Report: Bieksa trade hit a snag when Sharks wouldn’t offer pick in 2015
8 years ago
Photo Credit: Candice Ward/USA TODAY Sports
The second-day of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft opened with the San Jose Sharks trading up from the 39th pick in the draft to the 31st by leveraging their 2016 second-round pick in a deal with the Colorado Avalanche. The Sharks then used that pick to select defenseman Jeremy Roy out of the QMJHL.
It was an interesting deal from the Canucks’ perspective, and not only because it emphasized the high cost of moving up in a second-round that’s widely seen to be loaded with talent. It’s also interesting because it would appear to put the final nail in the coffin that was the widely expected Kevin Bieksa to San Jose trade, which reportedly fell apart on Friday afternoon.
Read on past the jump.
The reported Bieksa deal fell apart, apparently, when the Sharks refused to part with the 39th pick in the draft, according to Pierre LeBrun:
But the trade ultimately never got done. At least not yet.There seemed to be disagreement over the year of the second-round pick involved, a source said; the Sharks wanted to send a second-rounder from 2016 and the Canucks wanted a second-rounder for 2015. And if the pick was going to be 2016, I think the Canucks wanted another, lower pick also thrown in to compensate for waiting a year on the second-round pick.
And now the Sharks don’t have a second-round pick to play with, and the Canucks still have Bieksa’s contract on the books.
We should note here that Canucks general manager Jim Benning denied that a deal between the Sharks and the Canucks was ever close.
“I don’t know where this stuff comes from,” Benning told reporters on Friday, via Ben Kuzma. “Media reports said it was closer to getting done than it actually was.
“At the end of the day, we both weren’t at a place where we could agree upon doing a deal,” Benning continued.
LeBrun mentions that the Canucks may look elsewhere and that would be helpful if the Canucks hope to leave the NHL Draft with some additional cap space to play with this summer. At this point it would be awkward, surely, for Bieksa to return to the club this fall after how this played out (particularly if the reports of Bieksa and the Sharks being close to agreeing on a contract are accurate).
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