Looking Forward: The Sedins

Gillis made clear yesterday in a press conference that amongst his priorities of inking Kesler and Luongo to long term deals before they hit free agency, and re-signing the entire coachign staff, one of his foremost concerns (and rightly so) was re-signing the Sedins.

There’s been talk that the Sedins are not worth re-signing and the Canucks should let them go. They’re asking for about 7 million dollars each, basically double what they earned per year under their old contract and while that may be warranted by the way their stats look, with the cap headed down, not this season but the next, it just not might be financially possible, or responsible to sign them for that much while being able to re-sign others and maintain this core group of players.

When you look at the way they play, there are no two players so consistantly dominating as the Sedins. They’ve been point per game players for the last two seasons, and they proved this playoffs that they can play in the post season. They can hardly be faulted for the second round exit the Canucks experienced this season. They seem to have found a third man to play with in Alex Burrows, and since he didn’t have Anson-Carter-Ego-Syndrome, he actually re-signed with the Canucks. To replace them for the money they’re asking, or slightly less would be impossible without taking a larger cap hit. The fact that they need to be together brings down their price a little and that might help us out a little more in the long run.

At the end of the day, the Sedins want to win a cup. All players do. They also want to play on a contender, and they don’t want to be split up. I think the only teams willing to take a chance on them and their salary, if they were to test the free agency waters, would be the non contenders. The LAs, the Phoenixes, the Floridas, and I don’t think the Sedin’s are willing to do that. I have a feeling at the end of the day Gillis is going to work his magic and the Sedins will take the home town discount because if they don’t there is absolutely no way this team can function properly if 21 million dollars of a 54 million dollar cap is going to 3 players.