from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there. Like a sky-diving Elvis, Nate Schmidt fell from the Las Vegas heavens into the Vancouver Canucks’ laps late Monday.

The trade of the 22-minute defenceman to Vancouver not only caused people on the West Coast to direct their carving implements towards their turkeys instead of their hockey team – not the first time the subjects have been linked – but saved the Canucks’ weekend and bought general manager Jim Benning time to further repair the damage done by free agency.

Benning surrendered only a third-round pick to get Schmidt, the fleet, two-way defenceman the Golden Knights chose to deal to make salary-cap space for the top prize in free agency: defenceman Alex Pietrangelo.

The trade was a stunning uptick to a long weekend that had, for the Canucks, been a dismal conga-line of players leaving Vancouver.

Schmidt plugs a cavernous hole on the right side of the defence and gives Benning about three months – or until whenever next season begins -- to fill the remaining gaps in his lineup.

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