Sekeres and Price: Jeff Paterson on the Sekeres and Price Show on if the Vancouver Canucks should go after a scroing winger in Anaheim Ducks Frank Vatrano.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Matt Sekeres: “And that brings me to Frank Vatrano.”
Blake Price: “Does it?
Sekeres: “As Blake looks at me curiously. His name has been out there. He’s on $3.6 (million) for this year and next. He’s got 22 goals in 50 games. And he played with (Elias) Pettersson at the All-Star game by the design of Rick Tocchet.
Do you think Tocchet was trying to see something there, Jeff? And can you see them going for another, for reasons, could you see them going for another reasonably sized fish out here on the trade market before March 8th?”
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Paterson: “Oh, I think so. I mean, if you can make the dollars make sense. And that becomes the issue here at some point. There is a salary cap in place, and they’ve been up against it all season long.
And so, you know, they save a little bit on this latest transaction, but not enough to go get Vatrano necessarily, but we’ve heard Rutherford talk about the being all in and we’ve seen how aggressive he’s been over the, you know, his career. And Allvin, clearly cut from that same cloth now.
So yeah, I think I can see them absolutely knocking on doors here and trying to make some things happen. Whether they ultimately are able to pull another rabbit out of the hat, we’ll see.
But yeah, I mean, if you could bring in a guy that has been a goal scorer on a bad Anaheim team this year, I think that would be a pretty nice fit for this hockey club.
So, you know, I know Tocchet talked at length yesterday about just how sort of overwhelmed he is with the depth that he’s got down the middle now. I do think that there’s center ice position, and, again, I’ll include Lindholm in that conversation, even if he lines up over on the wing, sort of the way that Miller and Petterson shared center as duties when they were lotto lining it. So they’ve got the middle setup.
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But you know, one more scoring winger, absolutely, I think would fit the bill here but that may be too much to ask. But I do think that they will sort of go to the ends of the earth to try to make something happen here. Ultimately, we’ll just see if they’ve got the resources to pull the trigger.”