The NHL continues to play through the pandemic, and with the season moving forward rumours persist. Teams continue to figure out what works and what doesn’t for their roster. Lots of teams are realizing they are not as good as they thought, or realizing they need to add to make them cup contenders. Today we will be looking at NHL rumours surrounding the Vancouver Canucks, Anaheim Ducks, and Philadelphia Flyers.
NHL Rumours
New York Rangers
Rumour: According to Frank Seravalli on Canucks Central the New York Rangers are a team that is all over forward J.T. Miller as a trade acquisition.
Analysis: The Rangers are a team that is in a position to buy this deadline. When New York first traded J.T. Miller to Tampa they weren’t in a position to leverage his skill set to compete. They were going into a rebuild. Now, however, they sit atop the Metropolitan division. Bringing back Miller could help them out in a playoff run. Miller has shown in recent years he can put up points. Miller can potentially help the Rangers produce offensively rather than relying primarily on Igor Shesterkin‘s Vezina calibre season.
The Rangers have a number of assets they can send back to the Canucks. Seravalli suggests the Canucks may not exclusively futures, and potentially something that can help them on their roster. This is because Rutherford isn’t convinced the Canucks will need to go through a full rebuild, rather a retooling is the most likely route for Vancouver.
Anaheim Ducks
Rumour: According to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic the Anaheim Ducks are going to wait until closer to the deadline before making any decisions on pending UFAs.
Analysis: Between forwards like Rickard Rackell, Ryan Getzlaf, and defensemen Hampus Lindholm and Josh Manson, the Ducks have quite a few big-name UFAs. If they decide to go in the direction of continuing with the rebuild they could get quite a bit of a return for these players. Similarly, they have over $10,000,000 in cap space right now and could leverage that to take on a high cap hit deals from cash-strapped teams for assets.
However, if Anaheim feels like they can compete for a cup this season then keeping their UFAs makes the most sense. And the cap space that was mentioned before? They can use that to re-sign some players in the off-season or to acquire players to help their playoff run.
While the Ducks have taken steps forward this season, they are likely competing to win a round of the playoffs, not the Stanley Cup. There’s just no point to that. They should be trying to recoup assets still and leverage all they can to stay on their current path. The rebuild in Anaheim is working, they shouldn’t cut it short because they’ve had a successful start to a season. However, waiting to see is a good course of action. Having more information is never a bad thing.
Philadelphia Flyers
Rumour: According to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic, the Philadelphia Flyers have not approached captain Claude Giroux about the trade deadline, yet.
Analysis: Claude Giroux has been one of the best players in the NHL over the past decade. However, he has yet to win a Stanley Cup. Giroux came close in 2010, losing with the Flyers in the Stanley Cup Final, but he hasn’t made it that far since. At age 34, the Flyers captain must be starting to think about retirement at some point down the line. And with that, he’ll likely be thinking about winning a cup before he does that. At age 34, Giroux is still an incredibly useful player that most cup contenders would love to add. However, Philadelphia has not approached him about a trade.
If Philadelphia wants to trade Giroux, he has full control over where he goes with a no-movement clause. He could demand they trade him only to a team like Carolina, Tampa or Colorado. He could also insist on retiring a Flyer, a team he’s spent his whole career. If the Flyers could convince him to waive his NMC, they could still get a lot of assets back for him. They would need to retain 50% on him as he currently makes $8.275 million for the rest of this season.
This concludes today’s batch of NHL Rumours!
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