Donnie & Dhali: Elliotte Friedman when asked what he thinks the Vancouver Canucks could do leading up to the March 8th NHL trade deadline, and their potential interest in Pittsburgh Penguins forward Jake Guentzel if they decide to make him available.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Rick Dhaliwal: “Elliott, the trade deadline Vancouver Canucks Twitter, get ready. It’s gonna be crazy, a few weeks out here, you know that. But you know, there’s certain accounts out here Canucks Twitter that are crazy.
But listen, Elliott, what do you expect the Canucks to do here? Are there going to be in on some big names? Like, what’s your thought process when you try and figure out what these guys are going to do?
Friedman: “Well, you know, the one thing you have to remember Rick is, you have a guy who is in charge there who is not afraid. And I think over the years, we’ve learned with Jim Rutherford that when he’s in charge of an organization, that your organization is not going to be afraid to swing for the fences and the organization’s not are not going to be afraid to do things.
Look, you’re one of the only teams that made trades this year. You’ve made several of them. And you know, you’re, that’s what I look at.
When I hear all the rumors about Guentzel, and I think they make a lot of sense. I don’t know that it’s going to happen. But that is the kind of circumstantial evidence that you can look at and say, ‘Yeah, I can see the possibility of it.’
Look, you guys have a good team here and it was, we woke up on Monday morning, you had the most points in the NHL. Your best players have played great this year. Your depth players have played great this year. And you know, you get seasons where you say, ‘you know what, this is our year. It’s hard to win and we’re gonna go for it.’ I think you guys are kind of, are in that position right now.
And I think what you’ll do is, you’ll know the one thing about Rutherford is he likes to go early. We’ve talked about that before. He identifies when he wants and when he goes out and gets them.
Now the thing with Guentzel. I still do believe the Penguins and Guentzel
will plan to talk at least one more, probably around the All-Star break. I don’t know that anything’s gonna get done. I really do think the future direction of the Penguins is going to be the biggest question here in terms of what Guentzel decides to do.
But if Pittsburgh ever sends out a signal saying, you know, we’re ready to talk about this. I do think that Canucks are going to be one of the teams at the forefront there to say okay, what are we looking at and can we do something?”