Canucks: Brock Boeser’s contract carries all kinds of questions

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There are two constants now when we talk about Brock Boeser.

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There’s his roster status going forward, and there’s his lack of 5-on-5 scoring.

The two, of course, are closely related.

The fifth-year Vancouver Canucks’ winger is in the final year of a three-year contract. He’s due a US$7.5 million qualifying offer this summer.

Meanwhile, he’s in a goal-scoring slump. He has just 18 goals on the season and just two even-strength tallies since Christmas. Although he’s been scoring on the power play, his last 5-on-5 marker was Feb. 17 in San Jose.

Boeser’s name came up fairly often in trade deadline chatter recently, not just because he’s been struggling offensively, but also because of his challenging contract status.

For his part, Boeser was somewhat philosophical about the situation.

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“You never really know what’s gonna happen, but I had a feeling I was gonna be here after the deadline,” he said Wednesday from Denver, before a game at Ball Arena against the Colorado Avalanche.

But he also knows his 5-on-5 production hasn’t been good enough for a player who gets to play with top-end linemates like JT Miller of late, and Bo Horvat and Elias Pettersson against Colorado.

“I’ve got to look to be playing some better hockey personally. I’ve got to be better 5-on-5 and produce more for this team,” he said.

The current trade chatter may be over, but his contract status will remain a talking point, whether he finds his scoring touch again or not. When he signed his current contract three years ago, his agent, Ben Hankinson, admitted that there had been discussions about longer-term dealssome for big money.

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But, in the end, they settled on a contract that featured a big bet that he would be a US$7.5 million player in the final year. The three-year deal paid him big in this, his final season. And the structure now creates all kinds of complications for the Canucks. It means that if Boeser goes into the off-season without a deal, to retain his rights the Canucks would have to offer him a one-year, US$7.5 million contract.

Boeser’s production this season, though, doesn’t match such a salary, which would make him the highest-paid forward on the team. And so, according to the Canucks’ recently noted general manager, contract talks between the club and the player seem to be at an impasse.

“I’ve been talking to his agent and we haven’t made any progress there,” Patrik Allvin said Monday.

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Allvin has many challenging questions in front of him as he looks to reshape his roster. After figuring out what to do with Miller, Boeser’s contract is just about as big a dilemma as it gets.

It stood for reason that the Canucks might have looked to trade Boeser at the deadline, because his situation is so complicated. But if they had wanted to deal him, potential trade partners would have wanted to be able to talk contract with Boeser before agreeing to take him.

If the Canucks had let Boeser and Hankinson talk formally to other teams and then decided not to trade him, that might have created challenges for their own contract talks, since Boeser’s camp would have some knowledge about what the broader free agent market might look like for him.

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If the Canucks don’t qualify him, he would become an unrestricted free agent this summer, able to sign wherever he pleased.

How can the Canucks get him a contract that’s more amenable to their budget? They can offer him term, but he’s also set to be a free agent in two years. Conventional wisdom is that buying out UFA years is very expensive.

So what would Hankinson think he could get Boeser on the open market?

He’s always scored at a good rate, nearly a point-per-game until this season, when his production stalled. That said, he’s improved his two-way game a great deal and remains a high-quality power play contributor.

His current cap hit — US$5.875 million — is pretty reasonable when you look at some of his peers. If you think this past season is an aberration, does his long-term performance deserve a raise over his current average salary? And if so, by how much? And, again, for how many years?

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It would be foolish for the Canucks to not make a qualifying offer because they might just lose him for nothing. And while he would likely prefer to sign a deal offering long-term security, it’s hard to think Boeser wouldn’t be happy to take the one-year deal as a fail-safe option, since it would leave him in relative control.

The Canucks would still be in the same bind a year from now and, if they were to again present a qualifying offer, he could accept it again and then a year after that find himself an unrestricted free agent.

Signing Boeser isn’t going to be easy.

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