On the heels of his club’s trade for forward Lukas Reichel, Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin met with the media via Zoom to discuss several topics. Here’s what the Canucks’ GM had to say.

“We wanted to see if we could find something that could help us with a little bit more experience. The familiarity with Kevin Dean being in Chicago over the last three years, and obviously Lukas is a younger player that was drafted in the first round and played centre in the American Hockey League. Hasn’t played as much centre in Chicago early on in his career, but we definitely see the experience that he has, and the acquisition cost for us was intriguing here to make this move today.”

“I was fortunate to see him playing in Berlin in his draft year. Appreciated his competitiveness, his skill set and his ability to skate. Over time, you’ve been waiting to see if this guy would be able to take it to the next level and establish himself as an NHL player. It’s been — [as it is] for most of the young players — a little bit of an up and down, until you establish yourself. But you can see the skill set, and you can see the speed in his game, and even in the summer, this was a player that we talked about [to] potentially track him to see if he didn’t find his level in Chicago. Could it be a change of scenery type of player? Obviously we talked to Kevin Dean here since he got hired on some of the players that potentially could be available, and we continued to talk about Lukas and what Kevin had to say about him, and obviously like him as a person and his character too. So we’re excited to get him in here and continue to work with him.”

“Well, we definitely believe that he has the ability to do that there, and we’ll definitely give it a try here. I mean, again, I think it’s our job as an organization and with our coaches and development staff we have, it’s our job to help him to take his game to the next level. What intrigues us is, as I said, the speed coming through the neutral zone and his skill level there, and those are the things that make us excited about him. And he’s still young, so I believe there is, there is more to come…With the very condensed schedule here, we got two games in two nights right away, without practice times. So that being said, the familiarity with Kevin Dean on our staff, and what he’s done in the American League in the past, [Reichel] was drafted as a centre as well. So we’ll give him a shot here tomorrow, if he gets in here [to Vancouver] tonight, and we’ll continue to go from there.”

“I think we have been a little bit inconsistent, and part of that is the last couple games, being depleted, and also early on, we missed Teddy Blueger there on a PK. I think there’s a lot of positive indications of how we want to play, when we’re playing to our identity, we’re playing fast, and playing as a unit of five. There are signs that we played really good hockey. The games against Dallas and Washington was two games that I was really pleased with. But I also think even last night [in Nashville], we had our chances on the power play, but we weren’t able to execute. But there were still signs that we were still in the game. But I think with the parity of the league nowadays, you’ve got to find ways to execute, you’ve got to find ways to take care of the special teams. And if you do, you’re having a chance to get a point.”

Allvin also gave injury updates on Flip Chytil, Teddy Blueger, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, and Derek Forbort. You can read that article below!