No talk of replacing young Bruins defensemen
Julian Benbow of the Boston Globe: The Bruins made the decision the decision after last seasons’ playoff loss that they would go younger on their blue line. So far they are happy with their play and are not thinking of taking them out of the lineup.
“We’re content with where they’re at and what they brought,” Cassidy said. “So far, so good. But again, we’re roughly 20 percent into this year. I think we need a bigger sample size to truly evaluate. You know where they’re at. But right now, they’re doing what’s asked of them, so good for them.
“There’s been no discussion of taking them out of the lineup, giving them a night off to maybe watch and learn. May happen down the road. But so far that hasn’t been one of the decisions we’ve thought about. And so that means consistency has been there for the most part.”
Does a Canucks – Bruins trade make sense?
Jimmy Murphy of Boston Hockey Now: The Vancouver Canucks have made forward Jake Virtanen a healthy scratch more than once this season. Boston Bruins forward Jake DeBrusk has had a slow start to the season and has been inconsistent.
Would a Virtanen for DeBrusk trade make sense?
Canucks GM says they ran out of time with Toffoli
Ben Kuzma of the Vancouver Province: Vancouver Canucks GM Jim Benning said that he had wanted to re-sign forward Tyler Toffoli, but ran out of time.
Toffoli signed a four-year contract with a $4.25 million salary cap hit with the Montreal Canadiens.
“It was our intention to try and get him signed and if we could have had a little more time, we could have tried to work through that,” Benning said Wednesday. “It got to a point where I know Tyler wanted to come back and we were trying to figure it out.
“We kind of ran out of time with him getting offers and one he needed to take. We would have had to move money out.”
Couldn’t the Canucks have traded Virtanen ($2.55 million cap hit) for a draft pick to free up some space for Toffoli? Couldn’t they have traded Jordie Benn and his $2 million cap hit back to the Canadiens? There would have been interest in both players.
Other Canucks pending UFAs in Jacob Markstrom and Chris Tanev weren’t going the term or money from the Canucks. The Canucks were able to sign Braden Holtby, trade for Nate Schmidt, and sign Travis Hamonic.