Hockey Trade Rumors

It’s time for Vancouver, to finally admit to ourselves, Mats isn’t coming here, and with some quality players still available on the Trade Front, I think it’s time we thanked Mats for Considering us, and moved forward, and quickly.

Some interesting options are out there, and this is how I would proceed.

First off, the Canucks currently have 9.5 Million dollars / year in cap space.

But, this includes several players that will be sent down so the number is probably a bit higher, but let’s stick with 9.5 million.

Let’s look at our roster:

Sedin – Sedin – Bernier
Pyatt – Kesler – Burrows
Demitra – Wellwood – Raymond
Pettinger – Johnson – Grabner ?

OK, nothing scary for other teams to play agains.

(some of the LW/RW will probably switch back and forth, these are not my actually line predictions, just tentative lines )

Dmen:

Bieksa
Mitchell
Ohlund
Salo
Krajicek
Edler
+Any 7th. Davidson probably

Goalies:

LU. Enough said.

So, here’s my plan, based on random rumors we’ve heard from spector, tsn, eklund etc.

1. Ott – Van

To Ottawa:

Bieksa & Corey Schneider

To Vancouver:

Vermette & Mez

Sens free up cap space, get a big dman and the goalie of the future they desperately need.

Canucks don’t need a goalie of the future, and we get a good dman, and a young fwd who can score 20+

1. NYR – Van

I know this is from Eklund, who reporded Prucha to Van as follows:

“Prucha and a pick from Rangers to Vancouver for a Prospect, and two third round picks”

But why doesn’t something like this make sense? NYR need to shed salary, they have a million forwards on their team. I don’t know much about the rangers team, so lets just call this:

To NYR:

Prospect ( not edler or grabner) + two 3rd rounders

To Van:

Prospect + Prucha.

Canucks get another scorer, one who in his first 2 years scored 30 and 22 goals.

NYR save the cap space they require, and don’t need another fwd.

1. Buff – Van

To Vancouver:

Maxim Afinogenov

To Buffalo:

1st round pick in 2009

Canucks get yet another scorer

Buffalo gets a 1st round pick and what should be an incredibly deep draft.

(I debated this one at length, and some people tell me max might not even be worth a 1st right now, and some say he’s worth more…We could even say a 1st and a 2nd for my argument, just as long as we don’t trade a core player )

After all this, canucks cap:

We had : 9.5

– 3.75 Bieksa = 13.25 million free cap:

Add: Max + Prucha + Vermette + Mez = 3.3 + 1.6 + 2.76 + 4 ( estimated for Mez ) = 11.66

So our new cap balance = 1.6 million spare for trade deadline:

Or new Potential Lines:

Sedin – Sedin – Bernier

Demitra – Vermette – Afinogenov

Prucha – Wellwood – Raymond

Pyatt – Kesler – Burrows

Spares:

Ryan Johnson / Grabner ( rookie ) / Pettinger

Our Dmen:

Mitchell

Ohlund

Salo

Meszaros

Krajicek

Edler

+Any 7th. Davidson probably

CONCLUSION

In the end, we’ll end up with cap room to spare, and looking at our forwards we can even afford to waiver or release a fwd or two if we really need to save a little bit more cap space.

We won’t have a #1 power line that other teams are afraid of, but this gives us a real balanced 3 line attack, each of which could play PP and score 5 on 5.

Your thoughts?

Let’s make this happen

Mr_Canuck