The Vancouver Canucks’ roster seems to change on an almost daily basis.
This is by design. Throughout the season, the Canucks have shuttled players between their NHL roster and their AHL affiliate, the Abbotsford Canucks, in order to maximize the amount of cap space they can accrue or, on one occasion, to maximize the amount of LTIR cap relief they can use if they need it.
Those salary cap shenanigans should give the Canucks plenty of cap space to acquire additional help for the roster at or before the trade deadline. It’s been some impressive work by assistant general manager Émilie Castonguay, who is primarily responsible for the team’s cap management.
Tuesday’s roster moves might have looked like more of the same, but they don’t really relate to the salary cap at all.
On Tuesday morning, the Canucks sent defenceman Mark Friedman and goaltender Arturs Silovs to the AHL and called up forwards Linus Karlsson and Phil Di Giuseppe.
Both Karlsson and Di Giuseppe likely would have been called up earlier in the season if not for injuries.
Karlsson played four regular season and two playoff games for the Canucks last season, earning the call-up with his performance in Abbotsford, where he put up 60 points in 60 games. This season, however, he’s been limited to just 7 games in Abbotsford, though he has scored 5 goals in those 7 games.
Di Giuseppe, meanwhile, is a quintessential Tocchet Man, with his solid defensive game and north-south approach. He played 51 regular season and 11 playoff games for the Canucks last season but only just returned to the ice in Abbotsford after an early season injury. He has 0 points in 4 AHL games this season.
It’s not surprising to see either player called up to the Canucks but the timing of their call-up likely has a lot more to do with the upcoming roster freeze than their recent performance in Abbotsford.
The NHL’s Christmas roster freeze runs from midnight on December 19 to midnight on December 27 and prevents both trades and movement between the AHL and NHL. There are exceptions to the freeze, such as accounting for injuries, but the freeze gives players some assurances of where they’re going to be living during the holiday season and that they won’t have to pack up and move in the midst of spending time with family.
The Canucks could have waited until December 19 to set their roster but their schedule complicates that plan: they have two games on the road on back-to-back nights on December 18 and 19. Locking in their roster now — pending a potential pre-freeze trade — makes a lot of sense.
With those two games on the road and then two more games during the roster freeze, that's four games for which the Canucks will need a balanced roster capable of adapting to whatever circumstances come their way over the next ten days.
With Derek Forbort and Kevin Lankinen returning from a bout with the flu and the addition of Karlsson and Di Giuseppe, the Canucks will have 14 forwards, 7 defencemen, and 2 goaltenders on their 23-man roster — a roster that will likely be unchanged over the next ten days barring a pre-freeze trade or injuries.
Karlsson and Di Giuseppe may very well get into the lineup for one or more of the Canucks’ four upcoming games — both Dakota Joshua and Nils Höglander played less than nine minutes on Monday night — but, more importantly, they give the Canucks some coverage in case of minor injuries.
Here’s the Canucks’ current roster as they head out on the road:
Jake DeBrusk - Elias Pettersson - Max Sasson
Conor Garland - J.T. Miller - Brock Boeser
Danton Heinen - Pius Suter - Kiefer Sherwood
Dakota Joshua - Teddy Blueger - Nils Höglander
Phil Di Giuseppe - Linus Karlsson
Quinn Hughes - Noah Juulsen
Carson Soucy - Tyler Myers
Derek Forbort - Vincent Desharnais
Erik Brännström
Thatcher Demko
Kevin Lankinen
