Daily Faceoff: Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli on the Vancouver Canucks and Andrei Kuzmenko.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Yaremchuk: “Let’s stay in the Pacific Division and talk a little bit more about the Vancouver Canucks. Andrei Kuzmenko, kind of in and out of the lineup as of late. Healthy scratched a handful of times this season. He does have two goals in his last five games the results are slowly starting to come. What’s trade interest like in the Canucks winger?
NHL Rumors: Philadelphia Flyers, Montreal Canadiens, Calgary Flames, and the Florida Panthers
Seravalli: “Well, this is on the Canucks to figure out internally because so far this year, as you mentioned, has been a healthy scratch six times under Rick Tocchet and Kuzmenko has kind of continually violated what Tocchet would call his quote, non-negotiables.
Part of it is getting in on the forecheck, the other part of it is back-checking and effort and I think that part has driven the Canucks a little bit crazy. Now he, after that incredible rookie year last year, he was one goal away from 40 goals and 75 points as a rookie, his first season in the NHL. And you would think, like oh, this is the perfect guy to have on a relatively good contract this season and next at $5.5 million bucks, that you think, why wouldn’t he be part of the solution?
So the Canucks are kind of going through the process here of do we, can we bend and make this work? Can he be a little bit of a square peg in a round hole?
Or given what we just talked about with the Canucks and them being a team that is one or two potential moves away from really being a contender that could win the Stanley Cup this year with all the different positional boxes that they check? Are they better off taking that $5.5 million and offloading him somewhere and using that elsewhere?
NHL Rumors: Boston Bruins, and the Vegas Golden Knights
And so that’s sort of what they’re deliberating. Teams are calling. I don’t think they’re in a rush to do anything but if the right deal presented itself, I wouldn’t be shocked at all.