IRC Nickname retention

[we are the JOE]

I'm trying to figure out a way to get Pidgin to reclaim an IRC nickname (on servers with no 'nickserv') when it becomes available....something functionally equivalent to irssi's "keepnick" script.  I've been looking through all the libpurple functions, and even through the pidgin source code (under protocols/irc), but cannot see a way to accomplish this.  Anyone have any ideas?  This would make a great plugin, or even a great core feature.