On the Vancouver Canucks …
Jason Botchford of the Vancouver Province: Before being injured with an infected foot, Ben Hutton had been a healthy scratch in 12 of their last 46 games. He performance and ice-time has dropped since the start of the season.
Hutton had signed a two-year extension at $2.8 million per.
wonders if his time with the Canucks is close to being up.
On the St. Louis Blues …
Tom Timmermann: For those who may have been thinking the Blues could trade defenseman Carl Gunnarsson this offseason, it’s now not going to happen after his injury.
Lou Korac: For those who may have been wanting the Blues to buy out defenseman Jay Bouwmeester this offseason, that isn’t going to happen.
On the Calgary Flames …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Elliotte Friedman was on Sportsnet 960 in Calgary talking about the Flames. Don’t believe their season completely falls on coaching. Teams will be calling about defenseman Dougie Hamilton, but that could be a tough deal to make. Teams will ask about Matthew Tkachuk but can’t see him being moved. Sam Bennett would also get some interest.
“I think Treliving is going to get calls on all of those guys, and more, and I think what he’s going to do is he’s going to sit there and say, ‘Alright. If I want to make the change…’ I don’t think it’s going to become an issue of ‘I want to give up this guy over that guy,’ it might simply become an issue of who’s the guy that brings you the most.
“And the one thing you have coming that really saves you is it looks like you have some pretty good players coming. Do they think Andersson is ready to start next year. How far away is Valimaki – he might be a couple of years. I mean, you have some guys coming. So the question is going to be if you subtract, depending on what you add, do you have enough internally to add to.”
