Blues claim Kapanen, Leschyshyn on waivers as Rangers work on Patrick Kane trade: Around the League

The trade deadline is nearly upon us, and still, Luke Schenn remains a Vancouver Canuck. Sure, he’s a Vancouver Canuck who isn’t playing right now due to the team working on figuring out a trade, but he’s a Canuck nonetheless.

Meanwhile, teams around the league have gotten busy as they prepare for this Friday’s NHL trade deadline.

Yesterday, the Pittsburgh Penguins put winger Kasperi Kapanen on waivers. Immediately, Canucks fans began to speculate as to whether or not the Canucks would put in a claim for Kapanen. After all, the Jim Rutherford-led Penguins drafted Kapanen in the first round back in 2014, and also required him from the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2020.

As you may have read yesterday, we strongly advised against the Canucks picking up Kapanen and his $3.2 million cap hit. The 26-year-old winger has barely cracked the 30-point mark since being traded from Toronto in 2020, and has been a regular healthy scratch throughout this season.

And if there’s one thing the Canucks don’t need more of, it’s wingers, especially of the underachieving variety.

The St. Louis Blues, who have been in selling mode as they look to rebuild on the fly, decided to fill one of the holes in their lineup with the Finnish-born forward, as on Saturday, they put in a claim for him.

The Blues were the ninth team on the waivers priority list, meaning that eight teams ahead of them — including the Canucks — chose to pass on putting a claim in for Kapanen.

Yes, all indications for the past 48 hours and beyond have been that Patrick Kane will wind up a New York Ranger ahead of the March 3rd deadline.

After Vitali Kravtsov and Jake Leschyshyn were healthy scratched for trade-related reasons, it became clear that those two players were somehow going to be involved in the Kane trade, and on Saturday, Leschyshyn was placed on waivers.

Also on Saturday, the Blackhawks announced that both of their two main trade chips Patrick Kane and forward Sam Lafferty will be held out of the lineup tonight.

Kane’s agent Pat Brisson commented on the matter, as his client has a full no-move clause and needs to approve any potential movement.

“Based on the current status of Patrick’s situation, we collectively felt it was more appropriate to have him not play during this period of reflection,” Brisson said, according to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun.

There have also been rumours that the Canucks may be the third team involved in the trade to help make the money work, considering Kane has a cap hit of $10.5 million and the Rangers have just $206,000 in cap space at the time of this writing.

We’ve seen the Minnesota Wild be very active and willing to be a third-party broker to acquire additional assets, and the Canucks, along with the Montreal Canadiens, are believed to be the two other teams that have told rival GMs that they’re willing to do the same, according to Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli.

We’ll see where this goes, and of course, if the Canucks are involved in any way, we’ll have you covered on that when it drops. We explained the third-party broker process further earlier this week, and you can read that by clicking here.

UPDATE: The Canucks traded for Kravtsov less than an hour after we hit publish on this. Read about the trade here!

Join us on March 3rd for the Daily Faceoff Live: Trade Deadline edition as Frank Seravalli and the panel break down all of the latest rumours, news, and rumblings from around the NHL. The show will be live on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter from 9 AM-1 PM PT to keep you up to date on all things trade deadline no matter where you’re watching from.