Canucks connection to worst contracts agreed in free agency so far

A few days ago we wrote about an article by the Daily Faceoff, where they shared their opinion on the best contracts signed so far in free agency. This included an honourable mention for the deal the Canucks agreed with Vincent Desharnais.

In our humble opinion, we consider the Desharnais deal one of the best in free agency full stop. (A sneaky good/underrated signing if you will.) In any event, the Daily Faceoff has also written an article listing the worst contracts signed so far in free agency.

Now we’re happy to report that the list doesn’t include any by the Canucks, which we assumed it wouldn’t anyway. We’ve already stated that we give general manager Patrik Allvin and the rest of the front office a B+ for the way they’ve handled the offseason so far.

However, despite the Daily Faceoff‘s Scott Maxwell not listing any deals agreed by the Canucks themselves, there’s still a connection between the organisation and a couple of the names on the list. More specifically, we’re talking about Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov.

Beginning with Lindholm, he was one of four players given an honourable mention on Maxwell’s list. In one respect, it’s conceded that he was one of the best centre options available on the market, meaning the Boston Bruins had to do what it took to fill a major need on their roster.

On the other hand though, it led to the Bruins having to overpay for Lindholm, especially with other teams similarly interested, hence seven years at $7.5 million per season. In respect of the Canucks, Sportsnet‘s Elliotte Friedman had indicated they were ‘only’ prepared to go as high as $7 million per season, also for seven years.

As we wrote at that time, Lindholm wasn’t worth as much as he believed he was, especially with him coming off arguably his worst season since 2017-18 and now about to turn 30. Maxwell added to this in his article, by noting the player’s dip in production these past two seasons in general.

Turning to Zadorov, he makes the Daily Faceoff‘s list of the five worst free agency contracts signed, at six years and $5 million annually. In short, Maxwell says the Bruins have overpaid for the blue-liner and it will hamper them in the long run.

As one of the top available defencemen on the open market, it was always accepted that Zadorov was going to receive an increase on his expiring deal which had an annual cap hit of $3.75 million. However, it clearly got to a point that even though the Canucks had an interest in bringing him back, they couldn’t — or wouldn’t — offer him what he wanted.

In fairness, we don’t consider $5 million per season to be that bad, so we suspect this is more about the length of the deal. And at six years, we don’t blame the Canucks for not wanting to match this.

Overall, if we’re honest we would have had Zadorov as one of the honourable mentions and Lindholm as one of the main bad free agency contracts. Regardless, this reinforces our opinion that the Canucks did the right thing in letting both players walk, as they focus on a younger roster capable of contending for the long-term.