Big defenceman Andrej Sustr popped up in the waiver wire this morning. Jim Benning loves his towering, right-handed blue liners, but is he a fit for the Vancouver Canucks?
It’s not even November and injuries have hit the Vancouver Canucks‘ top two defencemen. Although, judging by the underlying metrics, Vancouver’s top pairing has not been very good this season.
However, many warned that overplaying the top pairing would increase their likelihood of injury and having one of the higher rates of blocked shots would help. Given how injury-prone Alexander Edler and Chris Tanev have been lately, it’s no surprised that they are hurt. However, the team’s thin defensive depth will open opportunities for other defencemen, some of whom are just trying to get back into NHL games regularly.
Which brings me to this morning’s news. Elliote Friedman confirmed that Ducks defenceman Andrej Sustr was put on waivers today. Sustr is a huge, right-handed defencemen, towering at 6’7″. He is not much of an offensive contributor and during his time in Tampa Bay, his corsi numbers may show you that he barely kept his head above water. Given how bad the Canucks defence is, people might welcome him.
More from The Canuck Way
- Which team won the Bo Horvat trade?
- What to expect from newcomers Anthony Beauvillier, Aatu Räty
- Back to the future: How the skate uniforms became a regular Canucks’ feature night
- Canucks kick off 2023 with disappointing 6-2 loss to Islanders
- 2nd period penalty trouble sinks Canucks in 4-2 loss against Winnipeg
He ticks the boxes that Jim Benning likes and you can cherry pick the right underlying metrics to support it. But, it appears Sustr was benefited from the system in Tampa Bay and contributed little to it.
I’m sure Benning is keeping an eye on Sustr since injuries hit his blue line. Calling up Alex Biega and playing him has started the clock. When you recall players, teams have 30 days or 10 games played before that player has to go back on waivers for reassignment. Unless Vancouver plans on keeping Biega up when everyone is healthy and waiving a forward or another defencemen, I don’t think Benning would prefer going that route.
This opens the door to claiming Sustr to add insurance on the right side if Tanev is out longer than expected. Theoretically, the team can always send Biega back to Utica before he needs to be waived and have an extra right-handed defenceman at the ready. Here’s the problem: Sustr is a bad defenceman.
At best, he is a marginal upgrade on Erik Gudbranson. It is enough of a headache to have one of him in the lineup and I’m not keen on the idea of having two. There is a good reason why his ice time continued to decline in Tampa Bay towards the end of his time there. It’s also unsurprising why teams were not lining up to sign him on July 1st.
Talk to Lightning fans. They will tell you all about how poor his play out there is. Anaheim fans learned that quickly in only four games this season. Ducks coach Randy Carlyle wasn’t impressed either, that’s how he ended up on waivers in the first place.
I get that the bar is low for Vancouver’s blue line and depth is an annual concern. But at this point, Sustr seems like another bad player to add to the lineup. Unless the goal is try and race to the bottom, then by all means, go for it. I legitimately wonder if the size and handedness are enough for Benning to take a chance. I sure hope he doesn’t, but he may believe that a claim will get people off his back over depth. However, when we want more depth, we mean good depth.