It seemed relatively surprising when a report surfaced that Colorado Avalanche defenseman Tyson Barrie was “in play” this weekend, but his name has now popped up in a couple of other locations as well. Darren Dreger of TSN tweeted last night that “Barrie trade consideration seems to have amplified” and listed Carl Soderberg as another player whose name had come up. Dreger was then on WGR550 in Buffalo this morning and connected both the Vancouver Canucks and Arizona Coyotes to the defenseman. Then, Adrian Dater of Colorado Hockey Now tweeted that he’d heard “chatter” about the Canucks offering Jake Virtanen and a 2020 first-round pick for Barrie, though obviously nothing has been confirmed yet.
Barrie, 27, is coming off an outstanding offensive season with the Avalanche in which he recorded 59 points in 78 games, but has just a single year left on his current contract and is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next summer. Add that to the potential emergence of Cale Makar on the right side and the powerplay for the Avalanche and the team seems to be at least listening on their top defenseman.
Still, this chatter doesn’t mean that the team is set on moving Barrie. He is after all an extremely important part of the team and GM Joe Sakic has fought strongly in favor of him in the past. Barrie signed a four-year, $22MM deal with the Avalanche in 2016 and carries a $5.5MM cap hit for this season.
A team like the Canucks shouldn’t be dangling their 2020 pick. That’s supposed to be one of the deepest drafts in history. Not wise.
Agree with JD. if this was a guy locked up for 3-4 more seasons maybe but a guy on an expiring contract playing for a losing team, trading a young player and a 1st sounds like a Pierre Dorion type of move.
If the Canucks trade their 2020 first rounder they would be committing the same mistake Ottawa did and I’d be jumping on the “fire Benning” bandwagon.
I don’t even think it’s because they’d be risking a top pick. Early mocks say that the top 20 are all legitimate top 10 picks. Trading a pick that normally would be high teens might be the equivalent as trading a 4-10 pick
Trade ‘em for some scoring.
Canucks expect to make the playoffs next year especially if they add a high scoring D-man. And Virtanen is not that good, he has potential, but he’s lazy