Photo Credit: Kelley L Cox/USA TODAY Sports

Kevin Bieksa’s finest moment as a Vancouver Canucks defender came during the 2011 Western Conference Final against the San Jose Sharks, when he was hitting everything, fighting Patrick Marleau, and even scoring breakaway goals. The series winner, weird as it was, was just icing on the cake.

Since then Bieksa has publicly criticized the Sharks for diving, even going so far as to say the club lacked integrity.

And now? Well now the Sharks are reportedly keenly interested in acquiring the physical, 34-year-old Canucks blue liner who may or may not have been asked to waive his no-trade clause this week, according to a report from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.

The Sharks and the Canucks don’t really seem to be natural trading partners. In some ways the two Pacific Division rivals are mirror images of each other, over-the-hill regular season juggernauts that are currently in the process of restocking their cupboards while eschewing any notion of ‘tanking’.

Both teams are staffed by players with no-trade clauses, and the Sharks’ interest in Bieksa is particularly hard to square with their personnel. This is a team, after all, that dealt right-shot defenseman Jason Demers this past fall in part because they felt they had a surplus at that spot with Brent Burns and Justin Braun. On the other hand, acquiring another righty blue-liner would allow the Sharks to move Burns back to forward (where he is super elite, as opposed to just excellent).

That said, the Sharks do have a need in goal, which the Canucks could help them out with. And the Sharks have been reportedly looking at some sort of major trade – a “blockbuster” even – that would send a core player packing, according to the San Jose Mercury News.  

It’s also probably worth noting that Friedman floated the possibility of the Canucks looking to package Eddie Lack with Bieksa in a trade during a Thursday evening radio hit on Sportsnet 960 (although he was talking about a hypothetical scenario involving the Buffalo Sabres). From

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Anyway the Sharks are a really odd team to have in the possible Bieksa mix, but in some ways it makes sense, particularly because they’ve become something of a zany, wild card organization over the past 14 months. It’s so senseless it’s sensible, essentially.