Report: Canucks Have Asked Bieksa to Waive NTC… Or Have They?
By Rhys Jessop
8 years agoIt’s the day before the NHL Entry Draft, so you and I both know that we’re in the doldrums of silly season today. Rumours, reports, and trade chatter are all flying around completely unchecked and haphazardly.
Earlier this morning, Kevin Bieksa was asked to waive his no-trade clause. Thirty minutes later, Canucks management had never asked him to waive his no-trade clause. Confused? So are we. Let’s try to make sense of this mess after the jump.
First, Farhan Lalji’s report:
Then, Jim Benning’s follow-up, and Ben Kuzma’s denial:
While it looks like these reports are directly contradictory to one another, I don’t necessarily think they are. The Canucks can still approach Bieksa and have a conversation about asking him to potentially waive his NTC without directly posing the question, and that appears to me what’s happened here.
Lalji’s reporting never actually makes a reference to having a conversation where Benning asks, “Kevin, we need you to move you right now. Waive your NTC.” It just vaguely references a talk that the two parties have had, which we’d be silly to assume didn’t happen. Of course the two sides have met in the past, and of course they’ve spoken to each other about this.
Kuzma and Benning could also both be telling the truth as well, in the sense that Vancouver has only really spoken in hypotheticals to Bieksa’s camp so far, and the actual big question has yet to be posed. Ultimately, it’s a semantics thing, and given the interest in Bieksa and how long these rumours have been simmering for, I think it’s unlikely that Benning’s denial means that he’s not considering a Bieksa trade.
It is worth noting however that Darren Dreger had reported less than one week ago that the Canucks and Bieksa had not yet even spoken about a potential trade. Thom Drance wrote the following back when that report surfaced:
With the Canucks pressed up against the projected upper limit of the NHL salary cap, there’s been some clamouring in the Vancouver market for the club to sell on Bieksa this summer. At the moment though, the team has yet to approach him about consenting to a potential deal, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger.
“I’m told that the Canucks have not approached Kevin Bieksa yet to look at the restrictions that he has within his contract,” Dreger said during an episode of That’s Hockey broadcast on TSN yesterday. “The sense that I get is if Bieksa were to allow a trade, he’d have to get an extension as part of the package…”
That the Canucks have yet to approach Bieksa about the possibility of waiving his no-trade clause matches up with Jim Benning’s recent comments on TSN 1040. The Canucks’ general manager didn’t categorically deny that it was a possibility that the club might ask a player to consent to a trade, but said that the club hadn’t “gone down that road” yet.
As for the extension nugget, if what Dreger is saying is true, and he’s not the first hockey reporter to touch on this, then we have to applaud Bieksa for utilizing his leverage in a creative way. You probably won’t be surprised to hear in light of these reports that Bieksa is represented by Kurt Overhardt. Overhardt isn’t much liked in some circles, namely in Ohio, but he seems to be pretty good at his job.
A lot can change in the week though, especially at this time of the year. A Bieksa trade seems further along in the process than it has at any other point, but that doesn’t mean that one is just hours away from breaking. But if one does happen, we can still have a guess at the expected return, given what guys like Bieksa have fetched in the past. MoneyPuck had a look at exactly that back in April, writing the following:
Now, there is a bit of variability to consider here in the case of Bieksa. On the one hand, he still has a good reputation in the league as both a leader and a physical player, potentially increasing his value somewhat. On the other, he does have a no-trade clause which could either limit the list of potential trade partners (as it did in the Kesler scenario), or put a kibosh on a trade altogether.
If Bieksa does go, which wouldn’t surprise me at all given the need the Canucks have for his cap space, Benning will likely get a 2nd in return, plus either a late round pick or a second grade prospect. If he can improve from that, then all the better.
A second round pick is consistent with Benning’s desires to add more picks in the 2nd and 3rd round this season, and the Canucks need to shed cap space too, so a Bieksa deal makes sense on a lot of levels for the team. But the player controls his own destiny in this case, making things a little difficult.
Personally, I’d guess that a Bieksa trade is a probability at this point rather than a possibility, but nothing is absolutely imminent, so these conflicting reports aren’t really conflicting with one another at all. But keep your eyes peeled – this is silly season for a reason. Anything can happen at any time.
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