Vancouver Canucks waiting until offseason to negotiate Alex Edler contract
The Vancouver Canucks will wait until after the season is complete before negotiating a contract with long-tenured defenceman Alex Edler.
Alex Edler is on the verge of wrapping up another good year with the Vancouver Canucks where he has been relied upon heavily to play big minutes in all sorts of situations.
Edler, 32, will be an unrestricted free agent at this season’s end but there’s little reason to believe he will test the open waters of free agency. Edler has repeatedly expressed his desire to stay in Vancouver and finish his career in a Canuck uniform.
All sorts of rumours regarding Edler’s future were going around as the February trade deadline approached. The team asked him to waive his no-trade clause in hopes of getting a deal done, but ultimately, Edler declined.
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Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy reported that Edler would have considered waiving his NTC if the team acquiring him had plans to extend him, but added that he wasn’t 100% certain if it ever got to that point.
Amidst all these talks surrounding a potential trade, there was still plenty of discussion about how the team was working to get a contract extension done for Edler before the season was finished.
As I mentioned in an earlier article, there were very mixed messages being sent out on the Edler contract front. Some people were reporting that a deal was close, others said it was a long way away from being complete.
Nonetheless, yesterday afternoon, TSN’s Pierre LeBrun went on TSN1040 radio and said that the Canucks are now set on waiting until the offseason before continuing negotiations with Edler’s camp.
LeBrun also said he believes the organization tried hard to get him signed before the trade deadline, but once the deadline passed, decided that they would wait until after the season was finished before trying to get a deal done with Edler.
Edler has been the Canucks’ most reliable defenceman for the past two years. He currently leads the league in shot blocks per game with an average of three. He will put his body on the line for this team, and that’s exactly what you want out of a leader who wears a letter on his jersey.
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General manager Jim Benning will have a busy offseason ahead of him, as all of Brock Boeser, Ben Hutton, Markus Granlund, Josh Leivo, and Nikolay Goldobin will require contracts before suiting up next season. What do you think Edler’s contract will be worth? Let me know in the comments section below!