With Vancouver sitting in fifth place in the North Division and the top four teams from there getting into the playoffs, the Canucks aren’t quite ready to sell just yet. However, every team but Ottawa has multiple games in hand on them so while their current playoff gap of three points could be considerably larger by the time those are made up. Accordingly, teams are calling about some of Vancouver’s roster players and one of them is winger Tyler Motte, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports in his latest 31 Thoughts column.
On the one hand, it’s easy to see why there is interest in Motte around the league. He has shown more of a scoring touch this season with five goals in his first 16 games while logging over 16 minutes per night, a career-high. It certainly hasn’t come at the expense of his physicality either as he’s averaging 4.67 hits per game, the second-highest rate in the league. With a $1.225MM price tag this season and next, he’s also quite affordable.
It’s also not the first time he has shown flashes of offensive upside. Last year in the bubble, he picked up four goals in 17 games while averaging over 3.5 hits per game so while his early-season output is a bit of an outlier relative to his past regular season production, he also technically just picked up where he left off last summer.
But on the other hand, Motte hasn’t played in a month due to a high-ankle sprain and is currently on LTIR. Although he has resumed light skating, he’s still likely a couple of weeks away from returning.
It was only a few years ago that Motte felt like effectively the throw-in in a deal that sent Thomas Vanek to Columbus and Jussi Jokinen to Vancouver but now that he has established himself as a capable energy player, Jim Benning could be in a position to land a quality return, especially at a time when power forwards are in high demand and affordable players are at a premium. But first, they’ll have to choose if they’re buying or selling, a decision that is probably still a few weeks away.
I wonder what the going rate for a “sports writer” is these days ? Because it surely seems that if they aren’t trying to be player agents, then they must be getting “a little something” from them in order to push rumours like this.
Which is what a lot of these stories are. Pure rumour and speculation which often seems to be more the work of agents “testing the waters” to get their client’s name out there in the hopes of sparking some action.
You know, like a few years ago when Cody Franson was a UFA and some “sports writer” wrote a glowing article about him, going as far as calling him a “power play difference maker” and suggesting any contract offer shouldn’t be lower than 5 mil annually !
Meanwhile, Hodson at that point had scored a grand total of 35 goals in 400 games with only 14 of those on the powerplay.
You’d think a “sports writer” would have noted that in his best year, Franson had a whopping 4 ppgs in 55 games.
(Franson ended up signing a 2 year deal with Buffalo that had an AAV of just over 3 mil. He managed a grand total of TWO power play goals and 7 assists in 127 games over those 2 years.)
It’s almost like the writer was being the mouthpiece of the player’s agent. Kind of like this story.
Like the old saying goes, if you haven’t heard a rumour by noon, start one.
Jesus man go outside lol
Who hurt you bro? Lol.
I really hope Benning doesn’t just give Motte away. He’s gotta do something to save his job though. I don’t put much stock into Aquilini’s recent comments.
You are using powerplay goals to criticize a defencemen. That says to me you don’t know what you are talking about in any meaningful way.