Every day Faceoff: Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli on the Vancouver Canucks and Andrei Kuzmenko.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Yaremchuk: “Let’s keep within the Pacific Division and speak a little bit bit extra concerning the Vancouver Canucks. Andrei Kuzmenko, sort of out and in of the lineup as of late. Wholesome scratched a handful of instances this season. He does have two objectives in his final 5 video games the outcomes are slowly beginning to come. What’s commerce curiosity like within the Canucks winger?
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Seravalli: “Nicely, that is on the Canucks to determine internally as a result of to date this 12 months, as you talked about, has been a wholesome scratch six instances underneath Rick Tocchet and Kuzmenko has sort of frequently violated what Tocchet would name his quote, non-negotiables.
A part of it’s getting in on the forecheck, the opposite a part of it’s back-checking and energy and I believe that half has pushed the Canucks a little bit bit loopy. Now he, after that unimaginable rookie 12 months final 12 months, he was one purpose away from 40 objectives and 75 factors as a rookie, his first season within the NHL. And you’d assume, like oh, that is the right man to have on a comparatively good contract this season and subsequent at $5.5 million bucks, that you just assume, why wouldn’t he be a part of the answer?
So the Canucks are sort of going by means of the method right here of will we, can we bend and make this work? Can he be a little bit little bit of a sq. peg in a spherical gap?
Or given what we simply talked about with the Canucks and them being a group that’s one or two potential strikes away from actually being a contender that would win the Stanley Cup this 12 months with all of the totally different positional containers that they test? Are they higher off taking that $5.5 million and offloading him someplace and utilizing that elsewhere?
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And in order that’s form of what they’re deliberating. Groups are calling. I don’t assume they’re in a rush to do something but when the best deal introduced itself, I wouldn’t be shocked in any respect.