

Laurence Gilman says the Canucks haven’t finished renovating their roster ahead of the deadline.

Could a Ryane Clowe trade be next?

Following a busy morning in which the Canucks extended Chris Higgins and traded for Derek Roy and re-assigned Jordan Schroeder, Canucks Assistant General Manager Laurence Gilman appeared on the Team 1040’s Canucks lunch with Matt Sekeres and Blake Price. Gilman addressed a number of issues, but mostly talked about the multitude of moves the team has already made and might still make over the next twenty-three hours (or so).

Asked whether or not the Canucks are "satisfied" or "done" with their roster tinkering, Laurence Gilman dropped this tantalizing nugget:

"We’re not done trying to improve this hockey team… We’re looking to make another move, at least one, and potentially two. We know that this is our team and it’s our time and it’s fertile and we’re trying to win the Stanley Cup. So we’re working at every angle here to see what we can do to add another piece."

Nails Much? Read past the jump.

One deal that the Canucks are rumoured to be interested in making is acquiring big Ryane Clowe from the San Jose Sharks. Certainly Ryane Clowe – who is goalless this season, but is a useful and massive top-nine forward who consistently posts stellar possession numbers – has good things to say about the Canucks and headcoach Alain Vigneault. Addressing the Clowe situation, Gilman had this to say:

"The bottom line is you’re talking about a player on another team who has a no-trade clause (NTC) so he’ll have some measure of selection in where he goes. When a player doesn’t have a NTC, the dimension of the deal is two dimensional – General Manager to General Manager. When a player has a NTC it becomes a three-way deal more or less. Particularly for a player with a NTC on an expiring contract and clearly would like to play again, there’s also the dimension of a potential contract extension. So there are a lot of moving parts and it’s difficult to sum up his situation with one sentence or one answer."

That’s pretty fascinating, but yeah, it certainly sounds like the Canucks will do what they can to pry Clowe out of San Jose and maybe even extend him.

This could be a fascinating situation to keep an eye on, especially since Clowe has the right to "press send" on any trade he’s involved with (which, presumably serves to mitigate San Jose’s leverage in trade talks somewhat). Clowe is getting up there in age and could prove to be a pricey addition – both in terms of his future cap-hit, and the assets required to pry him out of San Jose – but he’d change the complexion of this forward group significantly.

At another point in the interview, Laurence Gilman addressed whether or not the addition of Derek Roy – who solidifies the Canucks down the middle of their lineup, in theory – changes the calculus for the Canucks in terms of an asking price on the Roberto Luongo deal:

"Assuming Ryan Kesler gets healthy soon, we’re now looking down the middle at Henrik Sedin, Ryan Kesler, Derek Roy and Maxim Lapierre. Now, Ryan Kesler has been used as a wing at other points in his career, in my opinion some of the best hockey he’s played for us was with Mats Sundin as a centreiceman. In the case of Roberto, in the event that we move him a centre could easily come but it provides us some flexibility to take back another positional player such as a forward (a winger) or a defenseman."

So in short: yes it does.

In terms of specific areas the Canucks will still be looking to address before the deadline, Gilman said the team feels they could "use another forward of some measure," and also "wouldn’t rule out getting another defenseman to upgrade our bottom pairing." He ended the interview with a bit of passion too, which should get any trade-loving Canucks fan’s blood pumping:

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"We know we have a chance to compete with the teams to win the Stanley Cup. But to do that we need to have a complete roster. We’re trawling on all fronts to make it happen. If that makes it sound like we’re all in, well then I guess we are"

Listen to Laurence Gilman’s complete interview here.

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