Trade Luongo

I know that it would seem crazy to trade the Canucks best player and probably the best goalie in the league, but can we win with this team? I think that the answer is no. The Canucks clearly do not have the offensive firepower to be serious contenders. Granted we would be next to nowhere without Luongo saving the game virtually every night, but we would be able to get something very serious in return for Luongo.

Lots of Canucks fans, including myself, think that next year will be a better year. This year we have $9.2 million in cap space tied up with Markus Naslund and Brendan Morrison. If there were someone out there this summer to throw $9.2 million a year at then we might have a real cup contender for the 08/09 season. The only top notch unrestricted free agent this summer will be Marian Hossa. In my view Hossa is not worth $9 million a year. He is not even the kind of player that I would pay $6 million. If the Canucks are going to throw top of the league type money at someone it had better be a big dominant centre, not another flimy European player.  There are also no impending restricted free agents that the Canucks could throw a huge contract at.  That pretty much just leaves the trade route to improve the team.

Luongo is the biggest assets that the Canucks have.  He is there only franchise type of player, he is the only guy they have that they could trade and get a real bona fide star back in return.  I am not sure if we would have the goaltending to go it without Luongo, but Schneider will have get his shot at some point.  There is another problem of finding a team that has assets to move for someone like Luongo.  Tampa Bay seems like an obvious candidate, someone like Lecavalier would be a fare straight up trade.  With Richards gone now I think that Tampa might have to hold on to Lecavalier and hope that Mike Smith solves their goaltending troubles.

If the Canucks hold on to Luongo, and I think that they will, he would definitely be a prime candidate to trade in the 09 offseason.  Luongo has two more years on his deal after this year.  It seems almost certain to me that Luongo will not resign with the Canucks unless they are defending cup champions at the time, or perhaps were in the finals the year his contract was up.  Luongo’s wife still lives in Florida.  They have a young family.  It seems like Luongo would like to at least play on the East Coast so that he could be closer to his wife and young child.

I like the fact that Nonis went out and made the big deal to get Luongo.  I do not like the fact that since we have had such a great goalie we have completely lost our ability to play an exciting style of hockey.  I like to see the Canucks win, but watching them grind out one goal victories night after night gets very frustrating.  Even in games where the Canucks get a lot of chances they can never really finish teams off.  They need a scoring forward with the killer instinct to put away the good chances that they get.