I say that because he has been the third pairing primarily since last season. Look at which defensemen he spent the most time playing with at 5v5 last year:
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or as summarized by pairing:
Pairing | Player | Teammate | TOI Myers | TOI T | TOI tog | TOI % w |
1st Pair | Myers | Hughes | 938.95 | 989.03 | 170.90 | 18.2% |
2nd Pair | Myers | Edler/Schmidt | 938.95 | 1766.72 | 293.35 | 31.2% |
3rd Pair | Myers | Benn/Juolevi/Rathbone | 938.95 | 794.66 | 461.21 | 49.1% |
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Looking ahead at this next season—it sure looks like he is destined to play on the third pairing again.
He won't play on the first pairing. Consider that Hughes rarely ever played away from Hamonic last season. 80% of Hamonic's 5v5 ice time was alongside Hughes. And in those instances when Hughes did player with Myers—their corsi was a whole 9 points lower than (46%) than when Hughes played with Hamonic (53%).
It's unlikely that he'll play on the second pairing either.
As Thomas Drance already dived into this off-season—Tucker Poolman is the front runner to play alongside OEL next year—and Myers is not a great stylistic match for the match-up role that will probably be given to the OEL pairing.
Poolman’s speed is likely to be important because it seems pretty obvious that Poolman will be the front-runner to play in a matchup role for Vancouver on Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s right side.
Here’s the way to think about it. Obviously, you start with Hughes and Hamonic, because it’s clear the Canucks like that pair. Hamonic logged roughly 80 percent of his five-on-five ice time with Hughes last season and there’s no reason to think that’ll change.
Whether it’s Olli Juolevi or Jack Rathbone at left defence, both of them played most frequently with Tyler Myers last season. Lots of folks expect Myers to be the guy to play with Ekman-Larsson, but typically he hasn’t been Vancouver’s first-choice matchup defender. Myers tends to play a lot at five-on-five, but last season he actually played against the oppositions top lines at a rate below league average and dealt with the softest overall competition among all regular Canucks defenders (minimum 437 minutes at five-on-five):
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You have to think of this as sort of like a logic games puzzle. If the Canucks are going to prefer Ekman-Larsson in toughs than Hughes and Rathbone (or Juolevi or Brad Hunt), and they will, then they’re obviously not going to match Ekman-Larsson with the right-handed defender that they’ve avoided playing in a shutdown role scrupulously.
That leaves Poolman, the right-handed defender with the sort of wheels to help offset Ekman-Larsson, and his declining mobility, who also played toughs for the Jets regularly last season:
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Honestly, this one isn’t just obvious, it seems relatively clear to me that these particular features of Poolman’s game — his size, his right-handed shot, his mobility, his experience in a matchup role — were major reasons the club targeted him. And made sure it won the bidding for his services.
Fundamentally, it comes down to calibration. I might not rate Poolman at the rate the Canucks signed him, but they’re betting that he can pair with Ekman-Larsson on a pair that can be more than the sum of its parts. It’s the same bet, really, that the club is placing on Hughes and Hamonic.
If the right side of the Canucks’ defence is the team’s obvious weakness on paper, fit and calibration are what the club is betting can offset that.
That leaves Myers to the third pairing again with either Rathbone, Hunt, or Juolevi. Which as I alluded to in my original post, is not role where a team ought to most efficiently spend $6.0m under the salary cap.
And given the Canucks new motivation this off-season to trade away inefficient contracts—Tyler Myers ought to be the player that we consider most likely to be on the trade block.