Confirmed with Link: Canucks sign RD Vincent Desharnais 2-Year, $2M AAV Contract

[Jerry the great]

I'm partial to Drew P. Bahls.

Rection, Hugh G

 

[VanJack]

Shaping up as one of Allvin's few UFA busts. There's been few others. Mikheyev was underwhelming after his knee injury, and was jettisoned. And the two-year extension for Kuzmenko was doomed from the start. And of course Sprong didn't last 10 games.

I guess they reasoned that Desharnais had good size; was a rare right-shot defender; and actually looked serviceable at times in Edmonton last season. But sometimes it just doesn't work out when a guy goes to another team.

But if Allvin can find a taker for the second year of Desharnais' contract then he'll have to pull some sort of Houdini deal.

 

[F A N]

Sounds like the coaches - especially Foote - were impressed with him during the playoffs and felt like they could mold him into something greater in the Canucks system.

And there's stuff there to like. I really liked him in the AHL. He's very good on the PK. I think he's a pretty high IQ player for a player of his ilk, seems like a really good guy in the room. But his footspeed on retrievals is just very limiting. Plus he's on a team where there are all kinds of similar big glass-and-out big defenders and his skillset is more redundant than it might be elsewhere.

If we'd signed him at $800k to fill the Juulsen role it would be fine. We just overspent thinking there was more upside there and it doesn't seem like there was. Or certainly there isn't really the time for him to find that upside.

I think the Desharnais we're seeing is the version Oilers fans saw two seasons ago.

The Canucks' last season were very good at defending the rush but not so this year. Defending the rush also just happens to be a weakness of Desharnais. I think in Edmonton he was actually good at retrievals but the Oilers as a whole got better defending the rush under Knoblauch. Desharnais looked good compared to other Oilers D in terms of inzone defending. But like you said, his foot speed is very limiting.

Desharnais was on an upward trajectory but at the end of the day we're talking about a small sample size. Any regression results in a defenseman who is closer to the AHL than the NHL.