Sportsnet‘s Elliotte Friedman (damn, that feels weird to type) joined Scott Rintoul on Vancouver’s TEAM 1040 radio last night to discuss some NHL rumours and fortunately because of the Vancouver audience, a lot of what Friedman had to say about the Ryan Kesler tied into Jason Spezza’s situation as well.
If you want to listen to the interview, you can follow this link. You can also listen to the audio embedded at the bottom of this post.
On Bryan Murray saying there are two serious offers out there and whether Elliott knows what they are and who they’re from…
“Well I think definitely St. Louis would be in on this and it would surprise me if St. Louis wasn’t looking at a guy like Patrik Berglund and saying, ‘Can we put an offer around this guy?’ The only thing is, is that obviously that wouldn’t be enough. They would have to do a little bit more, but I have to think St. Louis is one of those teams. I would also think that Anaheim is lurking around all of this. I look at teams that could really use Spezza, I think St. Louis is number one on that list. I think it’s also very likely a place that he wants to go. The other team I look at in the middle of all this and I think this is a team that is going to be a bit stealth-like in some of these moves is going to be Dallas. I think if they really felt they could add a second line center to play behind Seguin and play in front of Cody Eakin, who I thought took big strides this year, I think that those are three of the teams that I’m looking at and saying, ‘Those are teams that are looking to do something.’”
On the Ryan Kesler front…
“I do think Anaheim… I believe that what happened last year with Anaheim was the player with the most NHL experience that they were willing to trade that Vancouver would have any interest in was Richard Rakell. I just don’t think it was enough for Vancouver. I think Anaheim had the mix of picks and him and when Etem came up and Smith-Pelley came up, I don’t think the Ducks were willing to do that. I think the Ducks look at it now and realize, ‘Look who we’re in the same Division with. If we want to win, we’re going to have to do it by giving up something.’ I do think that if you look at what you have to deal with, and that is Jeff Carter, Anze Kopitar, Jarret Stoll, and maybe still Mike Richards, your best chance to win is with more of a Kesler-type player than a Spezza-type player.”
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