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Canucks Talk

The Whiteboard: What Would You Give for McKenna?

09 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

30.845 - 42.664 Jamie Dodd

What's up? Welcome to Canucks Talk Sportsnet 650. I'm Jamie Dodd. My co-host is Thomas Drance. Drance covers the Canucks at The Athletic as well. Do I have to match your energy today?

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42.684 - 43.706 Thomas Drance

Because that was a lot of energy.

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43.726 - 47.993 Jamie Dodd

You brought it today, buddy. So I'm compensating because...

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48.665 - 51.792 Thomas Drance

You've been fighting to get on the internet for 15, 20 minutes.

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51.812 - 53.636 Jamie Dodd

That too. We can talk about that in a second.

53.656 - 57.344 Thomas Drance

You're on the absolute verge of launching Butler and Jihad.

57.385 - 70.714 Jamie Dodd

I might throw my phone out the window here. No, I fixed it just before we got on air. I slept like four hours last night for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I got the, you know, I had the venti latte and everything. Yeah, yeah.

70.734 - 87.477 Thomas Drance

But I'm trying to like, okay, I really got to bring the energy here. Okay, okay, okay. Fair enough. You know what? Now that I understand that you're teetering on a knife's edge, brother, I'll support you. Things are not going well. You know what? I had the same thing. Like last night I did a spin class with my wife and then we went and did the sonic hole plunge thing.

87.678 - 88.038 Jamie Dodd

Okay.

Chapter 2: What does Michael McCarron's six-year deal mean for the NHL?

657.39 - 678.229 Thomas Drance

And so we shouldn't care as much about 3.3 being a discount. What we need to care more about instead is A, the caliber of a player, B, the risk profile on the term, and mostly, I honestly think C, but honestly, maybe number one, is the flexibility that their contract gives their team from a value-added perspective.

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678.249 - 699.306 Jamie Dodd

In some ways, this feels like Minnesota did the deal... with the worst parts of both worlds from a team perspective right because so much of the long-term trend and the no move clause trend was it's a flat cap era but players want raises but players like players want to get paid how can we squeeze them into our salary cap and without going really high on the AAV.

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699.326 - 716.857 Jamie Dodd

And it's like, well, we're going to go to them extra term to lower that dollar amount, and we're going to give them all the protection we can because we have to, because we are forced to by the flat cap situation. And here, Minnesota gave Michael McCarron a huge raise, like a new cap era salary, but with old cap era term and protection on it.

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717.258 - 734.437 Jamie Dodd

And I think the lesson that GMs are going to have to learn is that You would much rather overpay and get rid of the term or lower the term and lower the trade protection as opposed to the reverse. And for so long, it's been, well, that's just what you do to get the dollar figure down. And I think now we have to look at it the other way.

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734.737 - 749.108 Jamie Dodd

We got to pump the dollar figure up to get the term down and get the trade protections down. And that's going to set you up much better in the other way. And it feels like Minnesota just kind of got caught between here. And look, he's a valuable player. I get why they wanted to keep him. But man, that's a long-term commitment.

749.188 - 755.562 Thomas Drance

Yeah, it doesn't like take too much off the table for them. But we'll see because they've got a Quinn Hughes deal to do here.

755.879 - 765.012 Jamie Dodd

Yeah, and I guess it's also like you don't know what it's going to take off the table years down the road. You're taking on a bunch of risk. You're right. It doesn't take anything off immediately for them, but it could.

765.172 - 786.342 Thomas Drance

They have 14-ish million in cap space, but they don't have an efficiency in Kirill Kaprizov, obviously, right? So that's something to manage and be diligent about managing. You've got some interesting players who are going to be up at some point down the line here, like Danilo Yurov, if they don't trade him. Right.

786.603 - 806.071 Thomas Drance

Bobby Brinks and RFA, you know, that's a, that's a pretty good player and a guy they spent a lot for. They've got Matt's Zuccarello to extend. Like they've got a lot of UFAs here, man. And then obviously you've got Quinn Hughes and Jared Spurgeon becoming extension eligible right now. Not to mention Jesper Wallstead. Yep.

Chapter 3: How could the rising salary cap affect Teddy Blueger's market?

1154.363 - 1168.324 Jamie Dodd

No, they can't. I wouldn't think so. Like, they could demand an investigation, I would think, but it's not like they can say, no, you can't hire Mike Babcock. I have no sense of what the PA can do in this situation. I would be very surprised if... I mean...

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1169.857 - 1192.59 Thomas Drance

stan bowman hiring mike babcock to try and save the connor mcdavid era like that is a truly hellish sentence i think all we should do is just like sit back and belly laugh yeah did you happen to hear jason greger on with uh it was really good it was the it was the interview where it's like they didn't even ask him a question they were just like hey jason thanks for doing this and he just immediately went in

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1193.65 - 1195.953 Jamie Dodd

On the decision. Good for him. Good for him as well, yeah.

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1196.473 - 1210.29 Thomas Drance

You know, you cover these teams, and sometimes they just do something that you know is so devastating, and so often you have to, like, couch it. I like when people are just like, this is a terrible, terrible move that will massively set back the franchise. Yeah, why are we doing this?

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1210.63 - 1222.444 Thomas Drance

Well, because, you know, sometimes you know it, and you're like, oh, be fair about it, or like, you know what I mean? Or you... It takes some work to have that type of clarity. And I thought Gregor put that work in. Good for him.

1222.504 - 1241.466 Jamie Dodd

Yeah, it was really good. I encourage everyone to go check it out if you haven't done it already. All right. We didn't do it yesterday. Let's go to the war room. To do this as fast as possible, we got to be very careful and go slow. Finding those guys with the predator eyes. Are there needs or areas of intrigue from a certain player type?

1241.486 - 1245.831 Thomas Drance

The de-thirst, it's real for San Jose. Vancouver Canucks are proud to select...

1247.33 - 1266.786 Jamie Dodd

All right. So I haven't done one in a while. So I'm going to get a little pie in the sky here. So I love pie, especially when it's in the sky. Although it makes it more inaccessible. I'm like, I'd rather it be here on my plate on the table. Air pie. Like a Frisbee.

1268.769 - 1270.873 Thomas Drance

It's just a little airborne. It's still good. It's still good.

Chapter 4: What challenges do teams face in the current salary cap environment?

1435.127 - 1458.492 Thomas Drance

Like the thing about McKenna is his East West motion, like movement skills. He kind of weaves into traffic and then passes out, but you've never really seen another guy move like him. Like he moves different. And then he also is an elite playmaker. And then also he scores some nasty goals, although I don't think he's a shoot first guy personally. Yeah, that's a special, special player.

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1458.552 - 1460.074 Thomas Drance

I mean, whatever it takes.

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1460.735 - 1468.547 Jamie Dodd

All right. That's the whiteboard for today. Keep sending your texts in. Yannick Hansen joins us next year on Canucks Talks Sportsnet 650.

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