I especially liked this line:

“ Put it this way: Back in 1996, the Penguins didn’t add any big-name help for what turned out to be Mario Lemieux’s best chance at one more championship, then fell one agonizing win short of the final. Then again, if they hadn’t held onto their high picks that year they would have missed out on Craig Hillier, Pavel Skrbek, Boyd Kane and Boris Protsenko, so…”


- 1970vintage

Bo Horvat trade watch: 8 potential destinations, plus what the Canucks might get in return.

By Harman Dayal

Bo Horvat has been No. 1 on virtually every NHL trade deadline targets list. He’s the biggest name to watch and may also be the first big domino to fall. Trade talks have reportedly heated up within the last 48 hours and multiple national and local insiders have said that Vancouver’s captain could get moved sooner rather than closer to the March 3 trade deadline.

With all of this swirling, it’s a good time to analyze potential landing spots, what the Canucks could be looking for in a package and more.

What does Horvat bring to the table and what’s the optimal team/lineup fit?

Horvat’s evolved into a high-end finisher and elite goal scorer during the last couple of seasons. He’s scoring at a 55-goal pace this year — which probably isn’t sustainable given the outlier 22.9 percent shooting clip he’s operating at — but he also scored at a 36-goal pace last season.

Horvat’s scoring trajectory is similar to Chris Kreider — Kreider could consistently score at a 30ish-goal pace before a massive breakout to score 52 last season. That wasn’t repeatable but Kreider’s on pace for 36 goals this season.

Since the 2021 campaign, Horvat ranks 12th among all NHL players with 31 power-play goals. He’ll be most valuable to teams that need a scoring boost from the bumper spot of PP1, where his wicked release has terrorized goalies; if your club is already set in that bumper role or has an elite first unit, Horvat’s value won’t be quite as strong.

The 27-year-old centre brings a ton to the table at even strength as well. He’s a face-off specialist and was relied on by the Canucks for years to absorb tough matchups against the other team’s best players.


One thing to keep in mind: Horvat isn’t the defensive ace that some might think. It’s not for a lack of effort, Horvat just isn’t gifted with elite defensive awareness. It’s why he’s mysteriously never developed into a quality penalty killer (he plays shorthanded minutes on the Canucks, but that’s only out of necessity and they have the worst PK in the NHL at 66.9 percent).

Horvat’s an excellent offensive driver. He’s become a master around the blue paint with tips, deflections and rebounds. The anticipation he shows in the inner slot, combined with his big frame which is tough to box out, is the type of scoring style that will translate to the playoffs when time and space are at a premium. Horvat’s a proven clutch scorer — he tallied 10 goals in 17 games during the Canucks’ bubble run, the only time he’s had a chance to perform in the playoffs.

Horvat isn’t a natural playmaker nor is he very involved at carrying the puck up ice like most traditional high-end centres, so he’d be an excellent fit on a line with a dynamic winger who can handle the puck carrying and setup responsibility. He’d also mesh well with big-bodied, battle-winning forwards on a line that can forecheck and cycle teams into oblivion.

What could the Canucks want in return?

Jim Rutherford made it clear on Monday’s press conference that the Canucks are retooling, not rebuilding. That means Vancouver will prioritize landing young players who can step into the lineup and contribute soon. Colleagues Thomas Drance and Rick Dhaliwal reported last month that Vancouver would ideally like to acquire young centres or right-shot defenders in that package.

Dhaliwal has reported that the Canucks have not granted permission to teams yet to speak to Horvat’s camp regarding a potential extension. The Canucks operated the same way during J.T. Miller trade discussions last summer. That could be an interesting dynamic because some teams will have to self-assess how realistic a Horvat extension is in order to justify giving up a massive haul. Any team that acquires Horvat will have a natural negotiating edge though, because they’ll be able to offer him eight years on an extension as opposed to the seven years other clubs will if he makes it to the open market, which could mean more total money.

Horvat’s market value could reasonably be in the $8-million cap hit range, if not higher given the torrid scoring pace he’s on. For now, he’s on a $5.5 million cap hit which should be manageable for most teams to add.

Potential destinations

There are other teams that could very realistically emerge as possible destinations, but here are some clubs that should be in the mix.

Carolina Hurricanes: The Canes have failed in the playoffs multiple times due to their lack of goal-scoring in key moments. Horvat could be the missing piece as a clutch, elite finisher. Carolina’s need for a top scorer is even higher now that Max Pacioretty tore his Achilles again.

Horvat would slide in perfectly into the second-line centre role. Jesperi Kotkaniemi didn’t show the offensive upside necessary to hang there at the start of the season and the Hurricanes don’t have many other internal options. Carolina’s power-play ranks 26th in the NHL this season so Horvat could give a much-needed jolt there and at five-on-five.

The Canucks should be all over the idea of landing an impact player like Seth Jarvis or Martin Necas that can help now, but it’s hard to see why Carolina would move either given their long-term importance.

The Hurricanes do boast Scott Morrow, an intriguing 6-foot-2 right-shot puck moving defenseman with second pair upside. He was a second-round pick in 2021 and has performed well in the NCAA. A package including Morrow and other premium assets could be enticing.

Boston Bruins: Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci won’t be around forever so this could be a golden chance for the Bruins. Horvat would give an already-stacked roster a big boost in what could be a final year to push for the Cup with Bergeron plus long-term help if they’re able to sign him to an extension.

The fit is almost perfect but there are a couple of important considerations.

For starters, do the Bruins have the requisite cap flexibility to re-sign Horvat? Boston is projected to have $21.8 million in cap space this summer with just 13 players signed according to CapFriendly, and that doesn’t even include Pastrnak, who’s going to command a massive dollar figure. In other words, you could be looking at around $11 million left over for Horvat and several other roster spots. It’s doable if you move other money around but definitely tight.

The biggest complication, however, could be the Bruins’ lack of assets. Boston’s prospects pool is one of the worst in the league, with Fabian Lysell standing out as the club’s only blue-chip prospect. Lysell’s an exciting player, having notched 21 points in 24 AHL games this season at just 20, but he’s a right-winger, which isn’t ideal for the Canucks. The Bruins have all their first-round picks intact and Matthew Poitras is a centre prospect the Bruins drafted in the second round last year.

Winnipeg Jets: The Western Conference, which was already weak to begin with, is as wide open as it’s ever been. Colorado’s hampered and doesn’t look the same, Calgary and Edmonton have disappointed, St. Louis isn’t in the mix anymore and while Vegas started hot, they’ve come back down to Earth. New contenders have a chance to take advantage and that includes the Jets, who sit second in the West behind the Dallas Stars.

Winnipeg’s set down the middle for now but Pierre-Luc Dubois made it clear last summer that he intends to test free agency in 2024. All he has to do is go to arbitration or accept his qualifying offer this summer to initiate that path. Unless there’s been a change of heart, the Jets will need to replace Dubois at centre.

Horvat would check two boxes: He’d give the Jets a chance to push for the Cup this season, especially considering the weak West, and if he’s willing to re-sign, it would give them a chance to trade Dubois at some point down the line without skipping a beat.

Colorado Avalanche: Similar to Carolina, the Avs haven’t found the right 2C fit yet. Alex Newhook isn’t ready, and while J.T. Compher’s breaking out with an excellent offensive season, Colorado could really use another high-end centre. Horvat would be the perfect successor for Nazem Kadri. He’d fit like a glove in the bumper of the first unit power-play, and can you imagine the nightmare that a second line with Horvat, Valeri Nichushkin and Gabriel Landeskog would pose once those wingers are healthy?

The Avs may not be able to justify giving up a huge package for Horvat given their injuries and uncertain playoff status though. Colorado has the assets to complete a trade if they wanted — Newhook’s a young centre with potential and they still own all their first-round picks, but giving up those kinds of pieces might only make sense if they view Horvat as a long-term fit. The Avs’ cap situation would be tight regarding a potential extension.

Minnesota Wild: No team needs a top centre quite as much as the Wild. Bill Guerin’s built a talented, deep roster but Sam Steel has spent most of the year centering the first line with Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello. Having Horvat’s sharp shooting flanked by two elite playmakers is a tantalizing proposition, especially considering his ability to bring the size, edge and dirty work for that line.

Minnesota almost definitely can’t afford Horvat beyond this season so he’d be a pure rental. The Wild have a ton of attractive prospects — Brock Faber and Carson Lambos are standouts among the defensemen and Marat Khusnutdinov is an intriguing young centre.

Seattle Kraken: The Kraken seem like an odd fit on the surface — they already score a ton of goals and should be set at centre with Matty Beniers and Shane Wright. But Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman identified Seattle as a strong contender for Horvat’s services if they believe they can complete an extension. Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli linked Seattle with Horvat as well.

The Kraken could follow Vegas’ model of chasing success and big-name players immediately rather than taking the long view to roster building, especially with the way they’re surging in a wide-open Western Conference.

Edmonton Oilers: Edmonton’s top need is on the backend. The Oilers don’t seem particularly interested in Jakob Chychrun though which doesn’t leave many impact top-four defenders. That could create a scenario where the club makes a depth acquisition on the blueline and instead pushes the big chips in for a player like Horvat. Is that the most sensible option? Probably not. Could the Oilers still be interested in Horvat? My Oilers colleague Daniel Nugent-Bowman seemed to think so.

Edmonton’s been overly reliant on the big guns to score: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have been doing all the heavy lifting with not much secondary support. Evander Kane’s return will help with that. Acquiring Horvat would give the Oilers the luxury of pairing McDavid and Draisaitl together, who are unstoppable when on the same line, without worrying about how the second and third lines would fare.

My biggest question: Would the Canucks and their ownership group entertain the idea of shipping a captain and face of the franchise-type player to a divisional rival like Edmonton?

Detroit Red Wings: By signing Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, Ville Husso, David Perron and Dominik Kubalik among others this offseason, the Red Wings showed an intent to take the next step. Their days of bottoming out are over — it’s time to accelerate forward. There would obviously be zero point in Detroit acquiring Horvat as a rental but he’d make some sense if the club was confident they could lock him up long-term. Dylan Larkin’s a pending UFA and whether he re-signs or not, the Red Wings could use another top-flight centre. Copp’s filling the 2C spot now but he’s probably not a second-line centre on a future contender.

I wouldn’t pay top price in assets or an extension for Horvat if I was in Detroit’s position, especially with Marco Kasper arriving soon, but Frank Seravalli has identified the Red Wings as a club that has inquired about Horvat.

Bo Horvat trade watch: 8 potential destinations, plus what the Canucks might get in return.

By Harman Dayal

Bo Horvat has been No. 1 on virtually every NHL trade deadline targets list. He’s the biggest name to watch and may also be the first big domino to fall. Trade talks have reportedly heated up within the last 48 hours and multiple national and local insiders have said that Vancouver’s captain could get moved sooner rather than closer to the March 3 trade deadline.

With all of this swirling, it’s a good time to analyze potential landing spots, what the Canucks could be looking for in a package and more.

What does Horvat bring to the table and what’s the optimal team/lineup fit?

Horvat’s evolved into a high-end finisher and elite goal scorer during the last couple of seasons. He’s scoring at a 55-goal pace this year — which probably isn’t sustainable given the outlier 22.9 percent shooting clip he’s operating at — but he also scored at a 36-goal pace last season.

Horvat’s scoring trajectory is similar to Chris Kreider — Kreider could consistently score at a 30ish-goal pace before a massive breakout to score 52 last season. That wasn’t repeatable but Kreider’s on pace for 36 goals this season.

