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Dreger: Canucks interested in Evander Kane, ‘would love to bring the hometown kid back to Vancouver’
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Thomas Drance
Feb 5, 2015, 20:45 ESTUpdated:
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Are the chemistry conscious Vancouver Canucks interested in bringing Winnipeg Jets forward Evander Kane to the west coast of Canada? They should be, but it would be a bit of a surprising move for an organization that has jettisoned a variety of players in the recent past for reasons relating to “character” and off-ice citizenship.
Those concerns might not be enough to dissuade Vancouver when it comes to Kane. In fact they’re reportedly very interested in pursuing the embattled Jets power forward, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger. Unfortunately, they’re not alone.
Read past the jump for more. 
Here’s how Dreger characterized the club’s level of interest in pursuing Kane on the trade market during an Insider Trading segment on TSN Thursday night:
Most of the top contenders definitely will show interest. We’re talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins, we’re talking about the Boston Bruins. You look at the Western Conference you’ve got the likes of the Anaheim Ducks – (they) most definitely will inquire if they haven’t already on Evander Kane.
You’ve got the Vancouver Canucks, who would love to bring the hometown kid back to Vancouver. They’ve been looking for additional scoring and want a top-six forward.
The Montreal Canadiens? Again, interest in Evander Kane.
But there will be a lot of tough questions asked of (Jets general manager) Kevin Cheveldayoff specific to the injury…
When you look at the big picture… the Winnipeg Jets need a couple of big pieces here. They need something that is going to help this club in the short-term, to make sure that they hang onto their spot in the Western Conference playoffs, and they also need something on the long-term – because of the quality of Evander Kane.
When you’re talking about 3-years remaining and a cap-hit that’s very affordable at 5.25 million, there will be a tonne of interest.
So it’s easy for the Canucks to add Kane: they just need to clear salary and also outbid the Ducks, Bruins, Penguins and Canadiens! 
Whether the club even has the assets to do so is debatable, though presumably it would start with Bo Horvat and/or Jake Virtanen. Even then, they may not be able to outbid teams with deeper prospect pools and more young NHL-ready pieces, like the Ducks. 
One thing that might work in Vancouver’s favour here is that the Jets are sorely lacking in forward depth, especially on their third-line. Vancouver has the pieces to address that issue (from Jannik Hansen to Shawn Matthias to Chris Higgins to Zack Kassian). It’s really in the quality futures department that the Canucks are lacking, relative to some of the other interested teams Dreger listed.
One more thing to keep in mind is that Kane is represented by Don Meehan of Newport Sports agency. Meehan, you may recall, is Trevor Linden’s former player agent and Newport Sports employed Canucks general manager Jim Benning when he was briefly between jobs with the Buffalo Sabres and the Bruins. If, perhaps, the Canucks are willing to gamble on Kane in spite of his perceived immaturity, that layer of familiarity might be a reason why.
The takeaway ultimately is that Vancouver does have some interest in pursuing Kane. That’s good, because doing so is the right decision. 
Having interest in a particular young power forward is only the first first step though, and that interest doesn’t make any potential deal simple or less costly. When we consider that Vancouver would need to actually out-bid a whole mess of other teams for Kane’s services, and take on a major long-term salary commitment in the process, the Canucks would appear to be solid long-shots to actually land the former Vancouver Giant. 
There’s no harm in dreaming though.

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