According to Shannon, the Canucks plan is to make a decision on their physical stay-at-home defenceman in February. The plan, it sounds like, is to avoid a Dan Hamhuis-like situation where they take too long to decide what to do with an expiring contract on a valuable asset and suffer that decision under public scrutiny.
That means the Canucks will either put pen to paper on a long-term contract extension for Gudbranson or trade him in the hopes of recouping some of the value they parted with to bring him to Vancouver in the first place. Alternatively, as CanucksArmy’s Jeremy Davis suggests convincingly, the Canucks can walk away — it’s their second-best option, really.
The Canucks can’t re-sign Gudbranson until January 1st, so time is on their side, in some respects. The obvious drawback is that it gives them a relatively short window with which to try and work out whether they can get better value on a Gudbranson extension or a trade on the February 26th trade deadline.
And at the end of the day, that might not even be the Canucks decision to make. Based on Shannon’s wording, it’s fair to wonder if Gudbranson isn’t more interested in testing a weak free agent market to cash in elsewhere. At the very least, he can use the timing framework as leverage if the Canucks can’t put together a deadline deal to ship Gudbranson and pit them against the open market.
Sportsnet 650 had TVA’s Renaud Lavoie on the show just a few short days ago, and they touched on the Gudbranson conundrum. In general, Lavoie was firmly in favour of the Canucks re-signing Gudbranson but acknowledged that a market would exist for his services. If the Canucks do try a Gudbranson deal, Lavoie can see the two Ontario clubs having interest.
The Canucks will have options — some better than others — with Gudbranson when it gets down to crunch time. From where I’m sitting, there’s about three of them, and only one leads to a long-term future for the 25-year-old, hard-hitting defenceman in Vancouver.
Time will tell which option the Canucks and Gudbranson choose. This story is starting to pick up steam, though. Of that much, I am certain.