both a Plan A and a Plan B (and no doubt a Plan C) is too much, Canucks fans have never warranted such fortune.

The Hockey Gods will make sure Canucks fans pay, and pay dearly.

 

[I am toxic]

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

Canucks are getting DeBrusk in what should be the prime of his NHL career.....unlike Guentzel, who got a much longer term at almost double the money in Tampa.

Is Guentzel 'twice as good' as DeBrusk? If playoff scoring is any indication, I don't think so.

I would like this post twice, but the mods won't let me like anything more than once.

Mods, can you fix that? No, I won't promise to be nicer if you do, there is nothing in it for you. Just thought I'd ask anyway.