The Vancouver Canucks may have a window right now to do something aggressive with one of their young forwards, and Liam Öhgren looks like the clearest candidate.
That idea comes into focus after the Pittsburgh Penguins handed 23-year-old winger Ville Koivunen an eight-year, $32 million contract on Thursday, a deal that carries a $4 million average annual value. It is a huge commitment for a player with just 47 NHL games on his résumé, and his production in those games is modest: two goals, 12 assists and 14 points.
Still, Pittsburgh clearly saw enough to make the bet. And the Canucks should at least think about making a similar one.
This isn’t the first time a team has locked in a young player before the sample size got large. Last offseason, the Carolina Hurricanes gave Jackson Blake an eight-year, $40.94 million deal after he had appeared in 81 NHL games and posted 17 goals and 30 points.
Since then, Blake has looked like a bargain. Before the extension even began, he set career highs with 22 goals, 31 assists and 53 points, then led the Hurricanes in postseason scoring with seven goals and 20 points on the way to a Stanley Cup.
That kind of swing is exactly why these deals can age so well for the team on the right side of them.
The new NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement will change the landscape soon enough. On September 16, the maximum contract length drops from eight years to seven, which makes this summer a last chance for teams to use the full term. For a rebuilding Canucks club, that creates an obvious opportunity: pay a little more now in exchange for future value later.
Vancouver has a few extension-eligible players who fit that thinking. Zeev Buium has gotten the most attention, but he is projected to come in at a big number.
Elias Pettersson on defense is coming off a down season, so the Canucks will probably want more of a look before making any long-term commitment. Jonathan Lekkerimäki has the shot, but health has limited how much he has been able to show.
That leaves Öhgren.
And the case for him starts with the numbers. Before their eight-year extensions, Koivunen had seven points in 39 games the previous season and 14 points in 47 career games.
Blake came in with 34 points in 80 games that season and 34 points in 81 career games. Öhgren, by comparison, just finished with 18 points in 69 games and has 25 points in 97 career games.
If you narrow the lens to what he did with the Canucks in a larger role, the picture gets a little brighter. In those games, Öhgren had 18 points in 51 contests, which works out to 0.35 points per game. That still trails Blake’s pace before his extension, but it is well ahead of Koivunen’s.
There’s more to the argument than points, too. Öhgren ranked in the 90th percentile in shot speed at 91.9 MPH and the 70th percentile in fastest speed burst at 22.64 MPH across the NHL last season.
Koivunen and Blake were both below the 50th percentile in those areas in the seasons before they signed. Öhgren also carried more responsibility.
He averaged 14:27 per game with the Canucks, compared with 13:51 for Blake and 12:44 for Koivunen. He logged 37 seconds per game on the penalty kill, and over the final month of the season that number climbed to 1:14.
No, every player development path is different. Öhgren could take off, or he could settle in somewhere else. But if Pittsburgh and Carolina were willing to make those bets, the Canucks have reason to consider doing the same here.
It would be an overpay. The source doesn’t hide that.
But Vancouver is in a position where it can absorb one. The club has over $17 million in cap space right now and is projected to have more than $50 million next season.
An Öhgren deal landing somewhere between Koivunen’s $4 million AAV and Blake’s $5.1 million AAV is something the books could handle.
For a team heading into a rebuild, that kind of gamble is on the table. And if the Canucks are going to take one, Öhgren makes a lot of sense.
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