Gauging the Market for Goaltenders with Schneider and Luongo on the Block

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Hockey fans have heard a lot over the past week about the supposed plethora of goaltending options available to clubs on the market. On draft Sunday we’ve already heard that Sergei Bobrovsky is being shopped by Columbus (after he reportedly made a six million dollars per season contract demand this week), while Mike Smith is close to finalizing a six year contract with the Phoenix Coyotes worth 5.66 million per season (yikes). 

Meanwhile after fourteen months of shopping Roberto Luongo, Mike Gillis may have finally found a team willing to have Luongo’s life-time contract on the books going forward. Unfortunately that team is the Canucks. The Canucks are reportedly shopping Cory Schneider this morning, with the Oilers and a handful of other teams reportedly in the mix. Vancouver’s asking price is reportedly, and sensibly, sky high.

Read past the jump.

Schneider is considered by some to be the best young goaltender in hockey, and he has the small sample numbers to back that boast up. But Bobrovsky’s availability might complicate that.

That said it’s a three dimensional situation because, while Bobrovsky’s presence on the trade market gives teams interested in acquiring Schneider other options, it also gives the Canucks another potential trading partner in the Columbus Blue Jackets. We might mention that the Blue Jackets were interested a year ago in both Cory Schneider and Roberto Luongo…

Heading into the draft Vancouver’s goaltending situation, their trade posture and preferences are essentially inscrutable. We’d be remiss if we didn’t note how that aura of unpredictability benefits Vancouver, and potentially gives them a thin veneer of leverage if they still intend on dealing Luongo. That said, there’s a good argument to be made that keeping Roberto Luongo and banking whatever you can get in a Cory Schneider is the wiser way for Vancouver to proceed on Sunday…

All we can really say for now is that apparently there’s a good deal of demand for Cory Schneider’s services:

Also when I asked Mike Gillis at his media availability on Saturday how involved Roberto Luongo was in the trade process at this point, he told me that Luongo wasn’t "involved much at all" and wouldn’t be "until we have something in frame to discuss." We can imply then, that any possible Luongo deal wasn’t close as of Saturday afternoon, and certainly there’s no rumblings on that front as of the time of this writing…

Or maybe Bobrovsky isn’t on the trade market after all (or perhaps he briefly was but is no longer):