Strombabble: Mr Gillis and Mr Gilman go to Washington

The Canucks have been interested in Troy Brouwer before, could they be again?

Looks like it’s time to add Washington to the list of potential Lu-suitors.

Jeff Angus gave a rundown on Thursday of possible Luongo landing sites, so unless Gillis and Gilman are taking the most round-about route to New Orleans you can imagine – and on Super Bowl Sunday, to boot – it’s time to add the U.S. capital  to the list.

Mike Gillis has stressed since the beginning that this would be a hockey trade as much as anything; waiting for the season to start and for teams to start seeing gaps in their lineup always made sense. With the Capitals off to a poor start, are they set to make the proverbial ‘shake things up’ trade?

Some quick analysis, after the jump.

The Capitals have all kinds of problems, but goaltending wasn’t really thought to be one of them. Nonetheless, how comfortable can they be with two young goalies? Word is they are very, very high on Braden Holtby and they can’t be uncomfortable with Michal Neuvirth- would they have let Tomas Vokoun walk if they weren’t? But the fact remains that they are among the league’s worst in goals-against. That’s not completely on the goalies – the Caps have been a defensive mess so far, bleeding shots left, right and centre.

Nonetheless, adding an elite goalie like Luongo would be hard for the Caps to pass up. As we’ve emphasized here before, his cap-hit is very friendly (the Capitals have $6.3 million in cap space) and as we’ve seen so far this season, he’s still very much one of the best in the game.

The Capitals also do have a few players the Canucks have shown interest in before – Troy Brouwer, Joel Ward and John Carlson are all players that have aspects of their game that make sense for the Canucks, given what we know about what the team values. All three are good possession players who play some of the toughest minutes on the team.

The Canucks have two very clear needs that they should be able to fill in exchange for Luongo: some sort of goaltender to play understudy to Cory Schneider and a young-ish forward to help re-stock the cupboard going forward. This team is going to get old, very, very fast. A forward in his mid-20s makes the most sense.