3 Teams Linked To Canucks' Sherwood
The Vancouver Canucks have a strong trade asset in Kiefer Sherwood and it is likely he is going to get moved this season by the way things have gone for the team and the way things are headed with the organization.
Sherwood is a very tradeable player that any number of teams would be looking to add. He broke out offensively last season and proved he can not only hit, but score as well. He scored 19 goals and 40 points while setting the NHL record in hits with 462, passing it by a wide margin. He has taken his game a step further and has already put up 12 goals in 30 games on a bad Canucks team.
The 30-year-old is playing over 17:30 per game and over two minutes on both special teams each game, one of two Canucks players to be doing that. He is in the final year of his contract with a cap hit of $1.5 million AAV and is looking for a multi-year contract extension with a much bigger payday. It is likely that the Canucks would rather trade Sherwood with a new contract to get a better return than just move him as a rental when there are teams that would be willing to acquire him and keep him for multiple years.
Chris Johnston reported, "Teams like the Stars, like the Wild, Canadiens. There's others...but I don't know if anyone's stepping up and really forcing the issue in trying to get a deal done in a short window here."
The Dallas Stars recently had over $9 million in cap space open up after Tyler Seguin will miss the rest of the season. Not only do the Stars have to address that hole and maneuver around the multiple injuries they've been dealing with, but they will have to address defense with that money. While the Stars may not need to or be looking to re-sign Sherwood if they trade for him, his cap hit would allow a ton more room for additions to chase a Stanley Cup.
The Minnesota Wild need depth up front and some of their players haven't been contributing the way they should. Multiple others are injured. Sherwood would have no problem fitting in anywhere in the lineup and contributing on both special teams as he's doing in Vancouver. The Wild have less cap space as they don't have a major injury that opened some up.
The Montreal Canadiens would find it hard to be more banged up than they are right now, especially up front with Kirby Dach, Alex Newhook, and Patrik Laine all on the shelf for a while. Sherwood may not be the center the team is looking for, but the attempts to bring in depth pieces to help haven't worked. Players like Alexandre Texier, Joe Veleno, and Jared Davidson have been irrelevant in the lineup, just filling a spot and contributing very, very little.
Photo credit: © Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
