VANCOUVER – Home from the Steveston Salmon Festival on Canada Day, I told my son the Vancouver Canucks had traded Zack Kassian.
“They’re trading all my favourite players,” he said.
Not all of them. Just, in a span of five days, Eddie Lack, Kevin Bieksa and Kassian.
In this overheated market, every Canuck except Luca Sbisa is someone’s favourite player. And Vancouver still has Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Alex Burrows, Bo Horvat and Finn.
But most of the National Hockey League players that Canuck general manager Jim Benning inherited are gone, which represents fairly breathtaking turnover considering Benning has had the job only 13 months and he was supposed to be encumbered by a stack of no-trade clauses left in his desk drawer by Mike Gillis.