Since the 2021 campaign, Horvat ranks 12th among all NHL players with 31 power-play goals. He’ll be most valuable to teams that need a scoring boost from the bumper spot of PP1, where his wicked release has terrorized goalies; if your club is already set in that bumper role or has an elite first unit, Horvat’s value won’t be quite as strong.

The 27-year-old centre brings a ton to the table at even strength as well. He’s a face-off specialist and was relied on by the Canucks for years to absorb tough matchups against the other team’s best players.


One thing to keep in mind: Horvat isn’t the defensive ace that some might think. It’s not for a lack of effort, Horvat just isn’t gifted with elite defensive awareness. It’s why he’s mysteriously never developed into a quality penalty killer (he plays shorthanded minutes on the Canucks, but that’s only out of necessity and they have the worst PK in the NHL at 66.9 percent).

Horvat’s an excellent offensive driver. He’s become a master around the blue paint with tips, deflections and rebounds. The anticipation he shows in the inner slot, combined with his big frame which is tough to box out, is the type of scoring style that will translate to the playoffs when time and space are at a premium. Horvat’s a proven clutch scorer — he tallied 10 goals in 17 games during the Canucks’ bubble run, the only time he’s had a chance to perform in the playoffs.

Horvat isn’t a natural playmaker nor is he very involved at carrying the puck up ice like most traditional high-end centres, so he’d be an excellent fit on a line with a dynamic winger who can handle the puck carrying and setup responsibility. He’d also mesh well with big-bodied, battle-winning forwards on a line that can forecheck and cycle teams into oblivion.

What could the Canucks want in return?

Jim Rutherford made it clear on Monday’s press conference that the Canucks are retooling, not rebuilding. That means Vancouver will prioritize landing young players who can step into the lineup and contribute soon. Colleagues Thomas Drance and Rick Dhaliwal reported last month that Vancouver would ideally like to acquire young centres or right-shot defenders in that package.

Dhaliwal has reported that the Canucks have not granted permission to teams yet to speak to Horvat’s camp regarding a potential extension. The Canucks operated the same way during J.T. Miller trade discussions last summer. That could be an interesting dynamic because some teams will have to self-assess how realistic a Horvat extension is in order to justify giving up a massive haul. Any team that acquires Horvat will have a natural negotiating edge though, because they’ll be able to offer him eight years on an extension as opposed to the seven years other clubs will if he makes it to the open market, which could mean more total money.

Horvat’s market value could reasonably be in the $8-million cap hit range, if not higher given the torrid scoring pace he’s on. For now, he’s on a $5.5 million cap hit which should be manageable for most teams to add.

Potential destinations

There are other teams that could very realistically emerge as possible destinations, but here are some clubs that should be in the mix.

Carolina Hurricanes: The Canes have failed in the playoffs multiple times due to their lack of goal-scoring in key moments. Horvat could be the missing piece as a clutch, elite finisher. Carolina’s need for a top scorer is even higher now that Max Pacioretty tore his Achilles again.

Horvat would slide in perfectly into the second-line centre role. Jesperi Kotkaniemi didn’t show the offensive upside necessary to hang there at the start of the season and the Hurricanes don’t have many other internal options. Carolina’s power-play ranks 26th in the NHL this season so Horvat could give a much-needed jolt there and at five-on-five.

The Canucks should be all over the idea of landing an impact player like Seth Jarvis or Martin Necas that can help now, but it’s hard to see why Carolina would move either given their long-term importance.

The Hurricanes do boast Scott Morrow, an intriguing 6-foot-2 right-shot puck moving defenseman with second pair upside. He was a second-round pick in 2021 and has performed well in the NCAA. A package including Morrow and other premium assets could be enticing.

Boston Bruins: Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci won’t be around forever so this could be a golden chance for the Bruins. Horvat would give an already-stacked roster a big boost in what could be a final year to push for the Cup with Bergeron plus long-term help if they’re able to sign him to an extension.

The fit is almost perfect but there are a couple of important considerations.

For starters, do the Bruins have the requisite cap flexibility to re-sign Horvat? Boston is projected to have $21.8 million in cap space this summer with just 13 players signed according to CapFriendly, and that doesn’t even include Pastrnak, who’s going to command a massive dollar figure. In other words, you could be looking at around $11 million left over for Horvat and several other roster spots. It’s doable if you move other money around but definitely tight.

The biggest complication, however, could be the Bruins’ lack of assets. Boston’s prospects pool is one of the worst in the league, with Fabian Lysell standing out as the club’s only blue-chip prospect. Lysell’s an exciting player, having notched 21 points in 24 AHL games this season at just 20, but he’s a right-winger, which isn’t ideal for the Canucks. The Bruins have all their first-round picks intact and Matthew Poitras is a centre prospect the Bruins drafted in the second round last year.

Winnipeg Jets: The Western Conference, which was already weak to begin with, is as wide open as it’s ever been. Colorado’s hampered and doesn’t look the same, Calgary and Edmonton have disappointed, St. Louis isn’t in the mix anymore and while Vegas started hot, they’ve come back down to Earth. New contenders have a chance to take advantage and that includes the Jets, who sit second in the West behind the Dallas Stars.

Winnipeg’s set down the middle for now but Pierre-Luc Dubois made it clear last summer that he intends to test free agency in 2024. All he has to do is go to arbitration or accept his qualifying offer this summer to initiate that path. Unless there’s been a change of heart, the Jets will need to replace Dubois at centre.

Horvat would check two boxes: He’d give the Jets a chance to push for the Cup this season, especially considering the weak West, and if he’s willing to re-sign, it would give them a chance to trade Dubois at some point down the line without skipping a beat.

Colorado Avalanche: Similar to Carolina, the Avs haven’t found the right 2C fit yet. Alex Newhook isn’t ready, and while J.T. Compher’s breaking out with an excellent offensive season, Colorado could really use another high-end centre. Horvat would be the perfect successor for Nazem Kadri. He’d fit like a glove in the bumper of the first unit power-play, and can you imagine the nightmare that a second line with Horvat, Valeri Nichushkin and Gabriel Landeskog would pose once those wingers are healthy?

The Avs may not be able to justify giving up a huge package for Horvat given their injuries and uncertain playoff status though. Colorado has the assets to complete a trade if they wanted — Newhook’s a young centre with potential and they still own all their first-round picks, but giving up those kinds of pieces might only make sense if they view Horvat as a long-term fit. The Avs’ cap situation would be tight regarding a potential extension.

Minnesota Wild: No team needs a top centre quite as much as the Wild. Bill Guerin’s built a talented, deep roster but Sam Steel has spent most of the year centering the first line with Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello. Having Horvat’s sharp shooting flanked by two elite playmakers is a tantalizing proposition, especially considering his ability to bring the size, edge and dirty work for that line.

Minnesota almost definitely can’t afford Horvat beyond this season so he’d be a pure rental. The Wild have a ton of attractive prospects — Brock Faber and Carson Lambos are standouts among the defensemen and Marat Khusnutdinov is an intriguing young centre.

Seattle Kraken: The Kraken seem like an odd fit on the surface — they already score a ton of goals and should be set at centre with Matty Beniers and Shane Wright. But Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman identified Seattle as a strong contender for Horvat’s services if they believe they can complete an extension. Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli linked Seattle with Horvat as well.

The Kraken could follow Vegas’ model of chasing success and big-name players immediately rather than taking the long view to roster building, especially with the way they’re surging in a wide-open Western Conference.

Edmonton Oilers: Edmonton’s top need is on the backend. The Oilers don’t seem particularly interested in Jakob Chychrun though which doesn’t leave many impact top-four defenders. That could create a scenario where the club makes a depth acquisition on the blueline and instead pushes the big chips in for a player like Horvat. Is that the most sensible option? Probably not. Could the Oilers still be interested in Horvat? My Oilers colleague Daniel Nugent-Bowman seemed to think so.

Edmonton’s been overly reliant on the big guns to score: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have been doing all the heavy lifting with not much secondary support. Evander Kane’s return will help with that. Acquiring Horvat would give the Oilers the luxury of pairing McDavid and Draisaitl together, who are unstoppable when on the same line, without worrying about how the second and third lines would fare.

My biggest question: Would the Canucks and their ownership group entertain the idea of shipping a captain and face of the franchise-type player to a divisional rival like Edmonton?

Detroit Red Wings: By signing Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, Ville Husso, David Perron and Dominik Kubalik among others this offseason, the Red Wings showed an intent to take the next step. Their days of bottoming out are over — it’s time to accelerate forward. There would obviously be zero point in Detroit acquiring Horvat as a rental but he’d make some sense if the club was confident they could lock him up long-term. Dylan Larkin’s a pending UFA and whether he re-signs or not, the Red Wings could use another top-flight centre. Copp’s filling the 2C spot now but he’s probably not a second-line centre on a future contender.

I wouldn’t pay top price in assets or an extension for Horvat if I was in Detroit’s position, especially with Marco Kasper arriving soon, but Frank Seravalli has identified the Red Wings as a club that has inquired about Horvat.
- LeftCoaster

Thanks, Lefty!

Thanks, Lefty!
- Nucker101

You're welcome!

Bruce Boudreau’s emotional departure captures how lost the Canucks are.

By Thomas Drance

VANCOUVER—The image of Bruce Boudreau surveying the crowd on Saturday night, tears on his face, clapping and waving in deep appreciation for Vancouver Canucks fans after another home loss will resonate in this city long after the successful veteran head coach is fired in the coming days.

It was deeply touching in the moment, but it’s now an ignominious piece of Canucks franchise history.

Against a superior opponent Saturday night, Boudreau’s players emptied the tank to try and rally for him. They fell short.

And as the game ended, Boudreau stood on the bench, tears in his eyes and contemplated his hockey mortality.

He searched out his wife in the crowd and held back tears as the fans serenaded him appreciatively one final time: “Bruce There It Is!”

“You never know if it’s the end,” Boudreau said of the moment. He spoke through tears. He stopped frequently to gather himself.

“When you’ve been in it for almost 50 years, the majority of your life, and if it’s the end, I had to stay out there and look at the crowd and say, ‘Remember this moment’…”

Boudreau has been around a while. He’s been fired from NHL jobs before — on three previous occasions in fact. This was different, however, in part because he’s 68 years old now and in part because this is a situation that no one who works professionally in this industry has ever previously encountered.

“I’ve never had it where, like, I was fired once in the middle of the season — and by the way they haven’t fired me,” Boudreau said, as the media laughed. “And George (McPhee) called me to his house and we had a long talk.”

It was an anecdote that underlined how unusually — and how callously — Boudreau has been treated by the Canucks organization. He’s still yet to hear about his fate directly from club leadership, even though the specifics are common knowledge.

He doesn’t know which of his assistant coaches will be retained and which will depart, although he made sure to vouch for his staff at length postgame.

He’s known the axe was going to fall for weeks — months even — but he’s baffled by the timing and the impersonality of all of it. He quipped on Saturday that the club had been waiting until the schedule turned to cake, to make sure his replacement is put in a position to succeed. He then wished his replacement “good luck.”

“It’s different when you get to say goodbye to the players,” Boudreau continued, a bit meekly, the tectonic emotions of the moment welling up, “and they’re emotional and I’m emotional…”

The end of Boudreau’s Canucks tenure has played out in a way that’s been deeply unflattering for the Canucks and their management team.

Boudreau hasn’t been fired yet, he hasn’t had a lengthy tête-à-tête with club leadership to explain the reasoning. His firing hasn’t even been delivered by press release yet; instead it’s been relayed in drips and drabs during “Hockey Night in Canada” intermission segments.

