Sitting Ekman-Larsson puts spotlight on yet another glaring Canucks issue

TAMPA — Tonight, a healthy scratch. The next 4 1/2 years, who knows?

The implications of Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s first healthy scratch in nearly 12 years go far beyond the Vancouver Canucks’ game Thursday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The 31-year-old alternate captain skated Thursday morning on the Canucks’ fourth defence pairing, stayed on the ice late with the other Vancouver extras and will not play when the reeling team faces the powerful Lightning in the third game of a road trip that has seen the Canucks outscored 12-8 in a pair of losses.

Scratching him is a bold statement by Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau, who has been an endangered species all season but continues to run the team his way while president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin consider possible successors behind the bench.

Sitting Ekman-Larsson is a declaration about accountability – further proof that Boudreau is still trying to force players at Game 41 to take ownership of their play.

But scratching him will also shine a spotlight on a paramount problem facing management: the last half of eight-year, $66-million contract the Canucks took on from the Arizona Coyotes in the summer of 2021 when former Vancouver GM Jim Benning gambled that Ekman-Larsson could still be an impact player in the National Hockey League.

The Swede has 4 1/2 years and more than $37 million still owed to him. With the Coyotes’ retained salary, Ekman-Larsson’s annual salary-cap charge in Vancouver is $7.26 million through the 2026-27 season. By gross salary, he is the highest-paid Canuck.

None of these figures matter to Boudreau, who is simply trying to get his team to play better and defend a little. But they are vitally important to the organization.

“I think he can be better, but I think there's a lot of guys that can be better now,” Boudreau told reporters. “I mean, it's about accountability. It's about a lot of things. It's something you don't want to do. He's arguably our best defenceman, but sometimes you just have to do what you think is the best thing for the team right at that moment. And that's apparently where I am.”

Ekman-Larsson’s pairing with Tyler Myers has been disastrous in several games recently and, really, either veteran could have been sat out by Boudreau.

In Tuesday’s 5-4 loss against the Pittsburgh Penguins, who surged back from a 3-0 deficit and exposed the Canucks’ defensive ineptitude with 29 high-danger scoring chances, five-on-five shot attempts were 18-3 against Vancouver when Ekman-Larsson and Myers were on the ice.

Often matched against the opposition’s best forwards due to Boudreau’s limited choices on defence, the duo has been outscored 5-1 during this week’s losses in Pittsburgh and Winnipeg, where the Jets won 7-4 on Sunday without the benefit of a single power play.

For the season, Ekman-Larsson is carrying a 45.9 per cent Corsi and an expected-goals-for percentage of 44.8, which are both mid-pack on the Canucks. His average ice time of 20:28 is third among defencemen and Ekman-Larsson, significantly, has contributed 19 points in 40 games. But his goals-against-per-60-minutes have nearly doubled this season, to 3.61 from 1.99, and Ekman-Larsson’s minus-14 rating is worst among Vancouver defencemen.

He has played 888 games in the NHL and hasn’t been a healthy scratch since he was a 19-year-old rookie with the Arizona Coyotes in 2010-11.

Ekman-Larsson was not made available to reporters after the morning skate.