Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Doing the Wright Thing – on the potential trade talks between the Vancouver Canucks and Ottawa Senators.
Marek: “Something else from Saturday as well. Vancouver and the Ottawa Senators discussing deals involving defensemen
Friedman: “I had a couple people who said to me, ‘did you say that Zaitsev turned down the deal?’ and I said ‘no, I don’t believe that happened.’
I can’t give you the exact timeline. It’s kind of hard to say.
Marek: “Just so we introduce this properly here. this is a deal involving both Tyler Myers and Nikita Zaitsev.
Friedman: “Yes. So there’s been a lot of smoke around Ottawa because of, everybody knows they are looking D. And then Mike Grier came out publically with Erik Karlsson. We listen. Then you and I talked about Ottawa and we heard that they talked but it doesn’t look to be a match. We know Ottawa is looking for a D.
Then there started to be a lot of rumors about Tyler Myers turning down a deal to the Senators at some point. And I will say on that one. There’s a lot of differing opinions flying around about what happened and who did what and who didn’t do what.
Rick Dhaliwal, who I go on with every other Monday. I shout out Rick and Don Taylor because we’re proud, they give a fee for doing that and they graciously donate it to the Canucks Autism network which I’m very happy to donate to. So, I’m happy to plug them. He said that Myers hadn’t turned down a trade to Ottawa.
I heard the same thing recently. Again, there’s a lot of people with differing opinions on this.
But as it stands, I do think Ottawa and Vancouver talked about a Myers for Zaitsev deal, and it never got to the point where, at least not recently, when Myers even had to accept it. And Myers could block it. I think it’s even possible that Zaitsev could block it. I’m not sure, but it’s not like he’d block it. He was going to Belleville. So he wasn’t going to say no to anything.
And some people were asking me, ‘why would these teams do that?” To me, I think it’s actually simple. For Ottawa who have lost confidence in Zaitsev, they would have a player that they would use in Myers. For Vancouver, you get $1.5 million in cap room. Because even though they’re signed for one more season, Myers is a $6 million cap hit and Zaitsev is $4.5 . So that’s a reason there and Vancouver is looking for a bit more cap room to do some things.
The other thing here to is that the reason I think it didn’t get to a stage where anyone specifically asked to approve it, is that I don’t think they could agree on what else would be part of the deal.
I think there was the possibility of a draft pick, maybe someone else included, and I just don’t think the two teams could agree on it. So that’s why it didn’t happen.
And the other too is, we mentioned, I’m sure it’s true, that there was at least one player that turned down a deal to Ottawa and that is why a lot of people started wondering about Myers. But in this case, it’s not time.
I mean look, it just shows what Ottawa is trying to do to find more D, and now Bernard-Docker got hurt. So maybe they might need Zaitsev again. We’ll see. I don’t know where all this is going to go.
But it just shows you, a lot of the work that Ottawa is trying to do to find defensemen. Like they are not sleeping on this one. They are really trying to do it. I think Saturday’s game was really tough for them and their fans. The Devils are really good. They had a big crowd. Their fans were very unhappy. Not that you could blame them. It was a bad loss. The crowd and social media all over the coach. Brady Tkachuk defends the coach which is what the captain should do.
I mean it’s a tough time there right now. It’s been a hard start to the year. You and I have talked about the underlying numbers have actually been not bad for them until recently. But at the end of the day you have to have W’s. You absolutely have to have W’s.”
