Mixed feelings after trade deadline
Canucks give up some of their heart
The previous 36 hours had been so good for general manager Jim Benning and the Vancouver Canucks that the 12 hours that passed uneventfully Wednesday before the National Hockey League trade deadline hardly mattered.
Benning was unable to find a trading partner on Canucks starting goalie Ryan Miller and his US$6-million salary-cap hit. He failed to acquire any more draft picks. Besides the waiver claim of Anaheim Ducks forward Joseph Cramarossa, the Canucks didn’t do anything on deadline day.
And when that happened a year ago, angry villagers made their monthly march on Twitter.
On Wednesday? Peace and tranquillity throughout the land.
Two strong trades for scoring prospects will quell an uprising. After Tuesday night’s trade of Jannik Hansen to the San Jose Sharks for winger Nikolay Goldobin and a conditional draft pick, which followed Monday’s stunner of Alex Burrows to the Ottawa Senators for centre Jonathan Dahlen, the Canucks’ future looks far more promising than it had when the week began.
Let’s call Goldobin, a 21-yearold former first-rounder who will make his Canucks debut tonight against the Sharks, a B-plus prospect. Dahlen, who was chosen 42nd overall in last June’s deep draft and is merely tearing up the Swedish second division this season as a 19-year-old, probably grades even higher. Dahlen could be something special.
But if even just one of the two prospects becomes a top-six forward, this will have been a great week for Benning. Certainly, it is a time of clarity. After balancing their desires to rebuild and remain competitive, the Canucks have made it their clear priority to develop young players and try to be much better in two or three years than they are now. This isn’t the start of a rebuild. It is the acceleration of one.
“I think that started when I took the job here three years ago,” Benning told reporters Wednesday at Rogers Arena. “We wanted to get younger, get faster, build our core group up. And I think these last couple of days have just been a continuation of what we’ve tried to do since I got hired. We were able to add two young scorers to our mix.”
Only four players remain — Danny and Hank Sedin, Chris Tanev and Alex Edler — from the NHL roster Benning inherited from Mike Gillis on May 21, 2014.
A month later, Benning traded veterans Ryan Kesler and Jason Garrison for young 20-something players and draft picks. And so it has gone, albeit with a few contradictory moves along the way, notably the signing last July of 30-year-old free agent Loui Eriksson to a six-year contract worth $36-million US.
Lifetime servants to the Canucks, the Sedins’ contracts expire after next season. Edler is 30 and won’t be waiving the notrade clause Gillis gave him. And Tanev, at 27, is young enough to anchor the defence until the team is good again.
Hansen, 30, and Burrows, 35, both of whom were likely to leave the Canucks this summer through the expansion draft or free agency, were the last established pieces Benning could leverage to improve the team’s future.
And he appeared to connect mightily on both swings, although we won’t know for a while if he actually hit a home run on either Goldobin or Dahlen.
Still, that does not fully ease the sadness at seeing Hansen and Burrows leave.
These players, tireless and honest, beat daunting odds just to make the NHL. Burrows was undrafted and nearly quit the East Coast Hockey League, while Hansen was selected 287th — out of Denmark. That the two-way wingers became central to the Canucks, logging a combined 21 seasons that encompassed the most successful era in franchise history, is astounding.
Intuitively, these are players of character and unselfishness you cling to, players you build with because they are the mortar that binds teams.
They remained until their final minute as Canucks loyal to the team, willing to work with Benning through no-trade clauses in their contracts because not only would a change be best for them, but best for the teammates and
friends they are leaving behind in Vancouver.
“Both players have been longtime Canuck players, good players through the years, good leaders,” Benning said. “With Alex Burrows, when I sat down with him a week ago and talked to him possibly about going to another team — he’s such a selfless guy — he brought up that it would help out Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi if he was to do something like that.
“It’s kind of handing the torch to the next group of core Canuck players. I can’t say enough about both of them.”
There is little left of the Canucks’ core we knew.
For a decade, the Sedins have been like the eldest brothers in a large family. Burrows and Hansen were their nearest siblings.
“We’ve seen them grow up, going from being call-ups to being first- and second-liners on this team,” Henrik said late Tuesday when the Hansen trade was announced and Burrows had already left.
“That’s something for our young guys to look at and understand. You can’t just come in and be happy to be here. You’ve got to try to get better. That’s what those guys did. That’s why they’re still here. I don’t think they had much more talent than a lot of these guys. It’s up to these (younger) guys now to show up.”
“It’s obviously very sad,” Hansen said. “We’ve been together so long. Eddie and Tanev as well. Eddie, I met for the first time at our draft in 2004. We were roommates (in the minors) before we came here. As soon as we showed up here, Burr and the twins were here to take care of us.” Like family. The Canucks are rebuilding their talent pool. The harder part is rebuilding their team, heart, character and all.