Boudreau deserves better than to be undermined and tossed aside in this manner. Canucks fans know it, the whole hockey world knows it and his players know it too.

Across parts of two seasons with a middling roster catastrophically short on both overall two-way ability and puck moving skill from the back-end, Boudreau guided the Canucks to 50 wins, 40 losses and 13 losses beyond regulation.

113 points in 103 games isn’t great — it’s a 90-point per 82-game pace — but based on the talent at Boudreau’s disposal during his Canucks tenure, it’s impossible to argue that the veteran head coach didn’t find a way to wring as much as he reasonably could have out the players he was given.

This Canucks side is, after all, in construction and intent and on true talent (despite their miserable results this season), a fringe playoff team.

That gap in talent between the Canucks and the bona fide playoff teams like the Edmonton Oilers side that bested them on Saturday is extremely evident. It’s clear and obvious.

It’s also the main hockey problem in Vancouver in the short-term.

This team isn’t struggling because of systems or player deployment. This team’s problems aren’t structural. It’s not even a lack of effort most nights. Canucks management is likely kidding themselves if they truly believe that a coaching change can fix this.

The likelihood is that Rick Tocchet — reportedly set to replace Boudreau this week — will struggle to outperform Boudreau’s record in his first 103 games behind the Canucks bench, particularly with Bo Horvat likely to depart the organization in some capacity in the coming weeks.

This team isn’t good enough as constructed. It’s actually even worse than that. With no cap flexibility, a shallow prospect pool, no fixed cost certainty on their most important players and an overall deficit of high-value trade assets, there’s likely no direct route to building something better in Vancouver in the near term.

Of all the people who deserve blame for this state of abject hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks franchise, Boudreau ranks dead last on the list.

He arrived in Vancouver as a breath of fresh air. He won his first nine games and resonated immediately and powerfully with the fanbase and with players in the Canucks locker room. On the whole he led this team to a record commensurate with quality of the assembled roster — if not slightly better.

As he departed Rogers Arena on Saturday evening, likely for the final time as Vancouver’s head coach, Boudreau did so as a potent symbol of an organization that has lost its way.

One wonders, based on the tone in the rink on Saturday, and the supportive commentary of Canucks players, whether Boudreau’s lengthy, slow motion dismissal may also mark the end of the grace period extended to Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and their still relatively new Canucks management team.

If Canucks hockey operations believe that Boudreau’s presence was such a problem that he had to be treated in this manner, that this course of action and this level of public embarrassment was justified, well, they had better be right. There can be no further margin for error.

Because as the reaction of the fans at Rogers Arena on Saturday night made clear, if you’re trying to sell the story that Boudreau was “the problem” for this team, well, Canucks fans don’t seem to be buying it.

Bruce Boudreau’s emotional departure captures how lost the Canucks are.

By Thomas Drance

VANCOUVER—The image of Bruce Boudreau surveying the crowd on Saturday night, tears on his face, clapping and waving in deep appreciation for Vancouver Canucks fans after another home loss will resonate in this city long after the successful veteran head coach is fired in the coming days.

It was deeply touching in the moment, but it’s now an ignominious piece of Canucks franchise history.

Against a superior opponent Saturday night, Boudreau’s players emptied the tank to try and rally for him. They fell short.

And as the game ended, Boudreau stood on the bench, tears in his eyes and contemplated his hockey mortality.

He searched out his wife in the crowd and held back tears as the fans serenaded him appreciatively one final time: “Bruce There It Is!”

“You never know if it’s the end,” Boudreau said of the moment. He spoke through tears. He stopped frequently to gather himself.

“When you’ve been in it for almost 50 years, the majority of your life, and if it’s the end, I had to stay out there and look at the crowd and say, ‘Remember this moment’…”

Boudreau has been around a while. He’s been fired from NHL jobs before — on three previous occasions in fact. This was different, however, in part because he’s 68 years old now and in part because this is a situation that no one who works professionally in this industry has ever previously encountered.

“I’ve never had it where, like, I was fired once in the middle of the season — and by the way they haven’t fired me,” Boudreau said, as the media laughed. “And George (McPhee) called me to his house and we had a long talk.”

It was an anecdote that underlined how unusually — and how callously — Boudreau has been treated by the Canucks organization. He’s still yet to hear about his fate directly from club leadership, even though the specifics are common knowledge.

He doesn’t know which of his assistant coaches will be retained and which will depart, although he made sure to vouch for his staff at length postgame.

He’s known the axe was going to fall for weeks — months even — but he’s baffled by the timing and the impersonality of all of it. He quipped on Saturday that the club had been waiting until the schedule turned to cake, to make sure his replacement is put in a position to succeed. He then wished his replacement “good luck.”

“It’s different when you get to say goodbye to the players,” Boudreau continued, a bit meekly, the tectonic emotions of the moment welling up, “and they’re emotional and I’m emotional…”

The end of Boudreau’s Canucks tenure has played out in a way that’s been deeply unflattering for the Canucks and their management team.

Boudreau hasn’t been fired yet, he hasn’t had a lengthy tête-à-tête with club leadership to explain the reasoning. His firing hasn’t even been delivered by press release yet; instead it’s been relayed in drips and drabs during “Hockey Night in Canada” intermission segments.

Boudreau deserves better than to be undermined and tossed aside in this manner. Canucks fans know it, the whole hockey world knows it and his players know it too.

Across parts of two seasons with a middling roster catastrophically short on both overall two-way ability and puck moving skill from the back-end, Boudreau guided the Canucks to 50 wins, 40 losses and 13 losses beyond regulation.

113 points in 103 games isn’t great — it’s a 90-point per 82-game pace — but based on the talent at Boudreau’s disposal during his Canucks tenure, it’s impossible to argue that the veteran head coach didn’t find a way to wring as much as he reasonably could have out the players he was given.

This Canucks side is, after all, in construction and intent and on true talent (despite their miserable results this season), a fringe playoff team.

That gap in talent between the Canucks and the bona fide playoff teams like the Edmonton Oilers side that bested them on Saturday is extremely evident. It’s clear and obvious.

It’s also the main hockey problem in Vancouver in the short-term.

This team isn’t struggling because of systems or player deployment. This team’s problems aren’t structural. It’s not even a lack of effort most nights. Canucks management is likely kidding themselves if they truly believe that a coaching change can fix this.

The likelihood is that Rick Tocchet — reportedly set to replace Boudreau this week — will struggle to outperform Boudreau’s record in his first 103 games behind the Canucks bench, particularly with Bo Horvat likely to depart the organization in some capacity in the coming weeks.

This team isn’t good enough as constructed. It’s actually even worse than that. With no cap flexibility, a shallow prospect pool, no fixed cost certainty on their most important players and an overall deficit of high-value trade assets, there’s likely no direct route to building something better in Vancouver in the near term.

Of all the people who deserve blame for this state of abject hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks franchise, Boudreau ranks dead last on the list.

He arrived in Vancouver as a breath of fresh air. He won his first nine games and resonated immediately and powerfully with the fanbase and with players in the Canucks locker room. On the whole he led this team to a record commensurate with quality of the assembled roster — if not slightly better.

As he departed Rogers Arena on Saturday evening, likely for the final time as Vancouver’s head coach, Boudreau did so as a potent symbol of an organization that has lost its way.

One wonders, based on the tone in the rink on Saturday, and the supportive commentary of Canucks players, whether Boudreau’s lengthy, slow motion dismissal may also mark the end of the grace period extended to Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and their still relatively new Canucks management team.

If Canucks hockey operations believe that Boudreau’s presence was such a problem that he had to be treated in this manner, that this course of action and this level of public embarrassment was justified, well, they had better be right. There can be no further margin for error.

Because as the reaction of the fans at Rogers Arena on Saturday night made clear, if you’re trying to sell the story that Boudreau was “the problem” for this team, well, Canucks fans don’t seem to be buying it.
- LeftCoaster

Bittersweet night for Bruce. Mostly bitter I’d assume, but must be nice for him getting all that love from fans and his players.

Thanks lefty!

Bittersweet night for Bruce. Mostly bitter I’d assume, but must be nice for him getting all that love from fans and his players.

Thanks lefty!
- Nucker101

A fire Tocchet chant would have been hilarious. Too bad, lost opportunity.

Bruce Boudreau’s emotional departure captures how lost the Canucks are.

By Thomas Drance

VANCOUVER—The image of Bruce Boudreau surveying the crowd on Saturday night, tears on his face, clapping and waving in deep appreciation for Vancouver Canucks fans after another home loss will resonate in this city long after the successful veteran head coach is fired in the coming days.

It was deeply touching in the moment, but it’s now an ignominious piece of Canucks franchise history.

Against a superior opponent Saturday night, Boudreau’s players emptied the tank to try and rally for him. They fell short.

And as the game ended, Boudreau stood on the bench, tears in his eyes and contemplated his hockey mortality.

He searched out his wife in the crowd and held back tears as the fans serenaded him appreciatively one final time: “Bruce There It Is!”

“You never know if it’s the end,” Boudreau said of the moment. He spoke through tears. He stopped frequently to gather himself.

“When you’ve been in it for almost 50 years, the majority of your life, and if it’s the end, I had to stay out there and look at the crowd and say, ‘Remember this moment’…”

Boudreau has been around a while. He’s been fired from NHL jobs before — on three previous occasions in fact. This was different, however, in part because he’s 68 years old now and in part because this is a situation that no one who works professionally in this industry has ever previously encountered.

“I’ve never had it where, like, I was fired once in the middle of the season — and by the way they haven’t fired me,” Boudreau said, as the media laughed. “And George (McPhee) called me to his house and we had a long talk.”

It was an anecdote that underlined how unusually — and how callously — Boudreau has been treated by the Canucks organization. He’s still yet to hear about his fate directly from club leadership, even though the specifics are common knowledge.

He doesn’t know which of his assistant coaches will be retained and which will depart, although he made sure to vouch for his staff at length postgame.

He’s known the axe was going to fall for weeks — months even — but he’s baffled by the timing and the impersonality of all of it. He quipped on Saturday that the club had been waiting until the schedule turned to cake, to make sure his replacement is put in a position to succeed. He then wished his replacement “good luck.”

“It’s different when you get to say goodbye to the players,” Boudreau continued, a bit meekly, the tectonic emotions of the moment welling up, “and they’re emotional and I’m emotional…”

The end of Boudreau’s Canucks tenure has played out in a way that’s been deeply unflattering for the Canucks and their management team.

Boudreau hasn’t been fired yet, he hasn’t had a lengthy tête-à-tête with club leadership to explain the reasoning. His firing hasn’t even been delivered by press release yet; instead it’s been relayed in drips and drabs during “Hockey Night in Canada” intermission segments.

Boudreau deserves better than to be undermined and tossed aside in this manner. Canucks fans know it, the whole hockey world knows it and his players know it too.

Across parts of two seasons with a middling roster catastrophically short on both overall two-way ability and puck moving skill from the back-end, Boudreau guided the Canucks to 50 wins, 40 losses and 13 losses beyond regulation.

113 points in 103 games isn’t great — it’s a 90-point per 82-game pace — but based on the talent at Boudreau’s disposal during his Canucks tenure, it’s impossible to argue that the veteran head coach didn’t find a way to wring as much as he reasonably could have out the players he was given.

This Canucks side is, after all, in construction and intent and on true talent (despite their miserable results this season), a fringe playoff team.

