When the waiver wire turns up a player like Connor Zary, the real question isn’t whether he has NHL value. It’s whether that value is actually worth the price tag, the roster spot, and the message it sends.
That’s where the Canucks’ situation gets interesting. For a team that’s still building, the instinct is to leave no stone unturned. But as former Toronto Maple Leafs front-office member Rob Pettapiece put it, not every waiver claim is created equal.
“It’s a very different answer if it’s a minimum salary waiver claim vs. a bigger contract,” points out Rob Pettapiece, a former member of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ front office who has advised on many waiver claims.
“A waiver claim is like a trade for nothing, except you don’t have to negotiate. Because the other team doesn’t mind losing the player for nothing, they typically aren’t a difference-maker, and you really only do it when you think the player fits better for you, or if you think you’re more right about the player than they are,” he went on.
Zary is the kind of player who forces that calculation. He was once a late first-round pick, had a solid rookie season, and then went flat for the last two years.
Calgary’s production with him on the ice during that rookie year was inflated by a wildly high team shooting percentage, which made the breakout look more real than it was. That’s part of why the Flames put him on waivers Monday.
By Tuesday, the answer was clear: no one wanted to take the shot.
Maybe someone still trades for him, but the waiver market already delivered its verdict. Zary is 25, not a great skater, and he can score a bit - with a pretty big caveat attached.
His cap hit is $3.75 million this season and again next season, which makes the gamble a lot harder to swallow. Calgary didn’t see enough to keep him in the lineup and made him a healthy scratch to open the year, and if one of the league’s worst teams wasn’t sold, the argument for a fresh start gets thin fast.
There’s also the practical cap issue. A team that claims him is stuck with that money if the player doesn’t bounce back.
With the cap ceiling rising, there’s at least an argument that a deal like that could help a club trying to stay above the salary floor. But that’s a very specific use case, not a reason to chase him.
So the league answered the main question for the Canucks and everyone else: 31 teams passed.
There’s another layer here, too, especially for a club trying to build the right kind of environment under GM Ryan Johnson. Claiming a player like Zary would not just be a roster decision. It would tell the players already in the system something about how the organization views its own depth.
If you’re trying to create opportunity in the AHL, that matters. Most of those players won’t make it, but the whole point is giving them a real path.
In a rebuilding setup, the goal is different from a team chasing the playoffs or a Cup run. The players in the system need to know there’s a chance to get NHL games, to show what they can do, and to become interesting enough that maybe another team notices them someday.
That’s part of the backdrop to Vancouver’s own draft thinking, too. This year the Canucks selected Adam Novotny, a player who could wind up being one of the better 24th overall picks in recent memory. Zary, by contrast, looks more like the type of player that slot usually produces: useful, but rarely a true difference-maker.
Over the last 15 years, only two players taken 24th have made a real impact: Travis Konecny and Jared McCann, who was also a Canucks pick. The rest have mostly settled in as ordinary NHLers.
Zary doesn’t look like he’s headed for that upper tier. He looks more like a Philip Tomasino.
And that brings the discussion right back to the waiver claim itself. If he were making league minimum, maybe you take the shot. At $3.75 million, the whole league already gave the same answer.
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