The right-shot defenceman was a veteran presence in the room since day one of joining the Canucks and was – pardon the pun – a big piece in the community.
“I want to thank Tyler for his time here in Vancouver. He’s a great person and has been a good hockey player for us,” said Allvin. “Tyler had a full no-move [clause in his contract]. So, at the end of the day, I respected it. The conversations that I had with Tyler were that this was something that might happen, and I made him aware about a week ago, and at the end of the day, he signed off on this trade this morning.”
Allvin said that the trade offer came his way this morning while he was driving across the Burrard Street Bridge. He said that the team retaining $1.5 million of cap space helped bring the return of a second and fourth round pick.
The GM went on to discuss the upcoming trade deadline and said it is hard to say whether the market will heat up before Friday’s noon PST deadline. The team has already brought in young players who have shown great characteristics and work hard in practice. These young players have a chance to grow in the organization as leaders, but Allvin knows there’s still work to do and will continue to bring in players to help improve the club.
“I think it’s important for the future that we surround the young players with some leadership, and also continue to build,” said Allvin about his team’s vision looking into next season.
Allvin closed out the media availability with what he wants to see from his group in the final 22 games of the season.
“I want to see more fight in the group. I think Adam pointed [it out] in the [Dallas] game, and in the game against San Jose. I didn’t see the fight and urgency,” said Allvin.
“It’s their job, the players’ job, and our job to prepare every night for the fans and [be] playing for the crest. You can lose games, but you’ve got to play the right way, and you’ve got to compete. And that’s what I want to see from my group here moving forward. And I want to see us getting better [in] areas of our game, the details of our games that I want to see improvement in. Losing games is not great for anyone, and we owe it to the fans here that [have] been great in Vancouver and our players should play hard every night.”
The Canucks are in action Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PT against the Carolina Hurricanes. Then, the next big day is Friday for the trade deadline, which comes at noon PT.
