National Post

Duchene mired in hockey limbo

Seeks fresh start as trade rumours linger

- Michael Traikos mtraikos@ postmedia. com Twitter. com/ Michael_ Traikos

The waiting, as Tom Petty famously sung, is the hardest part. At least it has been for Matt Duchene, the talented Colorado Avalanche f orward forever stuck in limbo. How long has it been since he first appeared on the trading block? Two years? Three? It might have been even longer, constantly being told that he was unwanted and unnecessar­y, always hearing that he was close to heading to this city or that one.

The Ottawa Senators were once reportedly “kicking tires on a deal.” The Los Angeles Kings and New York Islanders were at one time i nterested. So, too, were the Montreal Canadiens, Columbus Blue Jackets, Nashville Predators, Carolina Hurricanes and pretty much any team in the market for a centre who scored 30 goals two years ago and was good enough to represent Canada at the Olympics and the World Cup of Hockey.

At first, Duchene wanted to remain with the team that he was a fan of growing up and that drafted him with the third overall pick in 2009. But with Colorado rebuilding and the trade rumours not going away, he now just wants what P. K. Subban, Taylor Hall, Jonathan Drouin and Jordan Eberle all received: a fresh start with a new team. Yeah, good luck with that. If the Avalanche really wanted to trade Duchene, it should have happened by now. Instead, GM Joe Sakic keeps holding out for a deal that might not actually materializ­e, all the while expecting that Duchene will simply put his head down and play through all the noise.

For a while, Duchene did just that. But with two years remaining on his contract and the Avalanche expected to be a bottom- 3 team again after finishing with just 48 points last year, he finally seems to have reached his breaking point.

Rather t han j oi n his teammates in Colorado for informal practices, as he has done in the past, the 26- year- old is in Toronto skating on his own. Those close to the situation told Postmedia News this week that Duchene may not report to training camp next week, something that theoretica­lly would put pressure on the team to move him.

The problem is with or without Duchene, the Avalanche are going to miss the playoffs. Not having him in the lineup might actually increase the team’s chances of ending up with the No. 1 pick next year. The bigger problem, however, is that the window to move a $ 6- million player might have cl osed j ust as t he weather started to cool.

Simply put, teams don’t make trades in September. Or October. Or any time other than around the trade deadline, the draft or the start of free agency.

It is why you can probably expect that Toronto’s James van Riemsdyk will start the season on a line with Tyler Bozak and Mitch Marner. And why as much as everyone would like the Duchene situation to be settled, the chances are that he will have to wait until the trade deadline before he finds some type of closure.

Last year, there were 16 trades i n the five- month span f rom September to February. None were particular­ly noteworthy, unless you count Edmonton sending Nail Yakupov to St. Louis for an ECHL forward and a conditiona­l thirdround draft pick.

Colorado, which reportedly is i nterested in defenceman Mattias Ekholm from Nashville, is looking f or something f ar more valuable in exchange for Duchene. But at this point, the team should simply cut its losses and do what is right for him and the rest of the team.

The longer this drags on — and it’s dragged on far too long already — the more dysfunctio­n it causes in Colorado.

“I talked a little bit with Dutchy. He’s not here, that’s not a secret,” Gabriel Landeskog, whose name has also been in trade talks, told the Denver Post this week. “But we’ll have to wait and see. As of right now, he’s part Avalanche organizati­on and we all expect him to be here when training camp starts. I don’t really know what else to tell you right now.”

Based on recent history, Duchene doesn’t have much of an option.

The team holds all the cards in these types of situations. We saw it last year when Winnipeg’s Jacob Trouba sat out for the first month of t he season in hopes of forcing a trade. And we saw it a year earlier when Tampa Bay’s Drouin refused to report to the minors in 2016 and instead requested a trade, something that he had to wait a year for to happen. Eventually, both players acquiesced and returned to their respective teams.

While those situations were different than the one Duchene is facing, because it involved a younger player who was looking for more ice time, the end result is usually the same.

In the end, the team always wins.

Of course, until the Avalanche moves on from this ugly situation and allows Duchene to move on, no one really wins.

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Matt Duchene
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