Training camp is not far away and Colorado center Matt Duchene still sits on the Avalanche’s roster, waiting. The oft-rumored trade talk that has surrounded the 26-year-old star have not stopped, but since general manager Joe Sakic is looking for an overwhelming offer, nothing has happened and its slowly looking like Duchene might have to languish for another season on one of the worst teams in the NHL until a team decides to make that “perfect” offer.
Despite that fact, TSN’s Darren Dreger said that while Duchene doesn’t want to leave Colorado on a bad note since it’s the only home he’s known since 2009, it is believed that he and his agent are now putting pressure on Sakic to get a deal done before training camp.
However, if a deal doesn’t happen, expect Duchene to be ready for training camp for one purpose, according to Yahoo Sports’ Greg Wyshynski, who writes that Duchene knows that if he wants an opportunity to play on a winning team, he needs to produce better than he did last year. After all, his numbers from a year ago might suggest that he isn’t deserving of a huge offer. He put up 18 goals and 23 assists in 77 games a year ago. Granted, he lacks the talent around him that many good players already have, but those numbers don’t spark tremendous excitement. Only a year before that, Duchene had a 30-goal season and 59 points. He may need to produce at that pace this year to find himself a new home, according to Wyshynski.
The scribe adds that this whole process is not fair to Duchene, who has invested 572 games for Colorado in his career and he deserves better than to sit and wait. However, Dreger says that Sakic believes he is worth more than last year’s numbers indicate, but he believes that a trade could easily still happen before training camp starts.
“I think it’s taking so long because Joe Sakic does, again, have a level of expectation that’s much higher from Matt Duchene than what he produced last year. And Matt Duchene himself has a higher level of expectation of his performance and I’m sure that he’s trained accordingly and vows that he’s going to have much bigger numbers this year moving forward. But if you’re an NHL general manager with interest, and there’s a handful of teams that still remain interested in Duchene, you’re trying to make a deal based on numbers from last year – not projections of what he might be moving forward, or what he’s been in the past, which is a star NHL forward,” Dreger said.
If no trade happens, it certainly will be an awkward training camp for Duchene, who could find himself shipped off at any moment, yet remains stuck playing for a struggling franchise. We’ll have to see how this one shakes out.
A) Dreger is a putz.
B) The process is very fair to Duchene. If he didn’t play like garbage while making a bunch of money, the Avs wouldn’t be such a bad team and some other team would actually want him.