That gap in talent between the Canucks and the bona fide playoff teams like the Edmonton Oilers side that bested them on Saturday is extremely evident. It’s clear and obvious.

It’s also the main hockey problem in Vancouver in the short-term.

This team isn’t struggling because of systems or player deployment. This team’s problems aren’t structural. It’s not even a lack of effort most nights. Canucks management is likely kidding themselves if they truly believe that a coaching change can fix this.

The likelihood is that Rick Tocchet — reportedly set to replace Boudreau this week — will struggle to outperform Boudreau’s record in his first 103 games behind the Canucks bench, particularly with Bo Horvat likely to depart the organization in some capacity in the coming weeks.

This team isn’t good enough as constructed. It’s actually even worse than that. With no cap flexibility, a shallow prospect pool, no fixed cost certainty on their most important players and an overall deficit of high-value trade assets, there’s likely no direct route to building something better in Vancouver in the near term.

Of all the people who deserve blame for this state of abject hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks franchise, Boudreau ranks dead last on the list.

He arrived in Vancouver as a breath of fresh air. He won his first nine games and resonated immediately and powerfully with the fanbase and with players in the Canucks locker room. On the whole he led this team to a record commensurate with quality of the assembled roster — if not slightly better.

As he departed Rogers Arena on Saturday evening, likely for the final time as Vancouver’s head coach, Boudreau did so as a potent symbol of an organization that has lost its way.

One wonders, based on the tone in the rink on Saturday, and the supportive commentary of Canucks players, whether Boudreau’s lengthy, slow motion dismissal may also mark the end of the grace period extended to Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and their still relatively new Canucks management team.

If Canucks hockey operations believe that Boudreau’s presence was such a problem that he had to be treated in this manner, that this course of action and this level of public embarrassment was justified, well, they had better be right. There can be no further margin for error.

Because as the reaction of the fans at Rogers Arena on Saturday night made clear, if you’re trying to sell the story that Boudreau was “the problem” for this team, well, Canucks fans don’t seem to be buying it.
- LeftCoaster

I hope this assfucks the Canucks for years to come.

A fire Tocchet chant would have been hilarious. Too bad, lost opportunity.
- 1970vintage

Can't really blame him though, I would leave my TNT for the nice pay raise of a NHL HC job too, now if they wanna chant something about ownership/management I woulld love it.

Can't really blame him though, I would leave my TNT for the nice pay raise of a NHL HC job too, now if they wanna chant something about ownership/management I woulld love it.
- Nucker101

Ya I don't get why people are hating on Tochett. Not like he was the one scheming to get Bouds out, or talking poop about him to the media. The entire poopstorm is with JR

Ya I don't get why people are hating on Tochett. Not like he was the one scheming to get Bouds out, or talking poop about him to the media. The entire poopstorm is with JR
- NewYorkNuck

It was about the comedy of it, not actually about Tocchet himself. You guys are so soft. What I was saying is it would have been funny for the crowd to be chanting to fire the guy who hadn’t actually been hired yet, while the guy who was about to be fired was still standing on the bench. I’m sure Boudreau would have got a laugh out of it.

Chanting “sell the team” is idiotic, like that’s going to happen.

It was about the comedy of it, not actually about Tocchet himself. You guys are so soft. What I was saying is it would have been funny for the crowd to be chanting to fire the guy who hadn’t actually been hired yet, while the guy who was about to be fired was still standing on the bench. I’m sure Boudreau would have got a laugh out of it.

Chanting “sell the team” is idiotic, like that’s going to happen.
- 1970vintage

Wasn't referring to you specifically, untwist your panties.

As to the bold: by chating "Fire Tochett" they're actually gonna consider it? I would say a "Sell the Team" chant causes more of a black eye for Aqua than anything else chanted – especially on national TV

As Canucks introduced new coach Rick Tocchet, they continued to wage war on reality.

By Thomas Drance


Sometimes it feels like the Vancouver Canucks are engaged in a decade-long war with reality.

What sort of franchise, after all, employs three different head coaches in 13 months, aside from a club in complete denial about the quality of their assembled roster?

On Sunday, in the latest skirmish, new head coach Rick Tocchet flanked general manager Patrik Allvin and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford at an introductory press conference at Rogers Arena. It was Allvin who kicked off the proceedings.

“As of this morning,” Allvin began, “I decided to do a coaching change here with the Vancouver Canucks.”

It was an unconvincing beginning, which was underlined further when Tocchet noted that he’d had a conversation with Henrik and Daniel Sedin on Saturday.

Everybody knows that the decision to fire Boudreau wasn’t made on Sunday. This has been obvious and well reported and inevitable for a while. Why not own that?

Because while Boudreau may have been formally relieved of his duties on Sunday morning, from the public’s perspective — and from Boudreau’s, and from the perspective of Canucks players too — he was effectively fired in slow motion across multiple “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts and Insider Trading segments over the past two weeks.


The way this situation was handled caused an unprecedented scene over the past week, one that had Canucks players walking on eggshells and distracted on the ice — by their own admission.

On Sunday, Rutherford took some accountability for the pointed criticism that he’d delivered about Boudreau’s performance over the course of this season.

“Nobody takes great pride in this,” Rutherford said. “I’ve known Bruce for a long time and he’s been a friend and I feel very bad about it. If I’ve offended anybody in the process, I apologize personally and on behalf of the Canucks.”

That was a strong moment. It should’ve been left there.

Instead, the immediate follow-up from the press gallery touched on how damaging the dragged-out Boudreau situation had been to the club’s reputation around the NHL.

Is Rutherford concerned that he’s stacked the deck against his incoming head coach? Is he nervous about how players and agents and rival executives feel about the organization in the wake of this mess?

“First of all, it’s played out in a way that’s out of our control,” Rutherford said. “We can only do our business the way we see fit. We can’t change our business based on speculation.

“So there’s all kinds of speculation out there, it’s not any different than most situations in professional sports where a team isn’t winning as much as people would like and there’s speculation that there’s going to be changes.”

This is where Rutherford’s commentary flipped into the incredible. Canucks players, experienced media members, talking heads around the league, even Boudreau himself (who has been relieved of his duties on three previous occasions) would all readily agree that nobody has ever seen anything quite like what transpired this past week.

No one in this business can remember a scene like the one that unfolded at Rogers Arena on Sunday night, where an outgoing head coach tearfully waved at fans after a home loss that everyone knew marked his final game with the club.

“If you go back to the last time there was going to be a coaching change here,” Rutherford continued, “there was speculation about it, and the owner was talking to Bruce about coming here before there was a change made.”

It’s fair to note that speculation raged around Travis Green’s job security as his tenure in Vancouver wound down, with names like Claude Julien and Scott Walker surfacing in the leadup to his dismissal. We were extraordinarily critical of the organization for mishandling it then, too.

That really was speculation though. This was different. When Green was fired, it wasn’t confirmed and telegraphed by the most prominent insiders in the game for a week ahead of time.

When the Canucks lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins at home in Green’s final game, there was a sense that change could be coming. There wasn’t certainty about it. We didn’t know the identity of his ultimate replacement (and the incoming assistant coaches).

In any event, what occurred in December 2021 around this team was an unholy mess. What occurred this past week was somehow worse.

Citing the similarities between this process and the abject panic that caused the organization to hire Boudreau before formally making a president of hockey operations hire, and that caused the organization to promote Stan Smyl for four days only to demote him again (and then promote him once more to a different job a few weeks later), and that caused Canucks ownership to publicly launch an exhaustive search to find a new chief of hockey operations only to hire Rutherford inside of a week — is something of a self-own.

The Rutherford era was supposed to represent something a lot more polished than whatever that was. Defending the ugly, emotional, distracting process of flipping from Boudreau to Tocchet by comparing the process of replacing Green with Boudreau last season is a line of defence worthy of this season’s Vancouver Canucks.

As for Tocchet, he was in an impossible spot on Sunday. There was little he could do after the events of the past 10 days to restore confidence in this marketplace. He did his best and sounded the part.

Asked what success would look like over the balance of the season, he discussed individual player improvement rather than making a playoff push. It was made clear that Tocchet isn’t expected to turn things around short-term (although he probably will).

Tocchet should probably check Sidney Crosby’s average ice time, but otherwise much of his commentary was grounded and self aware and modest.

What was perhaps most notable, however, was his tepid defense of J.T. Miller, which rested on the idea that Miller was pacing himself.

In a season full of remarkable moments, we should add to the list that the media asked pointed questions about a face of the franchise player whom the club signed to a $56 million extension less than five months ago, a contract which won’t kick in until July. To a man, current management and the incoming head coach accepted the premise of those questions across the board.

All of which brings us to the crux of the matter: the subject of where this club goes from here and how quickly they can arrive there.

Make no mistake, even if it wasn’t the direct focus, the rebuilding question hung over this entire availability. These days it hangs around all Canucks-related matters, and it isn’t going anywhere.

Pacing yourself, eating an elephant one small chunk at a time, the process, “it’s not going to be a quick fix.” The organization can dance around the fundamental question of this club’s overall direction however they like, but it’s present, lingering and never quite fading entirely into the background.

It’s the partially eaten elephant in the room.

The club’s last decade of existence is effectively a case study in whether you can contend in the contemporary NHL by taking shortcuts, or whether a slower, more holistic approach is required.

It’s taken a while to get here, but hockey fans in Vancouver are prepared for patience. There is basically consensus on this outside of the organization.

The Canucks, however, refuse to reach the most logical conclusion about the quality of their team and the distance they likely need to travel back to contention. They’re intent on continuing to try to microwave a five star meal.


Which is why the smart money is on Bo Horvat being dealt at the trade deadline for NHL-ready (or nearly NHL-ready) pieces rather than raw, uncut futures.

It’s why the club is widely expected to extend Andrei Kuzmenko and exercise a buyout (or two) on comparable, younger players who play the same position.

It’s why Tocchet will be in tough, if not this season, then in the years to come, when he’s asked to qualify for a playoff spot with a low-ceiling roster weighed down by years of short-term thinking.

Toward the end of Sunday’s press conference, Allvin was asked about the dissatisfaction of the Canucks fanbase with the overall direction of the club.

His strongest portion of the availability by far was when he was discussing the day-to-day, the habits required to build the team he envisions. When the discussion entered that arena, you could tell that he was passionate and not nearly as restrained as he typically is when speaking publicly. He had a point he wanted to convey with urgency.

Within that discussion, Vancouver’s general manager noted that when he looks up at the rafters at Rogers Arena, he doesn’t see any banners and he wants to build a culture that helps to put a championship banner up above the ice.

For Canucks fans, that’s all they’ve ever wanted. Just one, while they’re still around to see it.

Winning matters. The Stanley Cup matters.

There are other things that have to come first though. Things like credibility, integrity and a coherent plan. Things like treating people the right way.

These are the building blocks of getting a skeptical fanbase back on board with the direction this club is heading after a week of dysfunction.

Unfortunately, that’s the reality we didn’t hear club leadership really grapple with on Sunday afternoon.

As Canucks introduced new coach Rick Tocchet, they continued to wage war on reality.

By Thomas Drance


Sometimes it feels like the Vancouver Canucks are engaged in a decade-long war with reality.

What sort of franchise, after all, employs three different head coaches in 13 months, aside from a club in complete denial about the quality of their assembled roster?

On Sunday, in the latest skirmish, new head coach Rick Tocchet flanked general manager Patrik Allvin and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford at an introductory press conference at Rogers Arena. It was Allvin who kicked off the proceedings.

