Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Vancouver trades Shane O’Brien to Nashville for Ryan Parent

Shane O'Brien

Vancouver Canucks’ Shane O’Brien reacts after scoring against the Chicago Blackhawks during the second period in Game 6 of the NHL Western Conference semifinal hockey series in Chicago, Monday, May 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

AP

With a flurry of moves happening at noon today, one move that stands out is a trade. Vancouver traded defenseman Shane O’Brien and forward Dan Gendur to Nashville for defenseman Ryan Parent and forward Jonas Andersson. Vancouver then followed that trade up by putting Parent on waivers with the purpose of sending him to Manitoba.

This trade is a bit odd if you’re looking at it player-wise, and makes perfect sense for Vancouver from a bookkeeping standpoint. With the players involved, O’Brien doesn’t really make too much sense for Nashville. Yes, they could use a physical presence on the blue line like O’Brien, but head coach Barry Trotz is not a fan of undisciplined players and O’Brien’s penchant for taking bad penalties should prove to be an interesting dynamic to see how he works out there. He’s certainly a more talented option at defense than the likes of Kevin Klein, whether that trade off for occasional boneheaded mistakes makes it worthwhile remains to be seen.

As for Parent, over the course of his career he’s become the bouncing ball of transactions. He was originally a Predator, but was traded to Philadelphia, then later sent back to Nashville this off-season. Now he heads to Vancouver only to likely end up in the AHL being mixed up in the Canucks financial crunch/defensive depth mix.

While the Canucks will get some salary relief with Sami Salo and Alex Burrows starting the year on LTIR, Parent’s $925,000 still is a bit too much to keep around in the press box. Keeping Shane O’Brien around as a $1.6 million healthy scratch was an automatic no-go for Vancouver and likely the main reason why he’s headed to Music City, USA.