You people kill Matt Duchene. You crack him up.
On Monday night, the 26 year old sniper was forced to sit out the game against the San Jose Sharks.
By his own admission, Duchene was stricken by a legit stomach bug while Twitter was hockey buzzing about him being traded.
“I started laughing,… Duchene told the Denver Post.
“I never thought of it at the time. I thought if we announce that I was sick, there wopuldn’t be any questions about it. But I guess there was. I mean, I understand it. It’s part of the business and it’s something that may or may not happen at some point here. It was not a big deal. I just kind of laughed it off. It’s to be expected, I guess.…
Duchene hears the buzz. He knows he has a laser pointer dot shining upon him. Duchene seemingly knows it's only a matter of time until he and teammate Gabriel Landeskog are traded away at or before the March 1 NHL trade deadline.
Duchene's Avalanche is a greasy, out of control dumpster fire right now. Poor Nathan MacKinnon. His teammates are sleeping with one eye open as Joe Sakic is looking at a total tear down and massive rebuild of the Avs roster. The Avs are 13-30-2 and lying stunned in the NHL cellar looking up at the other 29 teams in front of them.
Despite their epic failures, Duchene leads the Avalanche with 15 goals. Duchene scored a career-high 30 goals last season. Despite that fact, his name was featured in the NHL trade rumor mill all summer long. I'm convinced that we're it not for Patrick roy resigning from the Avalanche that Duchene would have been traded in July 2016. Roy was at odds with Duchene and his contributions at both ends of the ice, and the lack thereof.
In 535 career games, Duchene has scored 171 goals and 234 assists for 405 points.
Duchene has only played in eight NHL playoff games and has just six assists and no goals.
Duchene is a $6M AAV this and next season.
There is no shortage of teams clamoring to trade for Duchene. Buffalo, Anaheim, and Los Angeles are a few of the teams that have expressed interest in the Halliburton, Ontario native.
Duchene will be back in the lineup tonight when the Avs host the Vancouver Canucks