“As of this morning,” Allvin began, “I decided to do a coaching change here with the Vancouver Canucks.”

It was an unconvincing beginning, which was underlined further when Tocchet noted that he’d had a conversation with Henrik and Daniel Sedin on Saturday.

Everybody knows that the decision to fire Boudreau wasn’t made on Sunday. This has been obvious and well reported and inevitable for a while. Why not own that?

Because while Boudreau may have been formally relieved of his duties on Sunday morning, from the public’s perspective — and from Boudreau’s, and from the perspective of Canucks players too — he was effectively fired in slow motion across multiple “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts and Insider Trading segments over the past two weeks.


The way this situation was handled caused an unprecedented scene over the past week, one that had Canucks players walking on eggshells and distracted on the ice — by their own admission.

On Sunday, Rutherford took some accountability for the pointed criticism that he’d delivered about Boudreau’s performance over the course of this season.

“Nobody takes great pride in this,” Rutherford said. “I’ve known Bruce for a long time and he’s been a friend and I feel very bad about it. If I’ve offended anybody in the process, I apologize personally and on behalf of the Canucks.”

That was a strong moment. It should’ve been left there.

Instead, the immediate follow-up from the press gallery touched on how damaging the dragged-out Boudreau situation had been to the club’s reputation around the NHL.

Is Rutherford concerned that he’s stacked the deck against his incoming head coach? Is he nervous about how players and agents and rival executives feel about the organization in the wake of this mess?

“First of all, it’s played out in a way that’s out of our control,” Rutherford said. “We can only do our business the way we see fit. We can’t change our business based on speculation.

“So there’s all kinds of speculation out there, it’s not any different than most situations in professional sports where a team isn’t winning as much as people would like and there’s speculation that there’s going to be changes.”

This is where Rutherford’s commentary flipped into the incredible. Canucks players, experienced media members, talking heads around the league, even Boudreau himself (who has been relieved of his duties on three previous occasions) would all readily agree that nobody has ever seen anything quite like what transpired this past week.

No one in this business can remember a scene like the one that unfolded at Rogers Arena on Sunday night, where an outgoing head coach tearfully waved at fans after a home loss that everyone knew marked his final game with the club.

“If you go back to the last time there was going to be a coaching change here,” Rutherford continued, “there was speculation about it, and the owner was talking to Bruce about coming here before there was a change made.”

It’s fair to note that speculation raged around Travis Green’s job security as his tenure in Vancouver wound down, with names like Claude Julien and Scott Walker surfacing in the leadup to his dismissal. We were extraordinarily critical of the organization for mishandling it then, too.

That really was speculation though. This was different. When Green was fired, it wasn’t confirmed and telegraphed by the most prominent insiders in the game for a week ahead of time.

When the Canucks lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins at home in Green’s final game, there was a sense that change could be coming. There wasn’t certainty about it. We didn’t know the identity of his ultimate replacement (and the incoming assistant coaches).

In any event, what occurred in December 2021 around this team was an unholy mess. What occurred this past week was somehow worse.

Citing the similarities between this process and the abject panic that caused the organization to hire Boudreau before formally making a president of hockey operations hire, and that caused the organization to promote Stan Smyl for four days only to demote him again (and then promote him once more to a different job a few weeks later), and that caused Canucks ownership to publicly launch an exhaustive search to find a new chief of hockey operations only to hire Rutherford inside of a week — is something of a self-own.

The Rutherford era was supposed to represent something a lot more polished than whatever that was. Defending the ugly, emotional, distracting process of flipping from Boudreau to Tocchet by comparing the process of replacing Green with Boudreau last season is a line of defence worthy of this season’s Vancouver Canucks.

As for Tocchet, he was in an impossible spot on Sunday. There was little he could do after the events of the past 10 days to restore confidence in this marketplace. He did his best and sounded the part.

Asked what success would look like over the balance of the season, he discussed individual player improvement rather than making a playoff push. It was made clear that Tocchet isn’t expected to turn things around short-term (although he probably will).

Tocchet should probably check Sidney Crosby’s average ice time, but otherwise much of his commentary was grounded and self aware and modest.

What was perhaps most notable, however, was his tepid defense of J.T. Miller, which rested on the idea that Miller was pacing himself.

In a season full of remarkable moments, we should add to the list that the media asked pointed questions about a face of the franchise player whom the club signed to a $56 million extension less than five months ago, a contract which won’t kick in until July. To a man, current management and the incoming head coach accepted the premise of those questions across the board.

All of which brings us to the crux of the matter: the subject of where this club goes from here and how quickly they can arrive there.

Make no mistake, even if it wasn’t the direct focus, the rebuilding question hung over this entire availability. These days it hangs around all Canucks-related matters, and it isn’t going anywhere.

Pacing yourself, eating an elephant one small chunk at a time, the process, “it’s not going to be a quick fix.” The organization can dance around the fundamental question of this club’s overall direction however they like, but it’s present, lingering and never quite fading entirely into the background.

It’s the partially eaten elephant in the room.

The club’s last decade of existence is effectively a case study in whether you can contend in the contemporary NHL by taking shortcuts, or whether a slower, more holistic approach is required.

It’s taken a while to get here, but hockey fans in Vancouver are prepared for patience. There is basically consensus on this outside of the organization.

The Canucks, however, refuse to reach the most logical conclusion about the quality of their team and the distance they likely need to travel back to contention. They’re intent on continuing to try to microwave a five star meal.


Which is why the smart money is on Bo Horvat being dealt at the trade deadline for NHL-ready (or nearly NHL-ready) pieces rather than raw, uncut futures.

It’s why the club is widely expected to extend Andrei Kuzmenko and exercise a buyout (or two) on comparable, younger players who play the same position.

It’s why Tocchet will be in tough, if not this season, then in the years to come, when he’s asked to qualify for a playoff spot with a low-ceiling roster weighed down by years of short-term thinking.

Toward the end of Sunday’s press conference, Allvin was asked about the dissatisfaction of the Canucks fanbase with the overall direction of the club.

His strongest portion of the availability by far was when he was discussing the day-to-day, the habits required to build the team he envisions. When the discussion entered that arena, you could tell that he was passionate and not nearly as restrained as he typically is when speaking publicly. He had a point he wanted to convey with urgency.

Within that discussion, Vancouver’s general manager noted that when he looks up at the rafters at Rogers Arena, he doesn’t see any banners and he wants to build a culture that helps to put a championship banner up above the ice.

For Canucks fans, that’s all they’ve ever wanted. Just one, while they’re still around to see it.

Winning matters. The Stanley Cup matters.

There are other things that have to come first though. Things like credibility, integrity and a coherent plan. Things like treating people the right way.

These are the building blocks of getting a skeptical fanbase back on board with the direction this club is heading after a week of dysfunction.

Unfortunately, that’s the reality we didn’t hear club leadership really grapple with on Sunday afternoon.
- LeftCoaster

Thanks, this team is a bad joke.

Wasn't referring to you specifically, untwist your panties.

As to the bold: by chating "Fire Tochett" they're actually gonna consider it? I would say a "Sell the Team" chant causes more of a black eye for Aqua than anything else chanted – especially on national TV
- NewYorkNuck

No, neither is going to happen, but one is comedy while the other is not.

Thanks, this team is a bad joke.
- Marwood

When you decide to fire someone, that is the exact instant you should do it, not two months later. Remember back in the day when a coach got fired and the GM ended up behind the bench for a few games while the found a replacement?

When you decide to fire someone, that is the exact instant you should do it, not two months later. Remember back in the day when a coach got fired and the GM ended up behind the bench for a few games while the found a replacement?
- 1970vintage

Yup. I've never seen anything handled this poorly. It does expose the true identity of the top leadership of this organization, starting with the owner. Their offices must be like Lord Micro Penis's house, no mirrors.

As Canucks introduced new coach Rick Tocchet, they continued to wage war on reality.

By Thomas Drance


Sometimes it feels like the Vancouver Canucks are engaged in a decade-long war with reality.

What sort of franchise, after all, employs three different head coaches in 13 months, aside from a club in complete denial about the quality of their assembled roster?

On Sunday, in the latest skirmish, new head coach Rick Tocchet flanked general manager Patrik Allvin and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford at an introductory press conference at Rogers Arena. It was Allvin who kicked off the proceedings.

“As of this morning,” Allvin began, “I decided to do a coaching change here with the Vancouver Canucks.”

It was an unconvincing beginning, which was underlined further when Tocchet noted that he’d had a conversation with Henrik and Daniel Sedin on Saturday.

Everybody knows that the decision to fire Boudreau wasn’t made on Sunday. This has been obvious and well reported and inevitable for a while. Why not own that?

Because while Boudreau may have been formally relieved of his duties on Sunday morning, from the public’s perspective — and from Boudreau’s, and from the perspective of Canucks players too — he was effectively fired in slow motion across multiple “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts and Insider Trading segments over the past two weeks.


The way this situation was handled caused an unprecedented scene over the past week, one that had Canucks players walking on eggshells and distracted on the ice — by their own admission.

On Sunday, Rutherford took some accountability for the pointed criticism that he’d delivered about Boudreau’s performance over the course of this season.

“Nobody takes great pride in this,” Rutherford said. “I’ve known Bruce for a long time and he’s been a friend and I feel very bad about it. If I’ve offended anybody in the process, I apologize personally and on behalf of the Canucks.”

That was a strong moment. It should’ve been left there.

Instead, the immediate follow-up from the press gallery touched on how damaging the dragged-out Boudreau situation had been to the club’s reputation around the NHL.

Is Rutherford concerned that he’s stacked the deck against his incoming head coach? Is he nervous about how players and agents and rival executives feel about the organization in the wake of this mess?

“First of all, it’s played out in a way that’s out of our control,” Rutherford said. “We can only do our business the way we see fit. We can’t change our business based on speculation.

“So there’s all kinds of speculation out there, it’s not any different than most situations in professional sports where a team isn’t winning as much as people would like and there’s speculation that there’s going to be changes.”

This is where Rutherford’s commentary flipped into the incredible. Canucks players, experienced media members, talking heads around the league, even Boudreau himself (who has been relieved of his duties on three previous occasions) would all readily agree that nobody has ever seen anything quite like what transpired this past week.

No one in this business can remember a scene like the one that unfolded at Rogers Arena on Sunday night, where an outgoing head coach tearfully waved at fans after a home loss that everyone knew marked his final game with the club.

“If you go back to the last time there was going to be a coaching change here,” Rutherford continued, “there was speculation about it, and the owner was talking to Bruce about coming here before there was a change made.”

It’s fair to note that speculation raged around Travis Green’s job security as his tenure in Vancouver wound down, with names like Claude Julien and Scott Walker surfacing in the leadup to his dismissal. We were extraordinarily critical of the organization for mishandling it then, too.

That really was speculation though. This was different. When Green was fired, it wasn’t confirmed and telegraphed by the most prominent insiders in the game for a week ahead of time.

When the Canucks lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins at home in Green’s final game, there was a sense that change could be coming. There wasn’t certainty about it. We didn’t know the identity of his ultimate replacement (and the incoming assistant coaches).

In any event, what occurred in December 2021 around this team was an unholy mess. What occurred this past week was somehow worse.

Citing the similarities between this process and the abject panic that caused the organization to hire Boudreau before formally making a president of hockey operations hire, and that caused the organization to promote Stan Smyl for four days only to demote him again (and then promote him once more to a different job a few weeks later), and that caused Canucks ownership to publicly launch an exhaustive search to find a new chief of hockey operations only to hire Rutherford inside of a week — is something of a self-own.

