How hard would it have been to "deal with expansion"? We don't have enough good players to protect, it was never a problem lol.
The only problem is them potentially squandering the opportunity to get out of that Myers contract (not that I'm confident Seattle would take him).
I mean, have we had a Mantha like player available to trade? I guess not.
But are you suggesting we haven't had many other opportunities to do a similar thing in all of Benning's time here?
Schmidt would be the closest thing to weaponizing cap space and even that doesn't really count considering we had to let go of one of Tanev or Toffoli to fit Schmidt.
It's the same old story. Here's an article from 2018:
https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/canucks-benning-looking-improve-impressive-draft-resume/
Dude trying to rebuild without a draft pick surplus then wonders why he has no depth lol.
Don't worry, I'm told the only reason we haven't won the Cup already this year is because of the hellacious all-time difficult division we're in.
Next year, when we're in our normal division, I anticipate us winning 2-3 championships by Christmas.
This Highmore character only has about 2 seasons' worth of pro games despite being 25, so perhaps the Canucks feel he has some untapped potential. I imagine they targeted a gritty C with Sutter being a UFA and Beagle's future in question due to injury.
That is the rationale, anyway. I'm not that high on Gaudette but we lost value here.
Just doesn't make any sense.
We keep getting told how hard it is to move money in the COVID/flat cap era and now lots of teams would have money to throw at a middling forward coming off a bad year?
Puh-lease.