Shannon “Benning Will Make a Decision [on Gudbranson] in February”

Sportsnet’s John Shannon was on Sportsnet 650’s Canucks Central with Alex Auld and CanucksArmy alumnus Satiar Shah to discuss, among other things, the unfolding situation between the Canucks and pending unrestricted free agent Erik Gudbranson.

According to Shannon, the Canucks plan is to make a decision on their physical stay-at-home defenceman in February. The plan, it sounds like, is to avoid a Dan Hamhuis-like situation where they take too long to decide what to do with an expiring contract on a valuable asset and suffer that decision under public scrutiny.

That means the Canucks will either put pen to paper on a long-term contract extension for Gudbranson or trade him in the hopes of recouping some of the value they parted with to bring him to Vancouver in the first place. Alternatively, as CanucksArmy’s Jeremy Davis suggests convincingly, the Canucks can walk away — it’s their second-best option, really.

You’ll remember that the Canucks re-signed Gudbranson, a restricted free agent at the time, to a one-year show-me type contract at $3.5-million after an underwhelming first season in Vancouver that was ultimately cut short due to a wrist injury that required surgery. At the expiration of the contract, Gudbranson will enter unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career in a relatively weak free agent pool — that’s especially true of the defencemen available.

The Canucks can’t re-sign Gudbranson until January 1st, so time is on their side, in some respects. The obvious drawback is that it gives them a relatively short window with which to try and work out whether they can get better value on a Gudbranson extension or a trade on the February 26th trade deadline.

And at the end of the day, that might not even be the Canucks decision to make. Based on Shannon’s wording, it’s fair to wonder if Gudbranson isn’t more interested in testing a weak free agent market to cash in elsewhere. At the very least, he can use the timing framework as leverage if the Canucks can’t put together a deadline deal to ship Gudbranson and pit them against the open market.

If the Canucks try to move Gudbranson, one would have to imagine there will be suitors. In spite of poor underlying metrics and visible struggles to the naked eye of most in the industry, it seems there will be a market for Gudbranson in February if the Canucks decided to go the trade-route.

Sportsnet 650 had TVA’s Renaud Lavoie on the show just a few short days ago, and they touched on the Gudbranson conundrum. In general, Lavoie was firmly in favour of the Canucks re-signing Gudbranson but acknowledged that a market would exist for his services. If the Canucks do try a Gudbranson deal, Lavoie can see the two Ontario clubs having interest.

Alternatively, it will always be fair to wonder if the Florida Panthers still have interest in Gudbranson. They tried to acquire Gudbranson in the summer for Jason Demers, straight up, but the latter of those two used his no-trade protection to veto the deal. The Panthers traded Demers to the Coyotes for Jamie McGinn just months later. The Province’s Jason Botchford recently reported, though, that the Panthers inquired again on Gubdranson as recently as September.

The Canucks will have options — some better than others — with Gudbranson when it gets down to crunch time. From where I’m sitting, there’s about three of them, and only one leads to a long-term future for the 25-year-old, hard-hitting defenceman in Vancouver.

Time will tell which option the Canucks and Gudbranson choose. This story is starting to pick up steam, though. Of that much, I am certain.