The Rutherford era was supposed to represent something a lot more polished than whatever that was. Defending the ugly, emotional, distracting process of flipping from Boudreau to Tocchet by comparing the process of replacing Green with Boudreau last season is a line of defence worthy of this season’s Vancouver Canucks.

As for Tocchet, he was in an impossible spot on Sunday. There was little he could do after the events of the past 10 days to restore confidence in this marketplace. He did his best and sounded the part.

Asked what success would look like over the balance of the season, he discussed individual player improvement rather than making a playoff push. It was made clear that Tocchet isn’t expected to turn things around short-term (although he probably will).

Tocchet should probably check Sidney Crosby’s average ice time, but otherwise much of his commentary was grounded and self aware and modest.

What was perhaps most notable, however, was his tepid defense of J.T. Miller, which rested on the idea that Miller was pacing himself.

In a season full of remarkable moments, we should add to the list that the media asked pointed questions about a face of the franchise player whom the club signed to a $56 million extension less than five months ago, a contract which won’t kick in until July. To a man, current management and the incoming head coach accepted the premise of those questions across the board.

All of which brings us to the crux of the matter: the subject of where this club goes from here and how quickly they can arrive there.

Make no mistake, even if it wasn’t the direct focus, the rebuilding question hung over this entire availability. These days it hangs around all Canucks-related matters, and it isn’t going anywhere.

Pacing yourself, eating an elephant one small chunk at a time, the process, “it’s not going to be a quick fix.” The organization can dance around the fundamental question of this club’s overall direction however they like, but it’s present, lingering and never quite fading entirely into the background.

It’s the partially eaten elephant in the room.

The club’s last decade of existence is effectively a case study in whether you can contend in the contemporary NHL by taking shortcuts, or whether a slower, more holistic approach is required.

It’s taken a while to get here, but hockey fans in Vancouver are prepared for patience. There is basically consensus on this outside of the organization.

The Canucks, however, refuse to reach the most logical conclusion about the quality of their team and the distance they likely need to travel back to contention. They’re intent on continuing to try to microwave a five star meal.


Which is why the smart money is on Bo Horvat being dealt at the trade deadline for NHL-ready (or nearly NHL-ready) pieces rather than raw, uncut futures.

It’s why the club is widely expected to extend Andrei Kuzmenko and exercise a buyout (or two) on comparable, younger players who play the same position.

It’s why Tocchet will be in tough, if not this season, then in the years to come, when he’s asked to qualify for a playoff spot with a low-ceiling roster weighed down by years of short-term thinking.

Toward the end of Sunday’s press conference, Allvin was asked about the dissatisfaction of the Canucks fanbase with the overall direction of the club.

His strongest portion of the availability by far was when he was discussing the day-to-day, the habits required to build the team he envisions. When the discussion entered that arena, you could tell that he was passionate and not nearly as restrained as he typically is when speaking publicly. He had a point he wanted to convey with urgency.

Within that discussion, Vancouver’s general manager noted that when he looks up at the rafters at Rogers Arena, he doesn’t see any banners and he wants to build a culture that helps to put a championship banner up above the ice.

For Canucks fans, that’s all they’ve ever wanted. Just one, while they’re still around to see it.

Winning matters. The Stanley Cup matters.

There are other things that have to come first though. Things like credibility, integrity and a coherent plan. Things like treating people the right way.

These are the building blocks of getting a skeptical fanbase back on board with the direction this club is heading after a week of dysfunction.

Unfortunately, that’s the reality we didn’t hear club leadership really grapple with on Sunday afternoon.
- LeftCoaster

Well said.

Thanks, lefty!

Where have Brock Boeser’s goals gone? Plus, why the Canucks should keep him around.

By Cam Charron

Brock Boeser is a fascinating player.

When he broke into the NHL, he had all the makings of a star player. In his rookie season, he was the Most Valuable Player of the NHL All-Star Game and finished second in Calder Trophy voting to Mat Barzal.

Over the course of his entry level contract, from his first nine games at the end of the ’16-17 season through ’18-19, Boeser was 18th among regular NHL forwards in five-on-five goals rate, ahead of players like Steven Stamkos, David Pastrnak, and Chris Kreider. He was also a decent power-play scorer, at 54th in the NHL in goals rate at five-on-four.

Since Boeser signed a bridge deal in the fall of 2019, it’s not an understatement to label him a disappointment. After scoring at a 35-goal-per-82-game pace over his rookie contract, Boeser has fallen to a 26-goal pace (not counting Wednesday’s game) despite the fact that scoring is up league-wide. At one point, Boeser’s shot looked like one of the best among young players, but after shooting 14.3 percent in his first three seasons in all situations, he’s dipped to 12.0 percent.

His five-on-five goals rate has collapsed. While Boeser continues to be a good power-play scorer, having settled into a net-front role on the Canucks top unit, he’s struggled to move the needle at five-on-five. Since the start of the ’19-20 season, Boeser is 202nd out of the 384 forwards with the most time on ice in goals rate. It’s a pretty significant drop-off for a once-promising player.

Worse, his two-way game has seemingly collapsed. No longer playing the majority of his minutes with Elias Pettersson at centre, Boeser’s five-on-five underlying numbers have collapsed. This season is the worst of his career where the Canucks have gotten a higher share of the scoring chances when he’s off the ice than when he’s on the ice, per Natural Stat Trick, and for a team like Vancouver that is among the worst in the league at giving up scoring chances, that doesn’t bode well for Boeser’s overall impact.

And yet I think it’s vital that, moving forward, the Canucks keep Boeser.

There’s lots of noise surrounding an extension for Andrei Kuzmenko, and the team is still not allowing Bo Horvat’s agent to talk about an extension with a potential trading partner, which makes it seem like the Canucks are at least considering the possibility of bringing back this roster — 27th in the NHL in points percentage going into Wednesday’s games — by re-signing both of their potential trade chips in Kuzmenko and Horvat.

The only way the salary cap math makes sense for the Canucks to do that is if they’re able to somehow move contracts belonging to players like Boeser ($6.65m), Conor Garland, ($4.95m) or Tyler Myers ($6.0m), any of which would be another short-sighted decision that will set this franchise back another couple of seasons.

Boeser has not been a very good player this season, but the Canucks are not a very good team. Given how difficult it’s been for teams to move wingers with cash on their deals (think back to how the Vegas Golden Knights simply gave away Max Pacioretty this summer to Carolina), the Canucks might have to pay a team to get rid of Boeser. They’d certainly be selling him for pennies on the dollar.

Now, before I get into the nitty gritty and my thoughts about having contributing veterans around during particularly lean years, I want to discuss an aspect of Vancouver’s offence that has been particularly troubling this season: how little offence the Canucks generate off the rush.

When I hand track games, I’m tracking not only all shots, offensive zone entries, and defensive zone exits, but I’m also watching how these events relate to one another. One thing I’ve noticed is that shots that take place very shortly after a zone entry are much more likely to be from good areas or in situations favourable to the offensive team, and more likely to be scoring chances.

In my own tracking, shots off the rush, or within six seconds of a controlled zone entry, go in 6.4 percent of the time, compared to 4.7 percent of the time for other types of shots. These numbers spike if the shot is preceded by a pass (9.0 percent) or is unpressured by a defensive player (10.4 percent). In short, creating space off the rush is conducive to creating offence.

And it’s something the Canucks have been unable to do around Boeser.

This gets a little granular, but stay with me here. I want to show two video clips from Monday’s game against Chicago:

What we see is that the Canucks have created two controlled zone entries, but neither seemed to create any dangerous opportunities. Both rushes involve a defenceman sending an outlet forward for Bo Horvat, who puts his head down along the left wing and bolts towards the Hawks zone.

In the first clip, Horvat is about 15 feet deep into the zone before Studnicka and Boeser are even in the zone:



In the second, Boeser doesn’t time his skate with Horvat’s rush and is motionless along the blue line when Horvat breaks down the left wing wall. Horvat should have known by the time he hit the red line that a straight break down the left wing boards wouldn’t be effective, with three Hawks defenders already closing in on him. Here, a cross-ice pass to Boeser would be a very effective option, with Studnicka breaking towards the net:



Obviously, that isn’t what happened, and the Canucks, rather than creating a chance off the rush, had to settle for setting up their “half court” offence.

Now, this isn’t a one-off situation with Boeser. While he doesn’t get very many scoring chances at five-on-five, another problem is that the Canucks are an ineffective team off the rush, and that seeps into the quality of shots that Boeser gets.

These types of ineffective rushes aren’t limited to plays with Horvat, but even the Canucks’ best players often have trouble knowing exactly what to do on a rush. Let’s look at two more examples from a recent game in Tampa Bay:

In this first clip, Pettersson does an excellent job of bumping the puck wide to Quinn Hughes; Boeser reads the play and tries to dart towards the net, but there’s no space. Mikhail Sergachev, who had been shadowing Kuzmenko on the right wing, is able to close to the middle of the ice since Kuzmenko doesn’t join the rushers into the zone and is motionless at the line when the entry occurs. Hughes is way ahead of the play and is basically staring at a 1-on-3. He gets a good shot away, but from too far away.

Let’s look at the next play:

This is nearly textbook. Off a defensive zone faceoff win, the Canucks opt not to just dump the puck out to centre as mostly happens in this situation. Instead, they run a set play where Hughes evades the forechecker and fires a dart to Kuzmenko, who gets a drop pass to Pettersson in motion and he approaches the blue line with speed.

The problem is that Kuzmenko, Boeser, and Pettersson are just too tightly bunched through the neutral zone. Using space effectively is extremely important when attacking since it forces the defenders to spread out. Despite a very strong exit, Pettersson has to make a very difficult pass at high speed to even enter the zone. He’s able to thread it through, but Kuzmenko’s pass to Boeser is a little behind, so rather than Boeser getting an excellent chance to walk down the right-wing side of the high slot, he has to modify his route into the zone to receive the pass cleanly. His shot is contested and from distance, effectively removing the benefits from rushing the puck up ice.

Now, the Canucks’ problems off the rush aren’t a problem restricted to Boeser, but you’d think that the team’s inability to create space in the offensive zone while the play is moving would take away some of the scoring opportunities of a player who doesn’t possess the puck on his stick all that much and has a good downhill wrist shot. The problem has been that he hasn’t really been able to use that weapon all that much as the Canucks rarely open up situations.

So it makes sense that Boeser’s shot rate is at a career-low right now, at five-on-five. The Canucks have been so poor off the rush that it’s really taken away from a potential area of strength for a player with his particular skillset.

Now, we’ll move a little into the granular portion of the data: of the 83 shot attempts I have in my shot sample, I’ve tracked just three shot attempts of Boeser’s, that were from inside the tops of the circles, that came off the rush and that were both set up by a teammate and not pressured by an opposing defensive player. One of those resulted in a shot on net. Here it is:

It’s a rare moment where Boeser gets open while skating towards the net, achieved only thanks to a broken play.

As for team construction during lean years, I think that the Canucks shouldn’t be in the business of moving out players at anything less than full value. The team needs to not only acquire draft picks and prospects who will help the team in the future but also retain enough veteran players who can help shelter rookies when they start to move up in the NHL, both on and off the ice. Many rebuilds fail because they skip a step and ditch any NHL talent on the roster. Just as frequently, attempts to build rosters can become attempts to rebuild because the team has tossed away NHL-level talent for the wrong reasons.

