The Canucks have an interesting problem on their blue line. Two of their top six defenders are currently out with injury and their return doesn’t appear to be imminent. As the body count rose, so too did the necessity of digging deeper into their farm system for help in the interim.

One such defender was Andrey Pedan. Not much was made of his acquisition last season, but it’s beginning to appear as though the Canucks might have something in this lankly Lithuanian. Before looking every bit the NHL defender in his most recent stint with the Canucks, Pedan was figuring prominently as a core member of the Utica Comets.

This begs the question: have you seen enough from Pedan to warrant an extended look in the Canucks top-six, and if so, who sits in favour of Pedan?

Last week we asked what your New Years resolution would be for the Vancouver Canucks. 

Trade vets for picks. Can’t get any simpler than that.

Stay the course, draft good prospects, unload Chris Higgins, try very hard to get a top puck moving defenseman in 24-27 age range, defenseman, defenseman and more defenseman. A few goals along the way wouldn’t hurt, either.

Using impending available cap space to exploit teams that are in a cap crunch. Not signing Vrbata, Hamhuis, Prust, Weber and Bartkowski frees up $15M. These players aren’t delivering performances that equate to their cap hit. Can Benning swing a trade with Philadelphia, New York or Boston to acquire a good player that they can’t afford to resign?

#1) send Virtanen back to Junior – he’s not ready and will be next year with a fresh start.

#2) Give Shinkaruk, Gaunce and Grenier meaningful NHL minutes – it’s time to find out what we have in these guys!

#3) Completely tear down and re-build the blue line! There is nothing more important and perhaps nothing more challenging to undertake but it is mission critical and it can wait no longer.

Step 1: dump all the salary that we can at forward at trade deadline and run youth – at minimum eliminate Vrbata, Burrows, Prust, & Higgins this leaves room for the AHL guys to play some NHL minutes.

Leaving forward lines as follows:

Sedin/Sedin/Hansen Shinkaruk / Sutter / Grenier Baertschi / Horvat / Kennins Gaunce / McCann / Dorsett Cracknell as utility guy

Step 2 : Dump all the salary that we can on D and run youth – at minimum trade Hamhuis, if by some miracle we could find a trade for Sbisa &/or Bartkowski DO IT!

Run with:

Edler/Tanev Hutton/ Biega Pedan/Webber Bartkowski – as 7th D cause seriously is anyone actually gonna trade for this guy!?

Step 3: Sign Byfuglien current ask is 55Million over 8 yrs, DO THIS DEAL! He is big, mean, eats minutes and accumulates points especially on the power play- he is everything our current D core is lacking

Step 4: Offer sheet Seth Jones or Morgan Reilly 6 years at 36 Million. Both are Restricted free agents with tonnes of upside- Nashville is probably reticent to pay Jones full value and will be seeking a bridge deal making him a prime target, as for Reilly – mostly any chance to screw the Leaves should be taken advantage of and it would be a fun F U on the Corrado situation;)

Essentially, we’d be dumping a bunch of dead weight salary and repurposing it all to the D, I’d say money well spent if we end up with a top 4 D group of:

Elder /Tanev Byfuglien/Jones

That solid a D along with steady Goaltending buys a lot of support to aid in the learning for a young Forward group and young D prospects like Pedan and Hutton.