Vancouver Canucks defenceman Erik Brännström was waived after a noticeable decline in his defensive performance. Despite being a puck-moving defenceman, the coaching staff lost confidence in his ability to defend. This led to repeated healthy scratches and ultimately his placement on waivers, which he cleared, allowing him to be sent down to the AHL.
The 26-year-old defenceman was a healthy scratch for the Vancouver Canucks even when Quinn Hughes was out of the lineup with an injury. Then, on Saturday night, when the Canucks decided to take Vincent Desharnais out of the lineup, AHL veteran Guillaume Brisebois took the ice in his place, leaving Brännström in the press box.
That’s likely also the reason why Brännström cleared waivers on Monday, allowing the Canucks to send him down to the Abbotsford Canucks in the AHL. One could quibble with a few parts of Tocchet’s answer. The fact that the team is struggling to score goals might suggest that adding a puck-moving defenceman to the mix would help rather than hinder your efforts to win. But the issue is that in his most recent games, Brännström wasn’t helping the team score, so there has been no reward to balance out the risk.
Here’s the things: Brännström was significantly better earlier in the season. If we look at his expected goals percentage , a statistic that combines both shot quantity and shot quality, Brännström was one of the Canucks’ best defencemen through the first 20 games of the season. His 52.7% expected goals was second only to Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek.
With Hronek returning, it might have been a good opportunity to keep Brännström around to see if he could get back to the player who played so well for the Canucks earlier in the season.
NHL VANCOUVER CANUCKS ERIK BRÄNNSTRÖM DEFENCE HOCKEY AHL WAIVERS COACHING STAFF
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