McGuire: Bruins And Flames Seem Like Trade ‘Dance Partners’

The Calgary Flames are once again open for business on the NHL trade market, and the Boston Bruins are once again being linked to Flames defenseman and Norwood, MA native Noah Hanifin.

This past week, TSN NHL Insider Pierre LeBrun reported on TSN Insider Trading that contract talks between Hanifin and the Flames were over and that he and the rest of the Flames’ potential 2024 unrestricted free agents were back on the NHL trade market.

“Now, Hanifin almost signed an extension here last month, close to $60 million, but he decided he wanted to wait and think about things, and now that ship has sailed,” LeBrun said. “The Flames are listening on these guys, but they’ve got no hurry; they have until March 8 for the trade deadline to seek a return on these players.”

As we did here at Boston Hockey Now last week, longtime NHL analyst and insider Pierre McGuire, speaking on the latest Eye Test Podcast, opined that given Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney has long coveted Hanifin, the Bruins and Flames seem like logical ‘dance partners’  and the NHL Odds of the two teams hooking up on the NHL trade market are solid.

“When you talk about the potential for trading, there’s one team I think that fits the model for Calgary to have a marriage and a dance partner – and I’m sure there’s more than one – but I’m thinking out loud here, the Boston Bruins,” McGuire said. “For whatever reason, they have always had a liking for Noah Hanifin. He went to high school at St. Sebastian’s School in Boston; he played at Boston College. No team in the National Hockey League scouts the ISL, the Independent School League, harder or better than the Boston Bruins. No team in the NHL scouts Boston College harder or better than the Boston Bruins.

So they know the body of work of Noah Hanifin as well or better than anybody, and where does Noah Hanifin go at the end of every season? Back to Boston. So, if you’re asking me, nobody’s told me, nobody’s told you, but I could see a marriage and a dance partner with Boston and Calgary.”

While some have speculated that such a trade or any trades involving the Flames’ pending UFA’s may not happen until the NHL Trade Deadline, McGuire doesn’t think Flames GM Craig Conroy should drag his feet. An NHL betting man should bet on something happening earlier than that.

“I don’t know if the value for potential UFA’s goes up in March or not; that’s a marketplace decision that nobody can predict at this point,” McGuire pointed out. “So what I would say in this situation, it’s probably better to try and generate marketplace before other people do, and the way you do that is, you send out messages around the league through your scouts that are on the road or your coaching staff that’s dealing with other teams’ coaching staffs, and you can create a marketplace, and if you can create the right marketplace, there’s no time limit. The sooner you can get it done is probably the better, depending on what you have in terms of offers.”