McKenzie: "I don't see a fit" between Canucks, Avalanche for O'Reilly trade

Bob McKenzie was on Vancouver’s TSN 1040 on Tuesday morning.

On if Ryan O’Reilly will be traded before the deadline, and if he could see the Canucks being interested:

“I could see the Canucks being interested. I don’t see a fit there. I don’t think – It would probably take Alex Edler. I’m not sure the Canucks want to do that. I’m not sure that Colorado wants to take a defenceman at that age. They’d probably like somebody younger, closer to O’Reilly’s age, who is only 24 years old. Or just turning 24.

“So in terms of trading him between now and the deadline, it’s possible. I think they’re looking at it. But as I outlined on a story on TSN.ca yesterday, he’s a year and a half away from unrestricted free agency. If you’re a team that acquires Ryan O’Reilly, and you don’t have an extension in place – and you can’t officially do an extension until after July 1, but you could easily get permission to talk to the agent and get a sense of whether you’re in the ballpark to get him or not long-term – you could be giving up appreciable assets for a guy who’s going to walk off into the wild blue yonder in a year and a half. That’s a tough one to take.

“But I think by the time it’s all said and done, Colorado – as much as they like him, I mean, I think Patrick Roy likes having Ryan O’Reilly on the team. What’s not to love? He’s a young centre, who plays the whole ice, he’s got some offensive ability. But I described him as Jonathan Toews light in the story yesterday. He can go head-to-head with guys like Toews, from a defensive point of view and win faceoffs and kill penalties. He’s got tremendous hockey sense. But he’s also got some decent offensive upside and he hasn’t equaled the numbers that he put up last year when he played left wing on a good Colorado team that’s struggling this year. As is O’Reilly. He put up 28 goals and whatever it was - 65 points last year. He does have some offensive upside and there’s a lot of teams that are really interested and think he’d be a tremendous No. 2 centre that you can win with.

“We’ll see where it goes from here, but it’s not an easy deal to make.”

Source: TSN 1040/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey

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