Dan Hamhuis doesn’t move as Canucks bungle deadline
Defenseman Dan Hamhuis is still a member of the Vancouver Canucks.
That’s partially because he controlled his future at the NHL trade deadline with a no-trade clause. But that’s mostly because the Canucks bungled trading him to one of the two places he’d be willing to move.
There were overtures from Eastern Conference teams throughout the day for Hamhuis. The Boston Bruins were the hottest for him, especially after Kris Russell of the Calgary Flames was moved to the Dallas Stars. But Hamhuis didn’t want to move to the Eastern Conference, which makes trading him there rather difficult.
But that’s Hamhuis’s right. He took less money and wanted more security when he signed a six-year, $27-million contract in July 2010. Ultimately, it’s his call on where to play.
Where did he want to play? With the Dallas Stars or the Chicago Blackhawks. And the Canucks decided not to move him to either team. For anything.
It’ll be interesting to hear how Jim Benning spins this, other than blaming the player for being inflexible regarding a contract the franchise gave him (albeit from a general manager who is no longer there).
Because as the Hamhuis sweepstakes went bust on Monday, we come back to this line from Jason Botchford of The Province: “The bad news is that Canucks ownership has had a long-standing feud with Dallas’s ownership. It seems unlikely they’d snuff a trade, especially if it was the best offer, but they may like to try and steer things to another team if they could get equal, or close to it, value.”
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
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