Canucks and Beyond

More on Brunnstrom -- No Guarantees

04/14/2008 at 5:03pm EDT

From Ansar Khan at MLive:

Brunnstrom narrowed his choices to Detroit and Vancouver six weeks ago. A few of the Wings Swedes, including captain Nicklas Lidstrom and Andreas Lilja, called him to try to convince him to pick Detroit. Brunnstrom is a big Wings fan and likes their puck-possession style, but he also wanted assurances that he would play on one of the top two lines. The Canucks apparently gave it to him, telling him he’ll be paired with Daniel and Henrik Sedin. But the Wings are too deep and too good a team to be offering any unproven prospect a guarantee like that. That’s not how this team operates.

Which is it: “assurances” or a “guarantee”?

First of all, no team should be offering a guarantee like that (well, with possibly the singular exception of the Vancouver Canucks, who would be unwise to turn down a well-fed monkey to play on their top-6 at this point). But that being said, I’d be surprised if Vancouver did anything of the sort.

Could they have made empty, encouraging promises—i.e. offered to buy him a poodle, sketched out Fabian-is-so-Fabio! billboards to surround GM Place, and told him he might get to be squeezed between a couple of Swedish twins on alternating Saturday nights?

Sure.

Did they put it in writing?

No way.

What Vancouver has that Detroit doesn’t is simple: total and utter desperation.

For Brunnstrom, that desperation—more than anything else—presents a big opportunity to make a name for himself.

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