It seems the expected for the Anaheim Ducks and Buffalo Sabres may finally become reality.
The Ducks have long sought a top-tier defenseman and the Sabres have long fielded calls on behemoth blueliner Tyler Myers.
If the latest NHL trade rumor is true, the two sides may be readying to enact a deal that would reverberate throughout the NHL landscape for some time.
TSN's Renaud Lavoie, appearing on Buffalo's WGR 550 on Friday, revealed that sources have confirmed to him that the Ducks and Sabres are having talks involving Myers, which continue to intensify.
"...Yesterday I received a phone call early in the morning about Tyler Myers from somebody in the league and it was about the Ducks and it said that they're talking a lot right now," Lavoie said, per NicholsOnHockey.com. "I was surprised by the names that I was hearing. I think what the Sabres are looking at is another D in return. The name that was in was Cam Fowler, who's a young D, obviously, with the Ducks. And another player could be involved if that trade comes up. So it's going to be Tyler Myers for, let's say, a defenseman like Cam Fowler and another player."
Myers, who won the Calder Trophy his rookie season but has since struggled to regain that form, would be a huge - literally and figuratively - addition for the Ducks. Lavoie invoked the name of another stud defenseman who took time to mature at the professional level when discussing the manner in which Myers is viewed around the league.
"When the teams are talking about Tyler Myers, they're saying, 'You know what? It's a Zdeno Chara case.,'" Lavoie said. "...When he started with the Islanders in the NHL, he was not the beast that he is today. It was a different player. He was not strong on his skates. He was falling down a lot. You see a little bit of that with Tyler Myers."
The purported price of Fowler and more is a hefty one, even for a player with Myers' physical gifts.
Fowler, 23, is a former first-round pick who, much like Myers, is still in the development stages of his NHL career. He's got significant offensive upside, but the knock on him to this point in his career is the lack of physicality to his game.
Swapping out Fowler for the 6-foot-8, 227-pound Myers would certainly add some strength and grit to the back end of the Ducks 'D.'
