Three clues that Thomas Drance doesn’t know WTF he’s talking about

First let me make an admission. I don’t subscribe to The Athletic. I tried it for a while because I appreciate good sportswriting, but I cancelled my free subscription because its Canucks correspondents then included J.D. Burke, the former head blogger at Anti-Canucks Army. The Athletic has since dropped him, but Thomas Drance isn’t much better. Why should I pay to read his whinings when I can read the better-informed and more well-reasoned Iain MacIntyre for free? Imac is an old pro, which is a dying breed in local sports journalism. The recent shuttering of TSN 1040 was another major loss for well-informed sports journalism in Vancouver. In its place what we have are a bunch of bawling bloggers all singing from the same song sheet.

Their brand of pack journalism was never more on display than when Canucks GM Jim Benning faced the Zoom cameras with his first press conference of the season on Friday. Can you blame the embattled executive for being camera shy given how much abuse he suffers whenever he dares to answer press questions? It doesn’t matter how honest he is or how right he is, he will be vilified by Vancouver’s sports media, which unfortunately now seems to consist of little more than a few bloggers. I did my best, as a devoted Benningbro, to parry their thrusts on Twitter using the hashtag #thankyoujim. I even managed to get muted by the socialist Burke, who first called me an idiot for daring to disagree with him. But then I saw some praising Drance’s column “Canucks can’t afford Jim Benning’s patient, passive approach ahead of a crucial trade deadline” as a major takedown. “Drancer nails this, on every level,” wrote Farhan Lalji of TSN and NWSS. I figured I’d better give it a read, so I got a friend who is a subscriber to copy the piece for me. Nailed it? C’mon. More like pulverized his thumbs in trying. Drance made so many errors that his credibility with me is almost gone. How was he wrong? Let me count the ways. 

The Canucks plan to prioritize extension talks with 28-year-old middle-six stalwart Tanner Pearson over the five weeks ahead of the NHL trade deadline while saving the more formative extension talks with their core 22- and 21-year-old superstars Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson for after the deadline. This is exactly backwards, but that’s fitting.

Whether Pearson is worth extending or not, the time to deal with him is now with the trade deadline looming. If an extension in the range of $2.5-3 million can be agreed, Bo’s left winger might well be worth keeping. Pearson is making $3.75 million at the moment, so that would mean taking a pay cut, but this projection has him worth $2.65 million. He has fit in well on the captain’s port side. That spot may go long-term to Vasili Podkolzin, who may join the team from the KHL this season, but he might best be started in the Bottom 6 and work his way up. Then again, Hoglander started on the second line and that has worked out well. The time to deal with extending RFAs like Hughes and Pettersson is in the offseason. It would be prudent to see what the market is like before even making them an offer. The black hole that is team revenues this season makes it unlikely that teams will be throwing around Big Bucks on July 28. Offer sheets to RFAs will be almost out of the question. When they see what kind of deals are being signed, Hughes and Pettersson will likely opt for bridge deals until the economy improves and the salary cap increases. This is something the tiny, private Drancer fails to take into account in making his next big blunder of assertion.

Pettersson, Hughes and Thatcher Demko are going to see their compensation increase by a factor of 10, year over year, this offseason.

That would mean Demko will be pulling down $12 million next season, while Pettersson and Hughes make $9.25 million. That would eat up all of the $27 million the Nux have coming off the books after this season, and more. Sorry, Drancer. That’s not how it works. Even in a normal season, salaries go up more gradually, except in exceptional cases. These three players are just finishing their first contracts. None even has arbitration rights. Demko is only in his second NHL season. He shows great promise, but he is not yet a made man. His predecessor, Jacob Markstrom, went from making $1.4 million in the last year of his second contract to $1.5 and $1.6 million in his third deal. Demko should get a nice raise, depending on term, but will likely take up no more than $2 million of next season’s salary cap. Hughes is hampered by his status as a 10.2(c) RFA because he played fewer than 10 games in his first season, which means he is not eligible to receive offers from other teams. Pettersson is, but the Canucks can match any offer he gets or else opt for lush draft choice compensation. The projection I referenced earlier predicts that Pettersson will sign for $7.9 million, which I think is a bit high unless it comes with a bit of term, while Hughes gets $5.8 million and Demko $2.4 million. That adds up to $16.1 million instead of more than $30 million, as Drance asserts. That will leave more than $10 million to re-sign the Canucks’ other free agents, including Edler, Juolevi, Gaudette, and Hamonic. 

But the third and fatal blunder Drance makes in his failed takedown of Benning is what makes it instead a face-plant of his own. He’s back after Pearson. “Hearing Benning discuss a possible Pearson extension on Friday — leaving aside the way Benning sacrificed his own club’s leverage in those talks with his commentary — is an insult to the intelligence of hockey fans in the Vancouver market. Pearson is a good, reliable professional. But he doesn’t in any way move the needle for this club.” That’s his opinion, and he’s entitled to it. I happen to disagree, having come to see Pearson’s value. But it is in next urging the Canucks to trade not just Pearson but all of the team’s other pending UFAs that Drance demonstrates his lack of understanding how the system works. 

Dealing Pearson should be a no-brainer for any front office thinking critically about what this team needs and when. Same goes for Brandon Sutter. And Travis Hamonic. And Jordie Benn. And Alex Edler. These deals are going to be complicated, though. They’re going to require the Canucks to retain salary.

No, they won’t. This is why trade deadline deals are often popular with teams looking to make a Cup run. They can be expensive, as the Canucks found out in acquiring Tyler Toffoli last year, but they don’t affect the salary cap much. While teams may be constrained by the cap throughout the season, by the time the trade deadline comes around most of player salaries have been paid. NHL players, to the surprise of many, do not draw salary during the playoffs and are instead playing for a share of Cup bonuses. No, Drancer, these deals are not going to be complicated, and they’re not going to require the Canucks to retain salary. Even if they did, it wouldn’t be much.

By now you might be wondering just who on earth Thomas Drance is. A graduate of the University of Toronto (2009), he worked as a tour bus guide and in a law clerk’s office before turning to blogging. He excelled, rising by 2015 to head the nine-website Nation Network . . . er, empire. He was then hired by the PR department of the NHL Florida Panthers, but that didn’t last long. We’ll let him tell that story. So now he's back to bedevil Jim Benning. That’s OK, because he’s fair game. But even a so-called journalist should strive to at least ensure that their analysis is based on fact, not fancy. Those of us who have followed the Canucks for the past half century well realize that this is perhaps the club’s most talented team ever. Benning should be praised for putting it together. We have watched for too many years while the team’s leadership squandered draft choices on scrubs. It is so refreshing to see the opposite for a change.

So you can count me in with Earl from Mission and Bud Poile over at Canucks Army. Keep up the good work, and #thankyoujim. Drancer . . . not so much.