Canucks Again Debunk the NHL Trade Talk

Both head coach Bruce Boudreau and forward Brock Boeser of the Vancouver Canucks essentially ‘poo-poo’ed any trade talk circulating around the team, although Boeser did say there’s only one way to handle things if a trade does occur.

“Any time a key player gets moved or someone everyone likes in the locker room gets moved it’s obviously hard and obviously it depends on what kind of leader they are in the room and stuff like that,” Boeser told the media. “It’s an opportunity for guys to step up and take on bigger roles and and challenges. I think if people look at it that way it can help the team and the team can keep going forward.”

This is not to suggest the rumours are true, they haven’t been, or if legitimate trade talk between NHL general managers will actually result in any deals in the immediate future. Many around the game believe it’s too soon with the trade deadline still almost a month off.

Meanwhile, as we’ve pointed out numerous times over the last six weeks, the JT Miller trade talk doesn’t make much sense on multiple levels, given the team’s leading scorer still has a year remaining on a discount contract. It would take a king’s ransom.

“We don’t even talk about it,” Boudreau said after practice Wednesday. “I haven’t talked one iota about JT getting traded, or whatever, he’s the cornerstone right now, one of the cornerstones of our team. We just go on and to me that’s all noise. It makes for great media, I mean I love reading it, when they talk about trade deadline stuff, but nobody’s talked to me about anything and I haven’t heard anything.”

Boudreau made similar statements a month ago.

However, we are now nearing the point where the situation around the league and with the Canucks could change rather quickly, once teams, or the Canucks team, play themselves out of the playoff picture. That hasn’t happened yet.

Many believe it’s inevitable, but then again, what would be the point in even playing.

“”It’s not really a worry of mine,” Boeser said. “I’ve been a big believer in saying whatever happens happens, I feel like I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say, and how much this organization means to me, but at the end of the day it’s up to them, it’s not my worry and I’ll go out there and try to continue to contribute to our hockey team and help us make this playoff push.”

The Canucks face a difficult challenge Thursday night in a pivotal game, which applies to basically all of them at this point, against the Calgary Flames at Rogers Arena.