The first few cuts are with a chainsaw, carving off large chunks of the roster to get it into a vague shape approximating the 2016-17 Canucks. After that, the Canucks broke out the knives to do a little whittling. 20 players were cut within the first few days of the pre-season, but the last couple rounds of cuts have been just three players each.
The Canucks still have 39 players on the roster, which means some big cuts will still be coming to get down to the 23-man opening night roster, including a few players who may seem like they’ve earned a spot.
That’s not the case now, as the Canucks sent Alexandre Grenier and Chad Billins down to the AHL and assigned Guillaume Brisebois to the QMJHL. Those three players certainly didn’t earn a spot on the roster, but that’s really only a disappointment in the case of Grenier, who is now 25 and running out of time to break into the NHL.
Grenier went unclaimed on waivers, which isn’t too surprising. This is the time of the season when dozens of players get put on waivers, with GMs more concerned about the fringe players battling for a spot that are already on their own rosters. Grenier, with his six games of NHL experience, was unlikely to move anyone’s needle.
Those six games came last season during two call-ups. Grenier even got a bit of time alongside the Sedins, but didn’t record any points. He didn’t look out of place in the NHL, but he also didn’t do enough to convince anyone that he needed to be in the lineup.
It was a different story in the AHL, where he led the Utica Comets in scoring with 16 goals and 48 points in 69 games. He’s at the age where he risks being permanently labelled a tweener. It’s disappointing that someone with his size—he’s 6’5”, 200 lbs—and skill just can’t seem to put it all together, but he was mostly invisible during the pre-season.
To be fair, he didn’t quite get the same opportunities that he did last year, when he got a chance to play with the Sedins, whereas this year he played with other AHL-bound forwards. And another strong offensive season in Utica could see him get another NHL chance, but those chances are running out.
Reportedly, Joe Labate’s strong preseason helped make the decision to waive Grenier a little easier. Labate is about the same size as Grenier, but is far more assertive physically, throwing some big hits and dropping the gloves at both the Young Stars tournament and in the pre-season. If the Canucks are looking for someone to fit a bottom-six role, Labate makes more sense than Grenier.
Guillaume Brisebois had a lacklustre Young Stars tournament, but seemed to figure things out in his final pre-season game. It wasn’t just that he scored a goal, rifling a hard wrist shot past Brian Elliott on the glove side; he seemed a lot more settled and poised overall and it was really the first time I was impressed with his game.
Brisebois returns to the QMJHL, where he’ll play with a new team. He was traded from the Acadie-Bathurst Titans, where he was the captain, to the Charlottetown Islanders, where he’ll likely play on the top pairing with 20-year-old Ottawa Senators prospect Cody Donaghey, who already has 6 points in 4 games. Playing with the offensive-oriented Donaghey should give Brisebois a chance to build off his 10 goals and 26 points from last season.
Finally, there’s Chad Billins, who has spent the last couple of seasons in the KHL and SHL after a year in the Calgary Flames system. Last time he was in the AHL, he put up 10 goals and 41 points in 65 games for the Abbotsford Heat, so he should help a Comets team that lost two of its top scoring defencemen in Taylor Fedun and Jon Landry.
Billins is a long way down the depth chart, so a lot would have to go wrong for him to see NHL ice this season.
