We are now less than one month away from the 2020 NHL Trade Deadline and you can bet your bottom dollar that Detroit Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman is hoping to make a deal or two.
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That being said, it always takes two teams to tango and the Red Wings may have trouble finding a dance partner considering many of their trade chips have underperformed so far this season.
In a piece written by Craig Custance of The Athletic, he asked NHL executives to answer the question, “who says no” to some hypothetical trades.
One of those trades involved the Detroit Red Wings sending Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou to the Colorado Avalanche for Bowen Byram, Shane Bowers, and a 2020 first-round pick.
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Here are the thoughts of Custance and one NHL executive.
Detroit sends Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou to Colorado for Bowen Byram, Shane Bowers and a 2020 first-round pick
– @SLefebvre1003
We might be moving well beyond the realm of reality here but this is a fun one to consider. Imagine the Avalanche with Larkin and Nathan MacKinnon down the middle. It’d be hard for teams to keep up. And the Red Wings definitely need another high-end defenseman in the system. But Larkin is a legitimate top center. Those are hard to find in a rebuild. If you’re trading one, you want an absolute guarantee that you’re getting an equivalent player back, kind of like Columbus got for Seth Jones in the Ryan Johansen trade. This is a Detroit no for me.
Exec: “Colorado is getting an offensive star in Larkin and a really good player, another speedy player in Athanasiou. They aren’t giving that much up in Bowers. Byram would be a big piece to give up. I would say that Detroit would say no to that. Larkin is their team. I don’t think they’d have a big issue getting rid of Athanasiou but they can get a first-rounder at the deadline for Athanasiou with a year left in RFA. Then it becomes a Larkin versus Byram thing. That ends up being the debate.”
Nation, is this a trade you would make if you were Steve Yzerman or do you agree with the NHL executive who says the Red Wings would say no?
