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Brock Boeser is coming off the best season of his career and he could be an unrestricted free agent next summer. Does a big payday loom?
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Published Aug 07, 2024 • 4 minute read
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Brock Boeser of the Vancouver Canucks. Photo by Jeff Vinnick /NHLI via Getty Images
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Brock Boeser is going to need a new contract, and until he has one, he’s going to be a topic of conversation.
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Passionate Vancouver Canucks fans know this.
Those of us who cover the team know this as well: Where there is a looming question, people will ask.
And so with this in mind, let us contemplate Boeser’s position as he enters the final year of a three-year deal that has a cap hit of $6.65 million US.
Boeser is coming off a career season. Another big year will surely land him a strong raise — but even if he doesn’t hit the 40-goal marker, which he did in 2023-24, he can still put himself in a strong negotiating position if repeats the strong overall play he showed last season.
But what comparables are there for him?
You can look around for comparables on other teams, but it’s easier to start with comparables inside his own house.
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If you are Boeser’s agent Ben Hankinson, you’re going to want to work to prove that Boeser is the third-most important forward on the team.
That’s not a hard claim to make — only two forwards played more than Boeser this past season, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson.
He was a crucial player in crunch time — indeed, when the score was tied or the Canucks were leading by one or two goals, no Canucks forward played more than Boeser.
How the Vancouver Canucks deployed their forwards by game situation in 2023-24. Photo by HockeyViz.com
That’s a sign of how much head coach Rick Tocchet has come to trust Boeser.
And given the Canucks’ results in those tough minutes — 22 of their 49 wins on the season came when being outshot — it’s also a strong comment on how much influence Boeser had on Miller’s improved defensive game.
Or so Hankinson will want to claim.
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As many are known to say inside hockey front offices, you don’t get burned by the deals other people make as much as you get burned by the deals you do yourself.
And being able to point to the big seven-year deal Miller signed two summers ago and which kicked in last season is a big positive for the Boeser camp.
Another thing: he’ll still be only 28 next summer, two years young than Miller was when his new contract started last fall. Boeser will still clearly be in his prime for the first two seasons of his new deal, something few UFA forwards are able to say.
As shown by an excellent recent analysis by Daily Faceoff, forwards don’t score from age 28 to 30 like they did from age 23 to 28, but they still score much better than forwards do from the age of 30-plus.
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The evidence backs a forward like Boeser, that he will almost certainly provide solid value for the first two years of his deal, before he faces the grim reality of time.
Daily Faceoff did identify a particular forward type that seems to be able to sustain their value as they enter their 30s, the “offensive” forward — players like Tyler Toffoli, Mats Zucarello, Alex Radulov, Paul Stastny, John Tavares, Artemi Panarin and Zach Hyman.
If you squint you can see some of Boeser in some of these forwards, but he really needs to repeat what he did this past season in the upcoming season for him to get closer to the likes of Toffoli or Hyman — but even then his track record just won’t be as strong.
And that’s the overall big thing that’s working against Boeser: for as strong as his two-way game has obviously become, he’s still not in the range of the top wingers in the game.
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Sam Reinhart scored half again as many goals as Boeser last season and he got Selke votes along the way.
Jake Guentzel inked a huge contract with Tampa Bay. He is older than Boeser and thus is more likely to see his overall value drop off, but in the near term he is likely the better player.
Boeser’s is a tricky case. As it stands, he’s the 30th-highest paid winger in the NHL. That’s the middle of the NHL’s collection of first-line wingers.
Just before him on the salary table are four players with $7 million cap hits: Anaheim’s Troy Terry, Minnesota’s Matt Boldy, Long Island’s Anders Lee and Colorado’s Gabriel Landeskog.
That’s pretty good company to be in.
The next three above them are very instructive: Kyle Connor, Clayton Keller and Jason Robertson.
Connor and Robertson are two of the game’s great wingers. Boeser could one day be in the conversation with them — but it will take work and, again, sustained play.
Add this all up, and it’s easy to see Boeser getting a raise, but hard to see him getting a big one.
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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