Canucks “very active” in trade talks, looking for defencemen

This summer will be big for the Vancouver Canucks. Signing a young restricted free agent to a very important contract and utilizing their cap space well, will go a far way to hypothetical future success, but the team is reportedly looking to add on the back end via a trade.

According to Rick Dhaliwal, Jim Benning and his management team have been making calls all across the league and the general feeling is that they are looking for a defenceman.

As of right now, there are multiple rumours of several defencemen being on the market as teams look to shuffle their players around to prepare for the new season. The Canucks have already been reported to be in on Leafs defenceman Nikita Zaitsev, who requested a trade from Toronto earlier this month.

Another player that has been rumoured is Flyers’ Shayne Gostisbehere. The 26-year-old has four years remaining on his six-year deal, coming in at a cap hit of $4.5-million — a well-deserving number for a player that has arguably been one of the best young defencemen in the entire league.

Gostisbehere has a career 0.63 points per game and has been an excellent power play contributor for a mediocre Flyers team. At even-strength, he has been significant better at controlling shot attempts for the last three years — averaging a  3.87 CF%rel.

Benning looking to improve the defence makes sense. There is flexibility there as no current defenceman for the Canucks is signed past next season, giving management tons of options in trades or free agent signings. There will of course be upcoming contracts to think of — Boeser, Pettersson and eventually Hughes — but barring complete disaster, this team has room to add a significant player on a significant contract.

They have over $31-million in space to play with and only Boeser’s new contract to think about.

With the hometown draft coming up, that might change the mindset as to when this hypothetical trade will happen. There will most likely be important transactions next weekend.