Sekeres and Price: Irfaan Gaffar and Patrick Johnston on if the Vancouver Canucks now have an option to create a trade package to acquire a defenseman.
Gaffar: For (Nils) Hoglander then, what’s his future here? I think it’s going to be part, I think acquiring a guy like (Daniel) Sprong means that now they can kind of set up a little package if they want for a defenseman. That’s kind of the way that I think it’s trending. What do you think?
Johnston: “Yeah Irf. You look at the way the pairings currently are set up and how you might prioritize, obviously the right side. I think that there still was an interest to find some kind, another puck-moving defenseman. You know, that’s not a guy that’s Quinn Hughes-lite, but a guy that can handle the puck.
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And you look at that third line or third pair, you think about the musing that they had, or maybe (Filip) Hronek and beyond his own pairing away from Hughes. Is there someone we can float in there? I, I don’t quite know how you make that work and I don’t think you’re gonna find a guy now that fits in that role, exactly. But I do think you could maybe still find a way to add a defenseman.
You know, reset what your roster looks like and find a defenseman that can handle the puck a little bit on your third pairing and help move the puck and help your other lines, because we saw obviously how important it was for for the Miller line to play with Hughes, for instance. I mean, they were at their best, they’re able to play with Hughes.
But you know, that means you’re not playing with Pettersen, right, you know, like, how do you make all these things fit together? How do you maximize the grit that they do like? We know that they like that, but how do you add a little bit more of a puck moving element?
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And maybe that’s, yeah, I agree, I totally agree with you, Irf. Maybe that is, that maybe Hoglanders the way you do that.”