Canucks in Flux: Ilya Mikheyev Is Shut Down as Team's Break Begins

"It's been a long year up until this this point," Quinn Hughes said after the Vancouver Canucks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2 on Friday night at Rogers Arena.

Now 2-1-0 under new coach Rick Tocchet, the Canucks sit 27th in the NHL standings as they head into the nine-day break that combines their bye week and All-Star Weekend.

They're 14 points out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference and 10 points clear of the league basement, currently occupied by the Blue Jackets they just defeated.

Following Friday's game, GM Patrik Allvin announced winger Ilya Mikheyev will be out of action for the rest of the season. Next week, he will undergo surgery to repair the ACL in his knee that he said was "almost" completely torn in the second period of the Canucks' first pre-season game, a 3-2 overtime loss to the Calgary Flames on Sept. 25. 

He's expected to be ready for training camp next September.

The injury made for a frustrating start in Vancouver for the now-28-year-old winger, who signed a four-year contract worth $19 million as an unrestricted free agent in July. After missing the rest of the pre-season and the first three games of the regular season, Mikheyev played 46 games for the Canucks, recording 13 goals and 28 points while averaging 16:55 of ice time. 

Known in the past for his speed, which made him a particularly dangerous penalty-killer, an emotional Mikheyev said the injury robbed him of his skating power and stability. In his last game on Friday, the hockey gods rewarded his tenacity with a flukey pinball tally for his 13th goal of the year and 100th career NHL point.

"Kid's got a lot of character to play the way he's been playing," said Tocchet after the game. "I think he wanted to keep playing to show me. It means a lot, but I want him healthy."

Mikheyev's announcement comes one day after another Dan Milstein client, Andrei Kuzmenko, signed a two-year contract extension with the Canucks. 

After a successful career in Russia's KHL, Kuzmenko chose to sign as a free agent when he made the jump to the NHL last summer. At 26, he's too old to qualify for consideration for the Calder Trophy. But he has been one of the NHL's best first-year players, producing at nearly a point-a-game pace with 21 goals and 43 points in his first 48 NHL games. 

Because of his age, Kuzmenko needed just one year of NHL experience to reach unrestricted free agency. Now, he stays with Vancouver on a two-year deal at a cap hit of $5.5 million per season, part of the new core that Allvin and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford are working to construct in hopes or getting the Canucks back on a winning path.

Kuzmenko and most of his teammates are now set for nine days to decompress following an emotional month that saw the drawn-out dismissal of coach Bruce Boudreau and the arrival of the pragmatic Tocchet.

The club's two highest scorers will be heading to Florida on a high note, for All-Star Weekend from Feb. 2 to 4. 

Friday night, Elias Pettersson scored his first shorthanded goal of the season and his first power-play marker to get to 21 goals. He sits just outside the top 10 with 58 points. Now in his fifth NHL season, Pettersson will be making his third all-star appearance.

Also on Friday, Bo Horvat tallied a career-high four assists in the Canucks' win over Columbus. He's up to 54 points for the year, just seven off his career high, and his 31 goals tie his career high and rank him eighth in the league. 

Now in his ninth NHL season, this is the second all-star appearance for the Vancouver captain and pending UFA — who sits at the top of many trade-bait boards as the clock ticks down to the March 3 deadline.

And while the press box at Rogers Arena has been packed with scouts and managers from around the league in recent weeks, Allvin reminded the media on Friday night the lack of salary-cap flexibility throughout the league has made it even more difficult than usual to get trades to the finish line.

"When was the last hockey deal?" asked Allvin, rhetorically. "I believe that was Ethan Bear, right?"

Bear was acquired by the Canucks from the Carolina Hurricanes on Oct. 28, three months ago. There have been a handful of small trades in the meantime, but nothing has moved the needle. Certainly, there has been nothing of blockbuster proportions like we usually see in the lead-up to the deadline.

"We'll see if it starts to pick up here," said Allvin. "A lot of teams are still in the races for the playoff spots, so we'll see here as we move along."

Meanwhile, Tocchet's five-day crash course with his new team has abruptly paused. The Canucks have won two home games under his watch by identical 5-2 scores after going just 8-13-1 at Rogers Arena under Boudreau. But a 6-1 loss in Seattle on Wednesday left Tocchet calling his new group "soft" and lamenting a lack of practice time to work on a structure that could turn the tide in a more positive direction.

While his players disperse and decompress, Tocchet and his staff are planning meetings for the next three days. But practice time won't be any easier to come by in February. The group will reconvene in Newark on Feb. 5 ahead of a four-in-six road trip. That's part of an 11-game February slate which includes just one multi-game homestand mid-month — and which will likely continue to be dominated by trade talk.

"Unfortunately, we only had one practice. I assume (Tocchet) wants to have 10 under his belt here moving forward," said Allvin. "But I think his communication, the way he wants to embrace the opportunity here and attack the group — I've been very impressed by that in a short period of time."