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Ottawa Senators hope to trade for a gritty defenseman like Vancouver’s Kevin Bieksa

kevinbieksaotttraderumors

James O’Brien

As we mentioned when discussing the latest round of Brad Richards trade rumors, the Board of Governors meetings are coming up on Monday and Tuesday in Florida so the gossip is starting to gear up a bit today.

One team that might look to tweak its roster are the mediocre but occasionally promising Ottawa Senators. At the moment, Ottawa is stuck outside the Eastern Conference playoff picture. They’re in a cluster with the Carolina Hurricanes and Buffalo Sabres for ninth place, which is promising until you realize the fact that the eight place team is between six and seven points ahead of that bubble group.

Since improving the overall talent level seems like a bit of a stretch at this point, the Senators would instead like to achieve the more reasonable goal of improving their toughness on the blueline.

The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch reports that GM Bryan Murray might look to trade for Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa to accomplish that.

Vancouver GM Mike Gillis has been trying to deal D Kevin Bieksa for a while (insert denial here) and will sooner or later.

However, the Canucks are being targeted by a lot of teams looking for blue-line help.

They’ve got both Bieksa (making $3.5 million US), who’s set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1 and D Keith Ballard ($4.2 million), who has been a healthy scratch at various times this season.

Bieksa would be a better fit in Ottawa and the Senators have liked him for a long time.

“He’s got grit and he’d make it a little tougher for guys around the net. He’s dirty and that’s the kind of player Ottawa needs,” said the executive. “The Canucks are going for a Stanley Cup this year, they have to make sure Sami Salo is on track to return.”

Naturally, we’ll keep you abreast of the scuttlebutt, even if it ends up being more about general managers flirting with ideas than actually accomplishing anything tangible.