TRADING BLOCK LIMBO FOR AVS’ DUCHENE
Forward may not show up for team’s training camp
The waiting, as Tom Petty famously sung, is the hardest part.
At least it has been for Matt Duchene, the talented Colorado Avalanche forward 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 interested.
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-three team again after finishing with just 48 points last year, he finally seems to have reached his breaking point.
Rather than join 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 closed just as the 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 in the five-month span from September to February. None were particularly noteworthy, unless you count Edmonton sending Nail Yakupov to St. Louis for an ECHL forward and a conditional third-round draft pick.
Colorado, which reportedly is interested in defenceman Mattias Ekholm from Nashville, is looking for something far 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.