Boeser wouldn’t make a lot of sense to trade because there isn’t a lot of demand for him. You may as well keep him around and work with him to help him find his game, which he exhibited early in his career. Maybe he turns into a 35-goal scorer again — probably not — but the point is that the team isn’t exactly losing out on anything by having him around. The opportunity cost of Boeser’s on-ice value minus his salary cap number isn’t enough to cover a fraction of the gap between the Canucks and a contending team, let alone one that would squeak into the playoffs. You wouldn’t re-sign him at his current price, but you can manage two more years with him as you do major surgery on the core and set out on stockpiling players who can help the team win in 2025 and 2026. Winning in 2023 and 2024 is out of the question right now.

Maybe if Boeser sticks it out, stays healthy, and finds a strong linemate or the Canucks start to generate more off the rush, it will help rehab Boeser’s value and the team might sell him at a slightly higher cost than they could today or this summer.

One of the keys for Rick Tocchet for the remainder of the season is to get Boeser playing well, so that if the Canucks are forced to move him they can get a better return, or Boeser can cement himself as a solution for the future of this franchise. He’s not worth throwing away to preserve the rest of this failed roster.

Drance: Hopeful Canucks future was at CHL Top Prospects Game as debacle unfolded in Seattle.

By Thomas Drance

LANGLEY, B.C. — Wednesday night marked a tale of two games for the Vancouver Canucks.

Out in Langley, at the CHL Top Prospects Game, Canucks brass assembled in a private suite toward the end of the rink at which Connor Bedard’s Team Red was scheduled to shoot twice.

Flanked by their primary lieutenants, Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin watched the CHL’s top prospects play intently. It was a surprisingly low-scoring affair, but there were still standout performances and key information to glean about some of the best draft-eligible players in the loaded 2023 NHL draft class.

Some 200 kilometres due south, meanwhile, the Canucks were absolutely shellacked by a Seattle Kraken team that has completely, discouragingly eclipsed their geographic rival in just two short seasons of existence. And it showed. The final score was 6-1, and that flattered the Canucks significantly.

In truth, it was the most lopsided game the Canucks have played in all season. Yet somehow the lifeless, low-effort performance felt grimly familiar for Canucks fans and close observers of this team.

The experience was new, though, to Rick Tocchet, Vancouver’s head coach for just over 96 hours. He seemed emotionally unprepared for the sadly routine low-calibre performance he witnessed firsthand in Seattle, based on his postgame commentary.

“That was bad tonight, that was bad,” Tocchet told the media postgame. “Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but that was soft tonight.”


Coach Rick Tocchet gathers his team during the first period against the Kraken. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
“Nobody wants the puck,” Tocchet continued, the frustration evident in his voice. “I’ve been here a short time, like 4-5 days, and from what I was told this group has a tough time putting back-to-back, predictable hockey efforts together. So we got a long way to go.”

With that, Tocchet became the third head coach to be left thoroughly exasperated by performances typical of this group of Canucks players within a span of 14 months. It took him less than a week to reach that point.

No matter how it looked at Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday evening, it was a schedule loss and the Kraken are objectively superior. Vancouver is still likely to pick up points at a higher rate over the balance of the season than they have to this point. The remaining schedule is absolute cake, and eventually, surely, Thatcher Demko will return and help stabilize the club’s performance between the pipes.

Still, outings like what we saw in Seattle are baked into the identity of this team.

It’s not only that this team is inconsistent and flawed. It’s not only that the goaltending has been iffy in Demko’s absence, although you’d be wrong to blame Spencer Martin in particular on any of the Kraken’s six tallies on Wednesday. It’s not even just that the Canucks as currently assembled aren’t good enough.

It’s that they’re not even close to being good enough.

How do you even retool a team that so frequently seems lifeless and, occasionally, checked out? How do you try and fix a club at the margins that rendered Tocchet speechless, as he wondered aloud about needing to improve the leadership group only 120 minutes into his tenure?

More than that, why would you even want to?

Out in Langley, meanwhile, Bedard was pushing the pace repeatedly alongside his linemate, Chilliwack’s Zach Benson. Whenever they were on the ice together, it tilted in Team Red’s direction.

Absent Kerrisdale’s Andrew Cristall, who missed the game due to injury, Bedard and Benson struggled to find chemistry with their third winger. That impacted the bottom line, but they still cut through the neutral zone, got set up on the cycle constantly and generated grade-A scoring chances at a one-per-shift clip throughout the evening.

Bedard just couldn’t manufacture a goal. The Team White goaltenders kept saving his shots and stoning his teammates.

The near-misses piled up, and in a glorified CHL all-star game played in front of a who’s who of top NHL executives, Bedard started to see red.

This isn’t just a generational sniper with top-end wheels and playmaking ability that we’re talking about. Bedard is also exceedingly driven and competitive. In an inconsequential showcase, he simply couldn’t stand losing.

So Bedard started throwing the body. He landed two big hits, one on the forecheck and another in open ice, against bigger opponents. And as the clock wound down and Team White put the game away with an empty netter and began to celebrate, Bedard moseyed his way over to the congratulatory Team White huddle and started throwing punches.

Bedard was more intolerant of an unfavourable result in the CHL Top Prospects game than any star Canucks player has seemed at any point this season about a third consecutive wasted campaign.

For Canucks management, these two games in Langley and Seattle on Wednesday night should help illuminate the choices they’re facing over the next month, and beyond. It’s a choice between trying to salvage the probably unsalvageable in an attempt to be just about average, or accepting the increasingly obvious: that this flawed team should be dismantled with the future in mind.

Canucks management is, unfortunately, all but checkmated in any effort to contend short-term due to an overall lack of hockey value at just about every level of the organization. As a result of a decade of mismanagement and short-term thinking, the club is capped out, with no significant relief looming on the immediate horizon — short of exercising buyouts this summer, which would only push the hurt into the future.

The club lacks high-value trade assets at the NHL level. They boast a shallow prospect system more typical of a post-window contender. Somehow, despite all of that, the club still has a deficit of draft picks over the next two seasons.

It’s one thing to be in this position and be a fringe contender, or even a strong playoff team. The Canucks are neither.

Perhaps if Rutherford and Allvin can lead this club on a near-historic run of savvy trades and signings over the next 12 months there may be a narrow path back to being a playoff regular. The damage done over the past decade makes it a near certainty that this team’s ceiling, however, will never match the best teams in the league short of taking a thoughtful, intentional step back — or going on a Dallas-Stars-in-2017 type run of extraordinary good fortune at the draft table.

Even then, this group will need to be completely transformed in terms of how they conduct themselves. How they compete.

Because at the moment, across three head coaches in a span of just over a year, it’s never even clear whether this Canucks team will put forth an honest effort on a night-to-night basis. It took Tocchet less than a week and only two games to take aim publicly at the effort level, commitment and leadership of his new players.

In this context, how is it possible that the club is even considering extending a dynamic soon-to-be-27-year-old offensive winger whose trade value is at its absolute apex, mostly due to the fact that he’s still on an entry-level contract?

Why would the club even care about getting NHL-ready pieces back in a potential Bo Horvat trade?

If the short term is bleak, all is not lost. At least not permanently. There is a hopeful way forward for the Canucks, and it’s not just about Bedard and the cruel whims of the NHL’s draft lottery balls.

It’s also about Benson, undersized but extraordinarily hardworking. At 17 he’s the best two-way player and the most dynamic scorer on a WHL juggernaut that’s only lost five games in regulation this season. If the lottery balls don’t bounce your way, he’s some consolation prize, considering he’s on pace to outproduce several of the No. 1 draft picks of the past decade as a first-time draft eligible.

It’s also about Brayden Yager and Colby Barlow and Cameron Allen and Lukas Dragicevic and Cristall — even if he was dealing with an injury on Wednesday — all of whom should be reason enough to prioritize landing a second first-round pick above all else at the upcoming trade deadline.

And it’s about Tanner Molendyk and Etienne Morin too, a pair of left-handed defenders whose puck-moving, problem solving and two-way intelligence absolutely sparkled throughout Wednesday night’s CHL Top Prospects game. Though they surely helped their draft stock significantly out in the valley this week, they’ll still likely go off the board in the mid-second or early third round on draft day in Nashville. Either player would immediately become this organization’s most dynamic blue-line prospect.

The hopeful way forward is clear and it’s incredible how quickly a sense of stability and optimism can return if the franchise simply stops digging. That process begins by accepting where and what this team is.

So forget the margins, the retool, the 22-year-old player that’s struggled to establish himself at the NHL level, but can maybe do it in Vancouver. The change this team needs is far deeper and more fundamental than all that. Just put down the shovel.

Out in Langley on Wednesday, a hopeful path forward for Vancouver was revealed if the Canucks were only willing to see it. Out in Seattle, there was disappointment, frustration and more of the same.

How could this organization possibly have any appetite remaining for this?

Drance: Hopeful Canucks future was at CHL Top Prospects Game as debacle unfolded in Seattle.

By Thomas Drance

LANGLEY, B.C. — Wednesday night marked a tale of two games for the Vancouver Canucks.

Out in Langley, at the CHL Top Prospects Game, Canucks brass assembled in a private suite toward the end of the rink at which Connor Bedard’s Team Red was scheduled to shoot twice.

Flanked by their primary lieutenants, Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin watched the CHL’s top prospects play intently. It was a surprisingly low-scoring affair, but there were still standout performances and key information to glean about some of the best draft-eligible players in the loaded 2023 NHL draft class.

Some 200 kilometres due south, meanwhile, the Canucks were absolutely shellacked by a Seattle Kraken team that has completely, discouragingly eclipsed their geographic rival in just two short seasons of existence. And it showed. The final score was 6-1, and that flattered the Canucks significantly.

In truth, it was the most lopsided game the Canucks have played in all season. Yet somehow the lifeless, low-effort performance felt grimly familiar for Canucks fans and close observers of this team.

The experience was new, though, to Rick Tocchet, Vancouver’s head coach for just over 96 hours. He seemed emotionally unprepared for the sadly routine low-calibre performance he witnessed firsthand in Seattle, based on his postgame commentary.

“That was bad tonight, that was bad,” Tocchet told the media postgame. “Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but that was soft tonight.”


Coach Rick Tocchet gathers his team during the first period against the Kraken. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
“Nobody wants the puck,” Tocchet continued, the frustration evident in his voice. “I’ve been here a short time, like 4-5 days, and from what I was told this group has a tough time putting back-to-back, predictable hockey efforts together. So we got a long way to go.”

With that, Tocchet became the third head coach to be left thoroughly exasperated by performances typical of this group of Canucks players within a span of 14 months. It took him less than a week to reach that point.

No matter how it looked at Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday evening, it was a schedule loss and the Kraken are objectively superior. Vancouver is still likely to pick up points at a higher rate over the balance of the season than they have to this point. The remaining schedule is absolute cake, and eventually, surely, Thatcher Demko will return and help stabilize the club’s performance between the pipes.

Still, outings like what we saw in Seattle are baked into the identity of this team.

It’s not only that this team is inconsistent and flawed. It’s not only that the goaltending has been iffy in Demko’s absence, although you’d be wrong to blame Spencer Martin in particular on any of the Kraken’s six tallies on Wednesday. It’s not even just that the Canucks as currently assembled aren’t good enough.

It’s that they’re not even close to being good enough.

How do you even retool a team that so frequently seems lifeless and, occasionally, checked out? How do you try and fix a club at the margins that rendered Tocchet speechless, as he wondered aloud about needing to improve the leadership group only 120 minutes into his tenure?

More than that, why would you even want to?

