The Vancouver Canucks may be a franchise at a crossroads, but GM Jim Benning says the team won’t ask longtime forwards Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin to waive their no-trade clauses unless they request to be moved first, per NHL.com. Both players have one season remaining on the matching contracts they signed in 2014.
Canucks GM says Sedin trade not an option unless they ask for it
Vancouver won’t come to them asking to waive no-trade clauses.
Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images
“We’re not moving the Sedins unless they come to me at some point and they say, ‘Well, we want to move on,’” Benning told Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver. “When we’ve talked to them, we’re not going to go to them and ask them to waive their no-trade. We’re not going to approach them for them to move on to another team.”
Basically, Benning is saying here that the Canucks won’t entertain trading either Sedin unless the players initiate the idea in the first place. Otherwise, it seems Vancouver is content to let the veterans play out the final year on their contracts, then figure out what’s next in the offseason.
With the possibility that this is the beginning of the Sedins’ final season with the Canucks, it’s unclear where both sides go from here. One option would be to try to trade the twins to a contender so they could get a shot at their first Stanley Cup, a feat that seems out of reach for Vancouver at this point.
But the Sedins would have to approve any deal, they’d be expensive as a package, and now Benning has more or less confirmed that he won’t do anything to pressure them to leave town. In the end, it may come down to whether they’re willing to be uprooted at this point in their careers together in order to have a better shot at the Cup.
The Canucks could definitely use the return from a Sedin trade to help jump start a youth movement that’s currently focused on Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser, Troy Stecher, Ben Hutton, and a number of prospects. In the end, that may not be an option for them, though.
“They’ve been Canucks their whole lives, they love the Vancouver Canucks, they are excited about our young players, and they want to see this thing through with us,” Benning said.
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