Ekman-Larsson buyout a start, but what do Canucks do with cap savings?

You know those comically large cheques you sometimes see professional golfers holding or people making charitable donations to worthwhile causes? That's how I envision Oliver Ekman-Larsson today. Posing for a photo with an oversized cheque from the Vancouver Canucks in the amount of more than $19 million US.

The Canucks had two options: pay the veteran defenseman nearly $30 million to underperform for the next four seasons or close to $20 million to simply go away. Shockingly to many, the Canucks opted to go the buyout route on Friday afternoon.

In desperate need of cap flexibility and finding no takers for potential trade chips at prices that made sense to the hockey club, the Canucks simply gulped hard and swallowed the poison pill of what remained on Ekman-Larsson's bloated contract that always figured to be a problem from the day it was acquired just two years ago.

What's remarkable is how quickly the former all star defender went into decline. Just 31 (he turns 32 next month), OEL was limited to 54 games last season. And in that span, the Canucks were outscored by 22 at 5-on-5. By comparison, in the 78 games Quinn Hughes played, the team held a 20-goal edge on opponents. That's how wide the gulf had become between the team's top two left-side options. When Hughes was on the ice, the ice was tilted in the Canucks favour. When OEL was on the ice, he spent significant amounts of time fishing pucks out of his own net.

The speed of the game had simply caught up to him and then passed him by. And the Canucks clearly figured that in a league that is getting faster by the season, OEL would continue to struggle with his mobility. And not seeing a path to enough improvement in Ekman-Larsson to warrant the cash outlay or cap commitment, the Canucks decided their best course of action was to cut bait and move on.

It was a shocking decision for an ownership group that not so long ago spent the COVID pandemic cutting costs at every corner. And while the Aquilini family has always been willing to spend to the upper limit of the salary cap, writing a cheque for $20 million dollars to erase a massive mistake just didn't feel like something that was likely to happen.

But here we are.

However, the buyout of Ekman-Larsson is only part of the equation. And the ripple of effects of Friday's decision won't fully be known or felt until we see what Patrik Allvin and the Canucks do with the money they have re-allocated. Because with OEL no longer in the mix -- and with Thursday's news that Ethan Bear has undergone shoulder surgery and won't be available until Christmas -- the Canucks defense currently consists of Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek and Tyler Myers. After that, all bets are off.

So will the Canucks enter the free agent waters on July 1st and chase the likes of Ryan Graves, Brian Dumoulin, Matt Dumba, John Klingberg, Luke Schenn or Radko Gudas? Or will they potentially pursue a Brandon Carlo, Dylan Demelo or Markus Pettersson or one of the many available defenders in Columbus via the trade route?

The Canucks have a few internal candidates to fill out the fringes of their defense corps (Akito Hirose, Christian Wolanin, Guillaume Brisebois, Jack Rathbone, Jett Woo, Cole McWard), but the buyout of OEL signals that this team will now be big-game hunting to upgrade a blueline that needs rapid reconstruction on both the left and right sides.

Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet made it clear late in the season how impressed he was with the size, skill and mobility of the Vegas Golden Knights blueline. One can only imagine how much he values the Knights roster composition now that it has yielded a Stanley Cup. So expect the Canuck to be on the look-out for toughness and abrasiveness as they begin the process of building out their back end.

The buyout of Ekman-Larsson was a bold step to be sure. But the Canucks can not make the mistake of past management groups by taking the money they now have and spending it frivolously. This is a team that has a long to-do list this off season to get back to relevance in the Pacific Division and Western Conference.

The Canucks already needed a third line centre and had to figure out how best to proceed on the right side of their defense. And now you can add the left side of the blueline to the equation. And perhaps it moves up a notch in terms of priority.

After Friday's seismic shift to the roster and to the team's approach to the off-season, the Canucks have signalled that what they had here last season wasn't good enough.

As hard as it sounds, in many ways writing a $20M cheque was the easy part. Ultimately the decision to buy-out OEL will be judged on how much better the Canucks can get with the salary cap cushion they now have to play with. And the hockey world will watch to see whether they can be a Stanley Cup contender well before the Ekman-Larsson deal is completely off the books in 2031.