A crazy rumour was bandied around Twitter today.

It started as it almost always does: with an Elliotte Friedman tweet.

https://twitter.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/1032296716014219264

Yep, that’s all it took for Canucks media and fans to be engulfed in a Twitter frenzy.

Obviously, this is just a rumour. But considering the source it’s coming from and the fact that it’s late August, we obviously have to take a deep dive into this and what such a thing would mean.

First, this isn’t happening.

Canucks GM Jim Benning has already said that. And as great as Erik Karlsson is as a player—he basically carried the Ottawa Senators on his back to the Eastern Confrence final two years ago—this is a good thing.

Even though Karlsson is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent next July, the price for his services will be astronomical. The Senators absolutely cannot afford anything other than a major coup for one of the best players that's ever suited up for the team. The Sens are a complete disaster right now and desperately need a PR win, as well as something to inject a flicker of life into the franchise.

That means Senators GM Pierre Dorion will come in hot. It’s hard to see the Sens asking for one of Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser or Elias Pettersson, along with the Canucks' 2019 first-round draft pick (in a draft taking place in Vancouver). 

And that should be a non-starter. Those are all pieces this rebuilding team needs right now, and it doesn’t make any sense to take on a 28-year-old player on an expiring contract for pieces that will help in the future, when the team might actually be competitive.

Sorry, Canucks fans that tossed out ludicrous offers like “Baertschi, Juolevi and a second”. That’s not happening. And as a result, a Karlsson trade to the Canucks is out of the question. 

Now, could the Canucks be a vehicle in a potential Karlsson trade? Perhaps they could play the role of a third team that could take on Bobby Ryan’s contract from the Senators that the contending team acquiring Karlsson couldn’t afford. We would even encourage that. The Canucks have a ton of cap space and could use whatever assets they can get.

But Vancouver's management team hasn’t made any moves toward taking on dead money in the past, so it’s hard to see them changing course on that.

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