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“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Canucks haven’t expressed their interest,” McKenzie said, suggesting he may have heard something from a little birdie that the Canucks had at least mentioned his name to someone.

But is trading for Ryan O’Reilly really what the Canucks need to be doing at this point? It’s hard to imagine the Canucks making a trade for the centre without giving up their 7th overall draft pick.

The Canucks don’t have a whole lot of movable players. There’s long been the argument that they should trade Chris Tanev, and Buffalo would be wise to add a guy like Tanev to play with Rasmus Dahlin…but would they really flip O’Reilly and his big contract for a defensive defenceman?

If you can pull that off, that’s the kind of trade you can argue is not crazy for a team like the Canucks, who should remain focused on the future. O’Reilly is two years younger than Tanev and a top-flight two way forward.

The Canucks have a lot of defencemen and while instinctually trading the best of a group that didn’t impress last season, they need to find new options there anyway. This isn’t a team that’s going to quickly turn around, remember.

The other reason you can see why the Canucks would be interested: there’s that veteran “knows how to win” factor.

“It’s clear they’re not opposed to getting some guys with veteran presence in their lineup,” McKenzie said.

Now, winning is better equated with actually good players versus them “knowing how to win,” a non-specific emotional concept, so thankfully O’Reilly has been a good player on a good team. Not every player who gets the “knows how to win” label has actually done that in reality.

But if the price is a draft pick, especially a top-end one, the Canucks should be a firm no. Adding young players is too important to the Canucks. They have a good batch of prospects, but you can never have too many.

The Canucks focus really needs to be on finding good young defencemen and good young forwards, the ones you get from draft picks. Every top team today is built heavily through the draft.

Trading for a player like Ryan O’Reilly is a fine idea — but the price has to be right.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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