Jim Benning buries Sven Baertschi, a player he is trying to trade.

Benning does not hold back.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Jim Benning buries Sven Baertschi, a player he is trying to trade.
Dom Gagne/CSM/Zuma

The Vancouver Canucks now have a very public trade demand, allegedly, on their hands and things may have already turned ugly. 

On Saturday Sportsnet's Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwal revealed that the Canucks were working on a trade that would see former first round draft pick Sven Baertschi traded to a new team. The Canucks have made very little use of the young forward this season and it seems as though that may have been the motivating factor behind a trade demand on the part of Baertschi and his agent. To be clear here Dhaliwal did not report that a trade demand had been made, but it certainly sounds to me like that was indeed what took place here.

Dhaliwal had a chance to get comments from Andre Rufener, the agent that represents Baertschi, and again it sounded very much like the Baertschi camp is looking for a trade in this scenario.

‘We would like to get traded, I am in contact with Jim Benning, he knows that,’ said Rufener as per Dhaliwal.

"I am not happy with the way this season has gone for Sven, he played well when he was in the NHL, in my opinion he did not get the opportunity he needed," said Rufener

Now obviously if a player is asking to be traded it implies that he has not been happy with the treatment he has received from his team and that is no doubt the case here. There is another side to that coin however and it may very well be that the player is not being used as much as he would like due to the fact that he has not lived up to the expectations of the team, which again is almost assuredly the case in this scenario. The always honest Jim Benning, general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, was asked about the sudden rumors surrounding Baertschi and his answers were very telling.

"He's played well down there." said Benning. "But We've kind of evolved as a team and our skill players are more hard skill than soft skill."

Bad enough that Benning appears to be calling his own player soft, but later when it was implied that he was not asking much in return for Baertschi he buried his own player once again.

"You've assumed correctly," responded the Canucks GM.

Ouch.


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