On the Vancouver Canucks and Nashville Predators …
- Craig Custance of ESPN: Canucks GM Jim Benning will continue to try and move to a young, faster team without going the bottoming out route. They have been a rumored destination for Milan Lucic if he hits the open market. There are some who think Loui Eriksson would like to play with the Sedin’s. Talk from Benning though is focused on getting younger.
“We’re going to shift our focus in our market to drafting well and developing our own players,” Benning said. “We’re going to sign some younger players we’ve had in the system before, and we’re going to get younger and continue to get faster and hopefully be more competitive.”
The Predators are waiting on Jimmy Vesey’s season to end, and they remain optimistic that they’ll be able to sign him.
“We think we need another forward and he’s the guy,” Poile said this week. “We looked at some different things at the trade deadline and felt if we got him signed and on the team, that would be the best addition we could make.”
On the Detroit Red Wings …
- Chris Nichols of Today’s Slapshot: Bob McKenzie on TSN 1260 on the Detroit Red Wings and Steven Stamkos.
“We’ll see where it goes. They’ve got some work to do on the salary cap front in terms of signing these guys. Danny DeKeyser’s contract is up. Mrazek’ contract is up. Riley Sheahan’s contract is up. But they’ll get those guys done.
“I’ll be curious to see – I don’t know, and again, this is not me reporting anything, but I’ll be curious to see IF Steven Stamkos gets to unrestricted free agency this summer, would the Wings try to get involved in that and see if there’s a way that they could manipulate it.
“Obviously huge financial implications for a contract like Stamkos, and I don’t think Ken Holland – I mean, Steve Yzerman learned at the feet of Kenny Holland in the Detroit organization. I don’t know that Kenny Holland believes you can pay somebody $10 million-plus in a salary cap world and still do everything else you want to do around him, so maybe philosophically it doesn’t make sense.