Dan Murphy's Canucks Mailbag: Will Travis Hamonic be re-signed?

This episode dedicated to the memory of Walter Gretzky. In 1988, the Oilers had offered Wayne Gretzky to the Canucks. Brian tells Jeff how he tried but couldn't make the numbers work to get Gretzky in Vancouver, who instead took his talents to L.A.

This week we'll get right into it...

I really like what I've seen from Travis Hamonic since he returned from injury (although no one looked even half decent Wednesday night versus the Canadiens). You have to remember he's just getting his feet under him. He was signed right before the season started, jumped straight into game action, got injured in game number five and didn't return for over a month.

When the Canucks signed him, I believed he profiled similar to Chris Tanev so I assumed he would be a good fit with Quinn Hughes. It hasn't been the perfect pairing, but I do feel like the two are developing some chemistry now. And the numbers seem to back it up. Hamonic's played eight games since returning from injury and among Canucks defencemen only Hughes has a better Corsi For percentage. And they are the only two blueliners north of 50 per cent. Hamonic is Vancouver's best D-man when it comes to xGF% over the eight-game stretch (47.73 per cent). So I guess, yes, I wouldn't be against Vancouver re-signing him after this season.

But it all comes down to dollars and cents. They have him on an extremely team friendly deal right now, and if they can get him on another one, then why not?

First off, I think Alex is going to be a great coach at the NHL level. He's extremely bright, hardworking and can easily relate to the players because he's not that far removed from his playing days. There will be respect there. There is not much more to be said about Burrows' path to the NHL that hasn't already been written.

What I can say is that he was a classic rink rat. He absolutely loved being at the rink and immersing himself in the game. He read everything. Watched everything. He couldn't get enough information and that probably speaks to how he was able to continually improve as a player. That same energy and thirst for knowledge is going to serve him very well in his current role and whatever job he takes moving forward.

I reached out to Alex on Sunday night to ask him a couple of questions about his duties with the Canadiens. He said he was more surprised to get the job so quickly with the Habs than he was with the power play assignment. He oversaw the PP for Laval the past couple of seasons as well.

The Canadiens were his team as a kid, so this is kind of a dream job. But Canucks fans shouldn't take that as a slight. I wouldn't rule out Burrows returning to the Canucks organization at some point in the future. This city, franchise and its fans hold a huge piece of his heart. But as I said in my last mailbag, Montreal is the perfect fit for where he is in his life right now.

Well, seeing as some view A Day To Remember as an easycore band, it's safe to say I enjoy the sub-genre because I listen to ADTR a lot. Other artists in my playlists include Four Years Strong and Settle Your Scores. I guess I should check out Abandoned By Bears.

I've written before that I'm not much of a concert guy, as I've probably only attended a handful in the last 10-15 years. GWAR at the Commodore, Metallica at Rogers Arena, Soilwork at the Rickshaw (dragged Jay Durant to that one) and when I was covering the Predators-Blues playoff series a couple years back I went and checked out A Perfect Circle in Nashville. And I was nowhere near the pit at any of them. The one band I really regret not seeing in concert is Rage Against the Machine.

Yes. It’s still a lot of trial by error. And there are plenty of those. But my hair grows back so I can afford the odd mistake. I don’t really have any mirrors to check the back of my head when I’m using the shears back there, which makes things a little complicated. I suppose I could just go to the barber and get it all cleaned up, but now that I’ve fallen out of the habit I guess I’ve become a little stubborn about it. So when something goes horribly wrong, there will be no one else to blame.

I'm not sure how much higher the Canucks had Boeser ranked. If the Canucks selected 15th in the 2015 draft I don't believe that Boeser or Barzal would have been the pick. My understanding is that there was a player still on the board the organization had rated higher than both.

I was standing right behind the 18th where the players would exit the green to head to the scoring tent.

It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t see Tiger’s golf ball until it landed on the back right fringe of the 18th. The roar was absolutely deafening. Now most of the fans watching around the 18th green had no idea how far Tiger’s approach was from or what his lie was like in the bunker. Since I had just finished with Sergio Garcia's group, I still had on my audio pack so I could hear the broadcast and knew from Peter Oosterhuis's commentary that Tiger had 218 yards to the pin and the shot was on a pretty good line.

I couldn't pick it out of the clouds, though, so had no idea how good it was until it landed. And believe me, that green is a lot narrower than it looks on TV. Fun fact: When Tiger holed out his winning putt he picked the ball out of the hole and threw it into the fans to the right of the green. The person who came up with the ball was my cousin Paddy Slack.

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