Predators and Jets among teams with potential trade interest in Canucks' Garland: report
The Vancouver Canucks have been reportedly looking to trade Conor Garland for a while, but teams haven’t been interested for one good reason.
He makes too much money.
This is according to CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal, who shared his intel on the situation with Halford and Brough’s show on Sportsnet 650 this morning.
Garland’s agent has received permission from the Canucks to speak to other teams in an effort to facilitate a trade.
While Garland mostly dodged trade-related questions on the subject prior to the season opener, he did confirm that he has recently hired a new agent — reportedly Judd Moldaver.
“I think this is about finding someone who can aggressively get him to another team,” said Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on today’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast.
There is interest in Garland, Dhaliwal reports, but not at his current price. The 27-year-old has three years left on a contract that has a $4.95 million cap hit.
“Teams think that Garland’s a $3 million player, not $5 million. That’s why the Canucks have not been able to move him for over a year,” Dhaliwal told hosts Mike Halford and Jason Brough.
“What I’m hearing, [$1.5 million], if the Canucks can get to that number, it’s going to be a little bit easier to move Garland. There are teams interested. I’m hearing Nashville, someone told me Winnipeg, others as well.”
Since the Predators have cap space, Nashville was also a team that Friedman wondered about aloud on his podcast. The Predators have the NHL’s fourth-lowest payroll, according to CapFriendly.com, with over $7.8 million in projected cap space. The Jets have over $2.3 million in projected cap space.
Retaining 30% of Garland’s contract is no small ask, but the Canucks could use a defenceman. Nashville currently has seven defenders making at least $2 million, including Coquitlam’s Dante Fabbro, who was a healthy scratch in the first game of the season. The 25-year-old blueliner has a $2.5 million cap hit and is a pending restricted free agent.
Garland finished seventh in Canucks scoring last season, with 46 points (17-29-46) in 81 games. But he was fourth in scoring (52 points in 77 games) one year prior.
Perhaps the most impressive stat from Garland’s time in Vancouver is his even-strength production. He has 83 even-strength points in 158 games over the past two seasons, which is better than anyone on the team not named Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. That number ranks him 79th league-wide during that span, ahead of players like Pierre-Luc Dubois, Tyler Toffoli, Patrice Bergeron, Bo Horvat, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.