Myers seems poised to stay in Vancouver, but what could he earn if he hit free agency?

• Player Overview
• What We Know
• Comparables
• Projection

Player Overview

Jumping right from junior hockey to the NHL in 2009-10, Myers immediately made an impact with the Buffalo Sabres, earning the Calder Trophy in his rookie season.

After spending five and a half years in Buffalo, then five and a half years in Winnipeg following a trade, the defenseman signed a five-year contract with the Vancouver Canucks in 2019.

Standing at 6-foot-8 and weighing about 230 pounds, Myers has the opportunity to be a difference-maker when he’s on the ice. He can play a physical game and be effective in battles in his own end, but can also still carry the puck relatively well for a player of his size. The problem with Myers can be inconsistency, with some lapses at times that lead to quality chances against.

Still, Myers averaged the third-most ice time of any defender on the Canucks this season. In a bit of a sheltered role, he remains an effective defenseman to round-out a top-four group.

What We Know

• According to Elliotte Friedman, the Canucks are optimistic they’ll be able to re-sign Myers.
• According to Rick Dhaliwal, Myers is willing to take a pay cut to stay with the Canucks. Dhaliwal reported that Myers will be ‘around $3M’.

Comparables

Below, we take a look at what Myers’ deal could look like at different lengths. For more information on the stats/tables used below, visit the About the Site page.

With Myers now 34 years old, comparables were generally kept to defensemen who were around his age in the first year of their contract.

4 YEARS

While four years is the longest contract we should expect to see for Myers, even that kind of term is very unlikely. Typically, teams just aren’t going to be willing to give that long of a deal to a defenseman in his mid-30s.

From what I can find, the only two defensemen who have started a four-year contract at 33 years old or older in the last nine years were Jeff Petry and Ryan Suter. Just based on the lack of available comparables, I’ve included Mattias Ekholm’s contract in the table above as well.

Putting Myers’ numbers against the comps though, it’s clear he wouldn’t be in the range of the $6.5M+ adjusted cap hits of Petry and Ekholm, though. While Myers’ production matched Ekholm almost directly, Ekholm was averaging nearly five minutes per game more than Myers (not to mention the fact that Ekholm was also two years younger).

Though Ryan Suter was a couple years older than Myers when signing, the $3.9M adjusted cap hit represents the closest thing we have to go off for a possible four-year deal for Myers. While Suter did have better numbers than Myers in just about every category, which could point to Myers coming in drastically lower than Suter on a four-year deal, Suter being 36 years old when signing could factor into why his cap hit was where it was.

So while Myers would likely come in lower than Suter on any possible four-year deal, it probably wouldn’t be by a huge margin. Again though, we really don’t have much of a sample size to go off with this.

3 YEARS

Three years is probably a more likely bet for a possible Myers contract.

Within the group of comparables, we generally see two different ranges. While Myers’ numbers put him well above the Luke Schenn contract, we then see a group of deals around $3.75M to $4.25M in adjusted cap hits, and then another at $5.5M and above.

In terms of the more expensive contracts, it’s difficult to say Myers would warrant that kind of a deal. Alec Martinez had both much higher signing year production and higher usage, and while Francois Beauchemin’s production was similar, he too had much, much higher usage than Myers. The comparison to Anton Stralman may be a little closer, but with Myers’ numbers not matching up well against the other two contracts at $5.5M+, it’s tough to see the defenseman getting into that range.

Using the Nick Jensen, Radko Gudas, and Trevor Daley contracts as comps though, we see numbers that were much more comparable to Myers’ stats. Jensen acts as a good comp for Myers, with similar signing year production. While Jensen’s career production and ice time were lower than Myers, he did have the higher signing year time on ice, which evens out to a decent comp. Then while Myers clears Gudas in every category (given that by all signs, Gudas was overpaid last year), Daley makes for another decent comp. The production was similar, and while Myers had the higher career ice time, Daley had the higher signing year ice time.

So overall, somewhere in between the $3.71M adjusted cap hit from the Daley contract, and the $4.25M adjusted cap hit from the Jensen contract seems to be the most likely range for Myers on any possible three-year deal.

2 YEARS

If it doesn’t end up being a three-year deal for Myers, a two-year contract is the next most likely option.

While we can rule out Myers from being in the range of the Alex Edler or Mike Green deals, the comparables get a little bit more realistic from there, in the range of a projected cap hit between $3.5M and $4.8M.

In terms of the five cheapest comparable contracts, Myers has lower signing year time on ice than every single one, but then higher signing year production than every single one. So it’s a little difficult to figure out exactly where he fits in this mix. With no answer on whether he’d be closer to the top or bottom of that range, the best we can do is say he’d be somewhere within it, with $4M or a little more once again representing the most realistic scenario.

Projection

A key with Myers is that if reports are to be believed, the defenseman is likely to take less than market value.

So while the $4M projection on a two or three-year deal may be what Myers could make in free agency, there’s certainly a chance he could end up taking less to stay with Vancouver. In terms of a contract length, a two or three-year deal is most likely for Myers, with a four-year deal being a bit more of a longshot.