Welcome to the yearly wrap up of the top read articles over the last year!
As the Vancouver Canucks and the rest of the NHL turned to the offseason with the return-to-play playoffs wrapping up, the ‘Nucks were involved in a huge early story.
And it all surrounded Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
While Vancouver was named as a top-desitionation for him, CanucksArmy writer wrote on Oct. 3 about nine other targets who would be better options.
First and foremost, Roget highlighted five things the Canucks should be identifying:
By this humble writer’s reckoning, Jim Benning and the Vancouver Canucks should be working, more-or-less, with the following set of qualifiers, in roughly this order, when making their list of blueline trade targets.
1) The defenceman should be available for trade, or at least acquirable without significant overpay.
2) The defenceman should have a contract that will not impede the Canucks’ attempts to sign Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes to long-term extensions.
3) The defenceman should be of at least top-four quality, preferably with the ability to spend at least some time on a top pairing.
4) The defenceman should be on the upswing of their career, in line with the core of the team, or at the very least not on the downswing.
5) The defenceman should be right-handed, or at least comfortable playing on the right side.
You may notice that the much-rumoured Oliver Ekman-Larsson only checks two those boxes — or maybe only one, depending on how far you believe his game has fallen off. That’s why we’ve put together our own list of potential D trade targets that make more sense for the Canucks.
Honestly, it wasn’t even that hard.
And with that, here was the list of players he came up with: Brandon Carlo, Haydn Fleury, Damon Severson, Scott Mayfield, Shayne Gostisbehere, Erik Cernak, Conor Timmins, Nikita Zadorov, and Adam Larsson.
On Twitter: @zjlaing