Jacob Markstrom injured, Ryan Miller out of circulation as deadline nears? (canucks)

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Jacob Markstrom injured, Ryan Miller out of circulation as deadline nears?

By Carol Schram

Feb 27, 2017 • 2:46 pm

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Last week, I put together this article, listing the best dream and realistic targets at each position at the NHL trade deadline.

With two days to go, four of the 10 players I featured have now moved—Ron Hainsey, Patrick Eaves and Martin Hanzal from the "realistic" category and Ben Bishop from the "dream" category.

I wasn't sold on Steve Yzerman's willingness to part with Bishop but by Sunday, the Tampa Bay Lightning had fallen seven points out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. I also wasn't buying the idea that the Los Angeles Kings were going to pick up another goaltender when Jonathan Quick was back from injury and Peter Budaj had played so well for them.

On Saturday, it was reported that L.A.'s goalie search had been narrowed down to either Bishop or Vancouver's Ryan Miller.

The Kings were able to bring in Bishop for a pretty reasonable price—Budaj, 19-year-old defense prospect Erik Cernak, a seventh-round pick and a conditional pick in exchange for Bishop and a fifth-rounder.

I still think the Kings would have been better off to channel their limited salary-cap space into trying to acquire a scorer, but if they were determined to get a goalie, I can see why they went for Bishop over Miller. He's younger (30 vs. 36), he was the Vezina Trophy runner-up last season and has been a finalist in two of the past three years and he has 36 games of playoff experience in the last two years, including a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2014-15.

Yeah, he has a tendency to get injured, but that resume far outshines Ryan Miller's, especially in recent postseasons. Miller appeared in three playoff games with Vancouver while he was fighting injury in the 2014-15 postseason after his spectacular flameout with the St. Louis Blues one year earlier.

The Bishop acquisition has caused TSN to remove Miller from their Trade Bait List entirely, since Miller can only be traded to one of five teams and it's assumed that California was his preferred target.

"The four other teams on his list are not believed to be in need of a goalie," writes TSN's Frank Seravalli. Even if a surprise deal to—say—Anaheim was to transpire, there are still plenty of other solid options in the marketplace. Any return the Canucks might be able to scare up even if they could deal Miller would probably be pretty insubstantial.

Meanwhile, here's another twist in the Canucks' goaltending saga. I heard some speculation that Miller would be held out of Tuesday's game against Detroit to make sure he doesn't get injured just in case a deal comes down, but now we have an injury for Jacob Markstrom!

At least an MRI means it's not the mumps—though it probably does mean that he was hurt during SuperSkills on Sunday. If this team didn't have bad luck, it'd have no luck at all...

At the other end of the trade spectrum on Sunday, young Arizona general manager John Chayka made out like a bandit when he traded Martin Hanzal and Ryan White to the Minnesota Wild. Both players are pure rentals on expiring contracts. Chayka also threw in a fourth-round pick to get Minnesota's first-rounder from this year (which will be very late; they're currently sitting second in the overall NHL standings), plus a second-rounder in 2018, a conditional fourth-rounder in 2019 and a minor-leaguer—24-year-old forward Grayson Downing.

The Wild also put four players on waivers on Sunday to make room on their roster. They lost Zac Dalpe—who will be reunited with his old coach from Vancouver, John Tortorella, when he joins the Columbus Blue Jackets organization.

Sounds like he is being assigned to the AHL for the moment, but he also has some other big things on his mind at the moment.

Anyway—my takeaway from the Hanzal trade is that Chayka had multiple teams interested and was able to sell to the highest bidder. Pittsburgh and Nashville were two other teams that were mentioned as possible landing spots for Hanzal just before yesterday's deal was officially announced.

So—the market for centres is strong. Not sure what that means yet for the futures of Jannik Hansen or Alex Burrows.

If you missed it on Saturday night, Alex Burrows was pretty forthright about his situation on After Hours with Scott Oake and Cassie Campbell. He gets into it right off the top, here.

Burrows said that, so far, he has not been asked to waive his no-trade clause. He admitted that it's tempting to pursue an opportunity to chase the Stanley Cup, but that it would also be a big sacrifice to be away from his young family for any period of time.

He also said that, no matter what happens, he'd be open to coming back to re-sign with the Canucks during the offseason, though I'd be surprised to see that happen. Vancouver's rebuild may be stuck in quicksand, but so far the organization has not re-signed any veterans since Trevor Linden and Jim Benning took over in 2014.

Also, if you missed it on Sunday, we had another mumps announcement...

So here's how the defense group looks at practice today.

Sbisa's back after missing the third period on Saturday. Tanev and Stecher are also back in the mix, but Tryamkin's still out and Hutton has now joined him on the sidelines.

I think that brings you up to date on the game of musical chairs that is the current Canucks roster.

To close, a quick look at a couple of key events in Sunday's SuperSkills competition:

I had Jordan Subban pegged as a possible winner in the hardest shot but instead, it was another call-up who took the prize. Apparently Alex Grenier was the only player to crack that magical 100 mph mark.

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