Chris Johnston

You know, he still has all that money left on his deal.

You know, I do think that there's a bit of risk reward in there.

But when I look at some of the teams that have made trades for centers, I mean, the flip side of this conversation is we'll go and tell you about all the teams in the league that want a center and can't find one.

And, you know, sometimes you have to take a bit of a risk.

You know, it wasn't an obvious choice when the Capitals traded for Pierre-Luc Dubois a few years ago.

You know, he was similarly not in a great spot.

I know he's been injured this year, so it's maybe not a perfect comparison, but he was a big part of the success they had last year in Washington.

And that was kind of a trade that maybe had some risk.

There was a lot of money left on Dubois' contract, similar to what you see with Pettersson.

And so, you know, I think that the Canucks can wait, but...

You're right.

I mean, look, if you're going to do the rebuild thing, you know, there's a couple pieces that got to go.

It's the short-term guys with UFA status, like a Sherwood who we've talked about, and then obviously I think a symbolic move would be moving on from Pedersen and really closing the chapter on that book of the last five, six, seven years in van.

The other part of it, too, is when...

I was going to say, when you're this far out, it's like a waiting game.

It's almost a game of chicken sometimes because the teams that have something to sell, I think it's natural to assume the best offer is still to come as you get closer to the deadline.

That isn't always the case.

the case of course and so I think agreeing on a price on some of these players has been challenging you know that's certainly the case in Vancouver you know where you know they're even more open for business this week as trades reported on insider trading on Tuesday but they've been open for business in a smaller way since December anyway and you know I think that they've engaged in an extensive amount of trade talk on their guys but it just seems like there's there's not

The urgency there.

They are waiting for that shoe to drop.