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Donnie & Dhali: Thomas Drance on the Bo Horvat, Vancouver Canucks contract situation. Rick Dhaliwal isn’t sure if the sides are going to talk once the season starts.
“Players of Horvat’s caliber often don’t want to be bogged down in contract talks in-season. That’s just a standard operating procedure.
Dhaliwal: “Especially in a Canadian market.”
Drance: “Now that said Rick, same agent, Pat Morris, had Jacob Markstrom at the time, right. They weren’t going to talk in-season, yet they sort of did right. I mean Markstrom didn’t get heavily involved. They didn’t get close enough that they had to but it’s not like they cut off all conversations entirely.
And we know cause we went through the Jacob Markstrom sort of extension, will they or won’t they, just two years ago. We tracked this before.
I would be surprised if Horvat has any interest in talking in-season, but I’d also be surprised if there was any sort of declaration from Morris. They didn’t really do it with Markstrom. Markstrom himself just I said I’m going to focus on the season. But, I would be, Morris tends to operate in a relatively classy, sort of under-the-radar way, right? That’s his preference. We saw that as things played out with Markstrom. I suspect we’ll see something similar as contract talks with Horvat sort of shape up.
Yep, sides appear to be looking at a gap here. They were looking at a gap with Brock Boeser and then that got done. They were looking at a gap with J.T. and then that got into a realm that they were comfortable doing the deal.
Will that happen with Bo Horvat or has the dynamic changed now that they have looked up J.T. Miller? That’s the big question for me, right. I’ve been saying this for a couple weeks but what I’m hearing, is that once the Canucks got Miller done, I think their urgency to move closely to close on this particular deal, dimished. Like I just think it diminished.
So we’ll see where this goes but I do think it’s got, certainly the possibility of dragging out, written all over it.