NHL Rumors: Canucks Reject Hurricanes Trade Offer

The Vancouver Canucks and Carolina Hurricanes have held trade discussions throughout the past several months and most of their talks have been surrounding 'Canes defenseman Ethan Bear. He's yet to get into the lineup this season in Carolina, and Bear's name has been posted at the top of many trade boards.

Turns out the two were close to finalizing a deal weeks ago, however the Hurricanes were set on Canucks forward Nils Hoglander being included in the deal and to this point Vancouver has no interest in moving their young forward.

Bear is expected to be traded as he was recently a point of discussing in Elliotte Friedman's 32 Thoughts blog:

One defenceman whose situation is coming to a head is Ethan Bear. Players want to play, and he hasn’t dressed yet this year. It’s nothing nefarious, Carolina’s doing what it thinks is best, but he can’t be happy and it’s really hard when you don’t play a game like the one in Edmonton — since you always want to prove your former team to be wrong. After mentioning it last weekend, a couple of sources indicated there was a trade request last summer. The Hurricanes’ position on this is as follows: they consider Bear a legit NHL defenceman and, since they don’t have cap issues, won’t eat part of his salary for “minimal return.” It’s possible Bear ends up on waivers to see if anyone claims him, and word is he would go to AHL Chicago, just because he wants to play. Vancouver’s shown real interest. Washington did around the draft. It’s believed Toronto’s poked around too. I’m sure there are others, we will see how it ends up.

We'll see how things play out these next few days as the Canucks haven't won a hockey game and could be hitting the rebuilding button any moment.