Photo Credit: USA Today Sports

Andrey Pedan has done plenty of travelling this season between the NHL and the American League, although he’s only managed to play games in the latter league. I had hoped that he would start the year with the team, considering him better than some of their other options, and advocated strongly against waiving the 22-year old defenceman.

But the Canucks waived him anyways, and he went unclaimed. No harm done.

However, Pedan has since been recalled three times, and although Willie Desjardins hasn’t inserted him into an lineup yet, the Canucks are about to run out of time and have to make a decision on whether to keep Pedan – or they’ll have to risk exposing him on waivers for the second time this season.

When a player is waived and subsequently clears, the waiving team is free to reassign and recall that player as many times as they see fit – within a certain set of parameters.

That’s where section 13.5 of the NHL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement comes in:

The important passage here is the second clause of subsection (i), indicating the rights granted by clearing waivers last until the player has played ten games or is on the roster for a total of 30 cumulative days.

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Thanks to CapFriendly, we can very easily track how many days a player has spent on an NHL roster, which I’ll set out here:

Recall Date Reassignment Date Days on Roster December 8th December 11th 4 December 17th January 1st 16 January 10th Present 10

With some very simple arithmetic, we can see that Andrey Pedan has been on an NHL roster for a grand total of 30 days, as of today. That means that unless the Canucks reassign him today, they will have to expose him to waivers when they eventually return him to the American League.

There does exist the possibility that the Canucks loaned Pedan to the American League during the Holiday Roster Freeze and CapFriendly was not aware of it.

In accordance with section 16.5 (d)(ii), a player can be loaned to their minor league affiliate up until 11:59pm on December 23rd, provided that they do not require waivers (Pedan would not have required them at the time), and provided the player was recalled after December 11th (Pedan was last recalled December 17th).

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The Canucks, like all team, had December 24th, 25th and 26th off. They also had the 27th off. They could have loaned Pedan to Utica following the game against Calgary on December 23rd, and recalled him the morning of December 28th, which would have kept him off the roster for an additional four days, thus extending the time he could stay in Vancouver without needing waivers. He wouldn’t even have had to fly to Utica, it could have merely been a paper transaction and Pedan could have stayed home the whole time.

It’s a minor move that could have bought them some extra time, but it might be a moot point anyhow, given the present state of the roster. Ben Hutton, Philip Larsen and Erik Gudbranson are nowhere close to returning to the lineup, and Troy Stecher barely survived Tuesday’s game without throwing up all over the ice. If anything, it seems like Pedan might be closer than ever to getting into the lineup.

Other options available to the Canucks include swapping Pedan for another defenceman. Unfortunately they don’t have any other defencemen in Utica that have played for them before, and only one (Chad Billins) that has ever played an NHL game at all. Beyond that, you’re choosing from a selection of players on ELC’s (Jordan Subban, Evan McEneny, Ashton Sautner), and Tom Nilsson, who is injured and can’t even play for the Comets, let alone the Canucks.

It’s also possible that Pedan just spends the rest of the season with the Canucks. They are currently operating with just 22 players on the roster, so even if one of their injured players returned to action, they wouldn’t need to reassign anyone. We don’t know exactly how long Gudbranson and Larsen are going to be out of commission for, and with the way things have been going to this point, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that more long term injuries are on the horizon.

So, to conclude this short point, if you don’t hear today that the Canucks have sent Pedan back to Utica (and I’m guessing they won’t), then they won’t be able to do so again without first offering him around the NHL. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

More Fun With the CBA!

Bo Horvat Goes to the All-Star Game (from Ryan Biech)

Roster Sizes, Contract Limits, and Multiple Waiver Claims

On the Conclusion of the CBA (from Ryan Biech)

Waiver Priority Order (from Ryan Biech)

On Emerson Etem, and Reclaiming the Claimed





