VANCOUVER — After teetering at the cliff edge of free agency on Tuesday before dashing safely back to the Vancouver Canucks, Brock Boeser and his family went to his nephew’s baseball game. That’s how they do it in Minnesota.
But the bigger celebration was scheduled for Wednesday night, after old friend and former teammate Troy Stecher arrived for the weekend, when Boeser planned to take his girlfriend, Bella, his mom, Laurie, sister Jessica, brother Paul and Paul’s family, out to dinner with Troy from Richmond, B.C.
“We’re going to boat to the restaurant on the lake and grab some dinner,” Boeser said on the phone from his lake house just outside the Twin Cities. “So that’s our celebration tonight.”
Boeser has always been about family, which partly explains his stunning U-turn as National Hockey League free agency opened on Tuesday.
A career Canuck, the 28-year-old winger had months to wrap his head around the idea of leaving Vancouver after contract talks on an extension failed repeatedly to get traction.
Boeser has a brain to match his big heart. Intellectually and pragmatically, he understood this was business and business would require him to relocate to another city and team after eight years with the Canucks.
But his gut never got on board the free-agency train.
“In my head, I think I was fully set on going somewhere else,” Boeser told reporters in a Zoom call Wednesday morning. “I had kind of a list of teams in my head that I thought maybe would be good fits. And then, you know, I just still was kind of uneasy about everything. And then they called. At the end of the day, you know, I think my heart was still in Vancouver, and I have so much faith in our team and the pieces that we have. And (coach) Adam Foote, too, I think he’s going to be a great head coach. So I think everything just lined up well, and I’m just super stoked to be back.
“I really, mentally, tried to throw scenarios in my head on, you know, different teams I could possibly see myself being on, and tried to envision it. But, you know, that can only get you so far. Just thinking about it … in my stomach, I still had a weird feeling about everything. When they called back, you know, I kind of lit up. It felt right when they started talking and trying to figure out a deal. I just started getting excited and I just knew it was meant to be.”
At least five teams, including the Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers, were expected to make serious long-term offers to Boeser when free agency opened at noon Eastern time. But in the final hour, literally, before it began, Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin made one last call to Boeser’s agent, Ben Hankinson.
Roberto Luongo’s former agent, Gilles Lupien, once explained to us that the process of agreeing on a new contract isn’t much different than agreeing with your spouse to go out for dinner. If your wife wants to go out and you want to go out, Lupien said, then you go out. If someone wants to stay home, then you don’t.
Boeser and the Canucks wanted to go out.
Allvin added term to the team’s offer and Hankinson lowered his ask on annual salary, and the sides quickly agreed on a seven-year, $50.75-million contract that pays $7.25 million per season, provides full trade protection for the right winger over the next four years and could make him a Canuck for life.
Boeser said he was at the gym for off-season training as free agency was about to open, but didn’t actually get off his phone long enough to start a workout.
“I was talking to Ben, just kind of going over everything and trying to get an idea of what could happen,” he explained. “And then he said Patrik was calling him. I kind of raised my eyebrows, like, ‘OK, maybe we can figure something out here.’ And then they kind of went back and forth a little bit, and we found some common ground. And, you know, I had other guys in my ear, like Gar and Demmer (teammates Conor Garland and Thatcher Demko) and all those guys kind of pushing my buttons to come back, too. It obviously plays a big part to have such good friends and have belief within the guys in the room.
“It felt like the door shut a couple times there. So I really had to wrap my head around moving on. There’s so many things going through my head, and that’s why I said my head was spinning. A lot. It was hard to kind of grasp. And that phone call kind of came out of nowhere, so it was definitely, you know, a shock to me. But the way I felt when that phone call came, I told my agent, like: ‘Get a deal done.’”
So the door looked shut several times. But neither side locked it.
Long before the contract was settled on Tuesday, Boeser and Allvin had to settle what was said back at the NHL trade deadline on March 7.
Allvin was candid with reporters about not trading any of his free-agent-eligible players, saying there “was not a whole lot of market return on our players.”
Pressed about not moving Boeser, Allvin said: “If I told you what I was offered for Brock Boeser, I think I would have to run out of here because you would not believe me.”
Privately, Boeser was hurt by the comments, which set a bleak tone publicly about the player’s future with the Canucks.
Allvin, who had always maintained contact and a positive relationship with Hankinson, immediately reached out to the agent and talked to Boeser.
“I said to Brock, ‘From my end, you’re a good player and I don’t want to disrespect you or just give you away,’” Allvin explained this week to Sportsnet. “We were still in the playoff mix at that point, and we were still talking (about a new contract). I would obviously take the words back, but that’s on me.”
“They definitely apologized to me about how it came out,” Boeser said. “Obviously, that’s important, I think, because it did come out kind of the wrong way. But they tried to clear the air as fast as possible. It’s not that they didn’t get deals that they could have used — future assets or whatever. But it’s that they would still have the opportunity to sign me.”
And then, nearly three months later, they did.
By keeping Boeser, who despite injuries has averaged 25 goals and 55 points over his eight seasons with the Canucks, Vancouver landed one of the top free agents available — and on a sensible contract. Re-signing Boeser, and extending new contracts to Garland and Demko a year ahead of their free-agent eligibility, has energized the organization — from management, through Foote and his new coaching staff, down to the players.
“I definitely didn’t think that this was going to happen,” Boeser said. “I think a phone call in the last hour changed everything.
“Obviously you wish it could have gotten done sooner and not at the last few minutes … until free agency opens. But, at the end of the day, I understand what they’re trying to do with the Canucks, and I want to be a part of it. I’m just happy that I can.”
