Drance: Why the Canucks’ no-risk dice roll on Vitali Kravtsov makes sense

The key to betting isn’t so much to make great picks, although that helps. The key is to manage your risk.

The Vancouver Canucks have done just that in acquiring winger Vitali Kravtsov from the New York Rangers. The deal, formally announced by both clubs on Saturday, features a price tag as close to “free” as anything you’ll find on the NHL trade market.

Heading to the Rangers in exchange for Kravstov is winger William Lockwood and a 2026 seventh-round pick. Lockwood is a hard working player with some excellent traits, but he’s also a pending Group VI unrestricted free agent following this season. The club wasn’t planning to retain him.

Meanwhile, I’m genuinely not sure I’ve ever seen an NHL team trade a lower value future than a seventh-round pick four draft classes into the future.

That the Canucks have decided to roll the dice on Kravtsov isn’t really the most notable thing about this trade. It’s that the price was so negligible.

That’s not to suggest that Kravtsov isn’t intriguing. He was a top-10 pick of the Rangers at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, selected only a couple of picks after Quinn Hughes. Now 23 years old, however, Kravtsov has yet to really carve out a full-time niche in the NHL.

His NHL journey has been complicated. In the years after selecting Kravtsov in the top 10, the Rangers won drawings at the NHL draft lottery in consecutive seasons — adding a pair of wingers in Kaappo Kakko and Alexis Lafrenière at the apex of the 2019 and 2020 NHL Entry Draft. That pushed Kravtsov further down the depth chart, through no real fault of his own, making opportunity tough to come by.

Ultimately, Kravtsov left the Rangers organization for an 18-month stint in the KHL, where he was reasonably productive at a young age but not a star-level producer.

The KHL factor, or the perceived risk that Kravtsov — a pending restricted free agent — might bolt back to the KHL following this season limited the interest that many NHL teams had in acquiring him ahead of the trade deadline. That risk doesn’t appear to have been of any concern whatsoever for Vancouver.

“Not once did the Canucks bring this up at all,” Dan Milstein, Kravtsov’s agent, told The Athletic on Saturday following the deal.

Kravtsov joins fellow Milstein clients Ilya Mikheyev, Andrei Kuzmenko and Danila Klimovich in the Canucks organization.

This season, Kravtsov returned to the Rangers on a one-year contract and was ultimately beaten out in an audition for a top-nine forward spot by Jimmy Vesey. He appeared in 28 games for New York this year — producing three goals, three assists and six points.

Kravtsov comes with a 6-foot-3 frame, potentially dynamic hockey sense and high-end pedigree, but there are significant question marks about him at this stage of his career, and the acquisition price reflects that too.

The feet need a ton of development, although talent evaluators who admire the player think he’s got the ability to improve there. Without question he’s shown some real progress as a two-way player and playmaker over the past two seasons at both the KHL and NHL levels.

The Athletic has been told that Kravtsov is still in New York. Logistics to coordinate his travel to Vancouver are in progress and he’ll join the club shortly.

The trade is a tremendous opportunity for Kravtsov, who we’re told is thrilled to be headed westward, his camp having identified the Canucks as an ideal NHL landing spot. He should get an opportunity to play major minutes over the balance of this season.

For the Canucks, meanwhile, they’re betting that on a team suddenly loaded with Russian nationals — Mikheyev, Kuzmenko and Vasili Podkolzin among them — including assistant coach Sergei Gonchar, they’ll be able to unlock something meaningful in Kravtsov.

They may be right, but the key to the wager is that the club hasn’t risked all that much regardless.

Since taking over the reigns of Canucks hockey operations in late January of 2022, general manager Patrik Allvin has taken a number of swings on players in an age range between 23 and 26 in a variety of deals, among them: Jack Studnicka, Travis Dermott, Ethan Bear, Riley Stillman.

Kravtsov fits that mould, but only sort of. There’s a key difference in this trade and those superficially similar deals.

Where Dermott cost a third-round pick, Bear a fifth-round pick, Stillman a second-round pick (although the club also cleared significant salary and some cap space in that deal) and Studnicka cost an intriguing defensive prospect (Jonathan Myrenberg) to acquire, the potential upside that Vancouver is risking in the Kravtsov deal is a trifle. That’s the ballgame here.

Trading even mid-round draft picks for players in their early 20s, even solid contributors like Bear, is a tough way for a team as far away from contention as the Canucks are to improve.

Yes, obviously, you’re far more likely to get NHL games out of a Studnicka-type than out of a long shot prospect like Myrenberg. The upside of what Studnicka might provide when this club is ready to contend is lower, however, than what Myrenberg could contribute even if he tops out as cost-controlled organizational depth at the NHL level.

That’s particularly true because even if the bet hits, as it has for a player like Bear, that hit is still on a player closer to unrestricted free agency and likely to get expensive by the time their contributions really matter on a team poised to make meaningful noise.

Short-term certainty is valuable in some instances, but it’s not superior to long-term volatility when the short-term outlook is bleak.

That said, any age-gap trade-related trepidation shouldn’t be applied in Kravtsov’s case.

Although it was a trade rather than a free-agent signing, the price is so low in this instance that the better analogy might be the club’s pursuit of Kuzmenko and younger free agents like Dakota Joshua, Nils Åman and Filip Johansson under Allvin’s watch. And those are swings the club should take all day.

Allvin and the Canucks have done well here to minimize the price paid and the risk taken on. The Kravtsov acquisition is as affordable a flier as an NHL team can take, and that makes it a worthwhile gamble for the Canucks, regardless of outcome.

(Photo of Vitali Kravtsov: Justin Berl / Getty Images)