The Brown Knight wrote:
Thinking out loud, perhaps the best suggestion that I can come up with is to simply play things out this year.
Wait for guys like Horvat and Shinkaruk to become impact players either next year or the year after, and pray that the twins and Kesler maintain their current level of play. A combination of Booth being bought out + salary cap increasing, will give us far more options for next year and the year after.
Erhoff, as much as I do love the idea of having him back here, will be contracted until 39.
Pretty much sums it up. We don't have enough cap space to add a quality top-shelf player. Even if we did, we don't have the decent mid-range prospects, young players, or veterans without NTC's to move without seriously jeopardizing our future depth or current team make-up.
Like it or not, and many fans are too shortsighted to accept this, the Canucks are (and have been for a couple seasons) in a holding pattern until the cap goes back up and we re-stock the cupboards. Gillis can continue to make the David Booth type deals and hope they work out, but adding a sure-thing guy with any sort of cap hit or a potential future all-star just isn't an option we have at the moment.
Come the offseason it's a different story. A couple guys I would seriously consider (health-dependant) in UFA are Dave Bolland and if he somehow makes it to Free Agency, Ryan Callahan. I don't think we're going to have the cap money to go after guys like Gaborik, Vanek or Stastny, but a curious one-year reclamation project could be Dany Heatley.