Sportsnet 650: Brian Burke on the rumors involving the Vancouver Canucks and Oliver Ekman-Larsson: “OEL is a marvelous player, I hated playing against him… I’m not sure that’s what Vancouver needs when they’ve already got a Hughes.”
David Alter: (off of Friedman’s tweet of the Bruins and Canucks on Ekman-Larsson’s trade list) “If the Canucks moved Loui Eriksson as part of this it could actually make a lot of sense for both sides, financially.
ARZ paid $4mil in signing bonus to OEL for 20-21, VAN paid $3 mil to Eriksson, who has $5 million in actual cash over 2 years left with $6mil Cap hit per season.”
David Alter: “That cap hit achieves Arizona’s objective of saving money, especially in the short term as Eriksson’s $6 mil cap hit would come off the books at the end of 2021-22.”
James Cybulski: “Looking at OEL’s history: Healthy. Gobbles up minutes. Obviously the money needs to work, but he addresses a glaring need on the Canucks’ blueline. If you can push Eriksson’s contract over which might benefit ARZ with low dollars compared to AAV, it could work.”
Craig Morgan of AZ Coyotes Insider: Oliver Ekman-Larsson hasn’t been the same under head coach Rick Tocchet as he was with Dave Tippett. Ekman-Larsson isn’t and won’t be the fiery leader that Tocchet would like.
Multiple sources have been saying that Coyotes ownership would like to move him.
One league source on his OEL’s contract:
“He’s not playing for $3.5 million or $4 million. There’s a difference between being a good defenseman and one that’s making more than $8 million, but I don’t think that is going to be a roadblock in terms of being able to move him. There will be some friction. It won’t be easy and I don’t think you’re going to have 30 teams able to swallow it, but I don’t think you’re completely stuck there.”
A scout on the idea of moving the top-pair defenseman.
“But in this (flat-cap) market, you’re potentially selling him at a discount. If he wants out and people know he wants out, that doesn’t help, and he’s going to control where he goes, but if you can’t see much of a light at the end of the tunnel and you can control where you want to go, why wouldn’t he leave? It’s unfortunate for the franchise, though, because I don’t know that you’re going to get back really what he’s worth and he might get his game back pretty quickly once he’s out of there.”