Today, let's start with an adorably cute piece of Vancouver Canucks news:
Phoebe's tiny now, but female Bernese Mountain Dogs can top out as high as 110 pounds so they're literally BIG commitments.
Luca Sbisa also has a female Bernese, named Heidi. She's bigger than she looks in this photo.
I feel like getting a dog is often the first step towards domesticity for a young hockey player. Hopefully Stecher and Phoebe will be able to put down solid roots in Vancouver for the foreseeable future and this doesn't end up being a precursor to some wildly unexpected trade coming down over the next few days.
The latest on the trade front today—the Carolina Hurricanes got a pretty nice return for 35-year-old impending free agent defenseman Ron Hainsey this morning, trading him to Pittsburgh in exchange for a second-rounder and 26-year-old minor-league winger Danny Kristo.
After a rash of injuries over the last week, the Pens were pretty desperate for defensemen—Olli Maatta and Trevor Daley are both out for at least a month. Justin Schultz has also been out for a week with a concussion but skated today and is expected to get back into action soon, but Kris Letang is now listed as day-to-day, so the Pens aren't out of the woods yet.
Pittsburgh GM Jim Rutherford signed Hainsey as a free agent when he was running the Hurricanes, so he's a known entity, which probably helped make it easier for Rutherford to make a quick decision. With his expiring contract, Hainsey also doesn't cause any future headaches for the Penguins, who skate very close to the salary-cap ceiling. Even with long-term injured reserve factored in,
CapFriendly is showing that Pittsburgh is currently $77,000 OVER their limit. It looks like the Pens will need to make another roster move before their next game on Saturday.
With a career that started in Montreal, then wound through Columbus, Atlanta, Winnipeg and Carolina, Hainsey has 891 games of NHL experience under his belt but has never appeared in a playoff game. I imagine he's pretty excited about this opportunity, especially with the defending Stanley Cup champions.
The draft pick acquired by the Hurricanes will be a late second-rounder, but that's precisely the kind of pick the Canucks should be coveting for their tradeable players.
I wonder if Jim Benning talked at all with Pittsburgh about one of Vancouver's "surplus" defenseman? Do you think a second-rounder would be enough of a return for a player like Ben Hutton or Luca Sbisa? As I said, my guess is that Hainsey's familiarity and his expiring contract were both pluses for Rutherford when he made this deal.
Here are the latest updates on the status of the Canucks' most buzzed-about players:
The Ryan Miller-to-Anaheim idea, which I mentioned yesterday, has picked up a little bit of steam now that John Gibson is sidelined with a lower-body injury and listed as day-to-day. Jonathan Bernier got the 4-3 win last night against Boston; Jhonas Enroth is the third-string goalie for the Ducks.
Salary cap issues might prevent the Ducks from adding a goalie—especially when they also need scoring. The Ducks currently rank 20th in the NHL offensively with 2.56 goals scored per game—the lowest of any team that's currently in a playoff position. Maybe they do need Hansen more than they need Miller?
As for Alex Burrows, we have this:
As
Iain MacIntyre phrased it in the
Vancouver Sun a week ago:
(Burrows') fierce loyalty to the Canucks may work in the team’s favour before March 1.
"If they think they’ve got to rebuild and they can get an asset for me, I’d feel … not an obligation, but I’d think about it," Burrows said then.
The Canucks' playoff hopes have only gotten dimmer since that conversation. With two more nights of action before Vancouver gets back on the ice against San Jose on Saturday, the Canucks now sit six points out of that second wild-card spot in the West, and four points behind both L.A. and Winnipeg, chasing the same goal.
SportsClubStats now pegs Vancouver's playoff odds at just two percent. Twenty-three of 30 teams are still within no more than four points of a playoff spot—Vancouver's one of just seven that's looking at a deficit of six points or more. At this point, it's unrealistic not to think of the Canucks in the "seller" category—they have a lot less to lose if they trade key players than, say, if St. Louis pulls the trigger on a Kevin Shattenkirk deal while also trying to set the table for another serious playoff run.
One other note to close things out today: the Canucks will need to lock down a new ECHL Affiliate during the offseason. Their one-year affiliation with the Alaska Aces is about to come to a close as the team shuts down at the end of the year due to a struggling northern economy.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»