It wasn’t too much of a surprise that Colorado center/left winger Matt Duchene wasn’t dealt by Wednesday’s trade deadline. Bigger trades involving players on longer-term contracts typically are now moved in the offseason. Duchene himself is certainly aware of that and told Terry Frei of the Denver Post that he thinks there’s a good chance that he’ll be moved in the offseason:
“There’s probably a good chance something will happen this summer, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But, for now, it’s nice to be a member of this team for the rest of the year. Yeah, it sucks where we’re at, but I love all my teammates and it will be good to finish the year with them.”
The 26 year old has two years left on his contract after this season at a cap hit of $6MM. With several teams being right up against the salary cap at the deadline, it’s likely that there will be more teams who can afford to bring Duchene in during the summer.
More notes from the Central:
- The nagging injury that Stars winger Patrick Sharp has been playing through will require surgery but he’s hoping to continue to try to play through it, reports Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News. Sharp was a strong candidate to be moved by the deadline but this lingering issue was enough to scare any potential suitors off. The pending unrestricted free agent has had a rough walk year as he has just 16 points (7-9-16) in 38 games while dealing with concussion problems on top of this current issue, which Sharp declined to get into specifics about.
- In a reader chat, Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses if defenseman Jay Bouwmeester might be a fit for the Golden Knights in the expansion draft. The veteran doesn’t have a no-move clause and while his offensive numbers have tailed off in recent years, he can still log a lot of minutes which would certainly be enticing to the expansion team. It’s far from a guarantee that the Blues would leave him unprotected but with a cap charge of $5.4MM for two years after this season, exposing him could free up a good chunk of cap space heading into the summer.