Brandon Gormley is waived by the Avalanche, would look great in bleu-blanc-rouge.

I'm kind of surprised that the Avalanche waived Brandon Gormley.  Not that I was keeping up with his exploits as a Coyote/Avalanche and thought he was doing great, just that I was confident he'd be a productive NHL defenceman in due time.  Good size, great mobility, he was a joy to watch in the LHJMQ, especially when he won the Memorial Cup as a Cataractes with Morgan Ellis and Michaël Bournival.  Only a matter of time now, I thought, and rubber-stamped posts on here that called for a trade with the Coyotes to acquire him.

I knew he wasn't killing it when he was swapped to Colorado for Duncan Siemens, that he must be developing slowly, since I was never impressed by Duncan Siemens.  I only knew the latter as a name at the draft, he was one of those Western League guys whose name gets thrown around, but you never really pin down who he is, kind of like I can't quite tell you the difference between Derek Pouliot and Shea Theodore.

A lot of my reservations about Duncan Siemens stemmed from his poor numbers, his low production after his draft, and also from his tepid showing as a teammate of Darren Dietz and Dalton Thrower as a Saskatoon Blade.  As the first-round pick, he should have been the leader of the blueliners, but Darren assumed that role.  And Mr. Siemens appeared disengaged, kind of listless, during the "Road to the Memorial Cup" documentaries.  It didn't help that he doesn't look like a star player, he's a bit goofy-looking, awkward in his presentation.  It brought to mind the way that scouts are said to focus overly on bodies in "Moneyball", how they obsess over how a guy looks instead of how he hits and fields, how he actually performs.  It was hard to fight that instinct in his case.  At any rate, he failed on either count.  He's currently languishing in the AHL, and has passed through waivers once this year after training camp.

So if Brandon Gormley is waived, by a team not replete with quality defenceman to begin with, the Avalanche not being the Predators, he must have stalled badly, have some significant holes or flaws in his game that can't be hammered out, but I can't quite shake my man-crush, and I wonder if a trade can be worked out if he passes through waivers.  We can't claim him outright, because then we'd have to keep him on our overstocked NHL roster, but maybe we can work out a deal with the Avs.  I hate to say it, but maybe there's an opportunity to deal Jarred Tinordi out of conference, with a team he might have a better fit with, and we in return get a Nathan Beaulieu clone who just needed a change of scenery to blossom.

Of course they'd have to throw in some sweeteners, like a fifth-rounder, and Nikita Zadorov...