Out in Langley, meanwhile, Bedard was pushing the pace repeatedly alongside his linemate, Chilliwack’s Zach Benson. Whenever they were on the ice together, it tilted in Team Red’s direction.

Absent Kerrisdale’s Andrew Cristall, who missed the game due to injury, Bedard and Benson struggled to find chemistry with their third winger. That impacted the bottom line, but they still cut through the neutral zone, got set up on the cycle constantly and generated grade-A scoring chances at a one-per-shift clip throughout the evening.

Bedard just couldn’t manufacture a goal. The Team White goaltenders kept saving his shots and stoning his teammates.

The near-misses piled up, and in a glorified CHL all-star game played in front of a who’s who of top NHL executives, Bedard started to see red.

This isn’t just a generational sniper with top-end wheels and playmaking ability that we’re talking about. Bedard is also exceedingly driven and competitive. In an inconsequential showcase, he simply couldn’t stand losing.

So Bedard started throwing the body. He landed two big hits, one on the forecheck and another in open ice, against bigger opponents. And as the clock wound down and Team White put the game away with an empty netter and began to celebrate, Bedard moseyed his way over to the congratulatory Team White huddle and started throwing punches.

Bedard was more intolerant of an unfavourable result in the CHL Top Prospects game than any star Canucks player has seemed at any point this season about a third consecutive wasted campaign.

For Canucks management, these two games in Langley and Seattle on Wednesday night should help illuminate the choices they’re facing over the next month, and beyond. It’s a choice between trying to salvage the probably unsalvageable in an attempt to be just about average, or accepting the increasingly obvious: that this flawed team should be dismantled with the future in mind.

Canucks management is, unfortunately, all but checkmated in any effort to contend short-term due to an overall lack of hockey value at just about every level of the organization. As a result of a decade of mismanagement and short-term thinking, the club is capped out, with no significant relief looming on the immediate horizon — short of exercising buyouts this summer, which would only push the hurt into the future.

The club lacks high-value trade assets at the NHL level. They boast a shallow prospect system more typical of a post-window contender. Somehow, despite all of that, the club still has a deficit of draft picks over the next two seasons.

It’s one thing to be in this position and be a fringe contender, or even a strong playoff team. The Canucks are neither.

Perhaps if Rutherford and Allvin can lead this club on a near-historic run of savvy trades and signings over the next 12 months there may be a narrow path back to being a playoff regular. The damage done over the past decade makes it a near certainty that this team’s ceiling, however, will never match the best teams in the league short of taking a thoughtful, intentional step back — or going on a Dallas-Stars-in-2017 type run of extraordinary good fortune at the draft table.

Even then, this group will need to be completely transformed in terms of how they conduct themselves. How they compete.

Because at the moment, across three head coaches in a span of just over a year, it’s never even clear whether this Canucks team will put forth an honest effort on a night-to-night basis. It took Tocchet less than a week and only two games to take aim publicly at the effort level, commitment and leadership of his new players.

In this context, how is it possible that the club is even considering extending a dynamic soon-to-be-27-year-old offensive winger whose trade value is at its absolute apex, mostly due to the fact that he’s still on an entry-level contract?

Why would the club even care about getting NHL-ready pieces back in a potential Bo Horvat trade?

If the short term is bleak, all is not lost. At least not permanently. There is a hopeful way forward for the Canucks, and it’s not just about Bedard and the cruel whims of the NHL’s draft lottery balls.

It’s also about Benson, undersized but extraordinarily hardworking. At 17 he’s the best two-way player and the most dynamic scorer on a WHL juggernaut that’s only lost five games in regulation this season. If the lottery balls don’t bounce your way, he’s some consolation prize, considering he’s on pace to outproduce several of the No. 1 draft picks of the past decade as a first-time draft eligible.

It’s also about Brayden Yager and Colby Barlow and Cameron Allen and Lukas Dragicevic and Cristall — even if he was dealing with an injury on Wednesday — all of whom should be reason enough to prioritize landing a second first-round pick above all else at the upcoming trade deadline.

And it’s about Tanner Molendyk and Etienne Morin too, a pair of left-handed defenders whose puck-moving, problem solving and two-way intelligence absolutely sparkled throughout Wednesday night’s CHL Top Prospects game. Though they surely helped their draft stock significantly out in the valley this week, they’ll still likely go off the board in the mid-second or early third round on draft day in Nashville. Either player would immediately become this organization’s most dynamic blue-line prospect.

The hopeful way forward is clear and it’s incredible how quickly a sense of stability and optimism can return if the franchise simply stops digging. That process begins by accepting where and what this team is.

So forget the margins, the retool, the 22-year-old player that’s struggled to establish himself at the NHL level, but can maybe do it in Vancouver. The change this team needs is far deeper and more fundamental than all that. Just put down the shovel.

Out in Langley on Wednesday, a hopeful path forward for Vancouver was revealed if the Canucks were only willing to see it. Out in Seattle, there was disappointment, frustration and more of the same.

How could this organization possibly have any appetite remaining for this?
- LeftCoaster

Good to see Drance is liking a lot of the same players as I do. He is starting to learn.

Drance: Hopeful Canucks future was at CHL Top Prospects Game as debacle unfolded in Seattle.

By Thomas Drance

LANGLEY, B.C. — Wednesday night marked a tale of two games for the Vancouver Canucks.

Out in Langley, at the CHL Top Prospects Game, Canucks brass assembled in a private suite toward the end of the rink at which Connor Bedard’s Team Red was scheduled to shoot twice.

Flanked by their primary lieutenants, Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin watched the CHL’s top prospects play intently. It was a surprisingly low-scoring affair, but there were still standout performances and key information to glean about some of the best draft-eligible players in the loaded 2023 NHL draft class.

Some 200 kilometres due south, meanwhile, the Canucks were absolutely shellacked by a Seattle Kraken team that has completely, discouragingly eclipsed their geographic rival in just two short seasons of existence. And it showed. The final score was 6-1, and that flattered the Canucks significantly.

In truth, it was the most lopsided game the Canucks have played in all season. Yet somehow the lifeless, low-effort performance felt grimly familiar for Canucks fans and close observers of this team.

The experience was new, though, to Rick Tocchet, Vancouver’s head coach for just over 96 hours. He seemed emotionally unprepared for the sadly routine low-calibre performance he witnessed firsthand in Seattle, based on his postgame commentary.

“That was bad tonight, that was bad,” Tocchet told the media postgame. “Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but that was soft tonight.”


Coach Rick Tocchet gathers his team during the first period against the Kraken. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
“Nobody wants the puck,” Tocchet continued, the frustration evident in his voice. “I’ve been here a short time, like 4-5 days, and from what I was told this group has a tough time putting back-to-back, predictable hockey efforts together. So we got a long way to go.”

With that, Tocchet became the third head coach to be left thoroughly exasperated by performances typical of this group of Canucks players within a span of 14 months. It took him less than a week to reach that point.

No matter how it looked at Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday evening, it was a schedule loss and the Kraken are objectively superior. Vancouver is still likely to pick up points at a higher rate over the balance of the season than they have to this point. The remaining schedule is absolute cake, and eventually, surely, Thatcher Demko will return and help stabilize the club’s performance between the pipes.

Still, outings like what we saw in Seattle are baked into the identity of this team.

It’s not only that this team is inconsistent and flawed. It’s not only that the goaltending has been iffy in Demko’s absence, although you’d be wrong to blame Spencer Martin in particular on any of the Kraken’s six tallies on Wednesday. It’s not even just that the Canucks as currently assembled aren’t good enough.

It’s that they’re not even close to being good enough.

How do you even retool a team that so frequently seems lifeless and, occasionally, checked out? How do you try and fix a club at the margins that rendered Tocchet speechless, as he wondered aloud about needing to improve the leadership group only 120 minutes into his tenure?

More than that, why would you even want to?

Out in Langley, meanwhile, Bedard was pushing the pace repeatedly alongside his linemate, Chilliwack’s Zach Benson. Whenever they were on the ice together, it tilted in Team Red’s direction.

Absent Kerrisdale’s Andrew Cristall, who missed the game due to injury, Bedard and Benson struggled to find chemistry with their third winger. That impacted the bottom line, but they still cut through the neutral zone, got set up on the cycle constantly and generated grade-A scoring chances at a one-per-shift clip throughout the evening.

Bedard just couldn’t manufacture a goal. The Team White goaltenders kept saving his shots and stoning his teammates.

The near-misses piled up, and in a glorified CHL all-star game played in front of a who’s who of top NHL executives, Bedard started to see red.

This isn’t just a generational sniper with top-end wheels and playmaking ability that we’re talking about. Bedard is also exceedingly driven and competitive. In an inconsequential showcase, he simply couldn’t stand losing.

So Bedard started throwing the body. He landed two big hits, one on the forecheck and another in open ice, against bigger opponents. And as the clock wound down and Team White put the game away with an empty netter and began to celebrate, Bedard moseyed his way over to the congratulatory Team White huddle and started throwing punches.

Bedard was more intolerant of an unfavourable result in the CHL Top Prospects game than any star Canucks player has seemed at any point this season about a third consecutive wasted campaign.

For Canucks management, these two games in Langley and Seattle on Wednesday night should help illuminate the choices they’re facing over the next month, and beyond. It’s a choice between trying to salvage the probably unsalvageable in an attempt to be just about average, or accepting the increasingly obvious: that this flawed team should be dismantled with the future in mind.

Canucks management is, unfortunately, all but checkmated in any effort to contend short-term due to an overall lack of hockey value at just about every level of the organization. As a result of a decade of mismanagement and short-term thinking, the club is capped out, with no significant relief looming on the immediate horizon — short of exercising buyouts this summer, which would only push the hurt into the future.

The club lacks high-value trade assets at the NHL level. They boast a shallow prospect system more typical of a post-window contender. Somehow, despite all of that, the club still has a deficit of draft picks over the next two seasons.

It’s one thing to be in this position and be a fringe contender, or even a strong playoff team. The Canucks are neither.

Perhaps if Rutherford and Allvin can lead this club on a near-historic run of savvy trades and signings over the next 12 months there may be a narrow path back to being a playoff regular. The damage done over the past decade makes it a near certainty that this team’s ceiling, however, will never match the best teams in the league short of taking a thoughtful, intentional step back — or going on a Dallas-Stars-in-2017 type run of extraordinary good fortune at the draft table.

Even then, this group will need to be completely transformed in terms of how they conduct themselves. How they compete.

Because at the moment, across three head coaches in a span of just over a year, it’s never even clear whether this Canucks team will put forth an honest effort on a night-to-night basis. It took Tocchet less than a week and only two games to take aim publicly at the effort level, commitment and leadership of his new players.

In this context, how is it possible that the club is even considering extending a dynamic soon-to-be-27-year-old offensive winger whose trade value is at its absolute apex, mostly due to the fact that he’s still on an entry-level contract?

Why would the club even care about getting NHL-ready pieces back in a potential Bo Horvat trade?

If the short term is bleak, all is not lost. At least not permanently. There is a hopeful way forward for the Canucks, and it’s not just about Bedard and the cruel whims of the NHL’s draft lottery balls.

It’s also about Benson, undersized but extraordinarily hardworking. At 17 he’s the best two-way player and the most dynamic scorer on a WHL juggernaut that’s only lost five games in regulation this season. If the lottery balls don’t bounce your way, he’s some consolation prize, considering he’s on pace to outproduce several of the No. 1 draft picks of the past decade as a first-time draft eligible.

It’s also about Brayden Yager and Colby Barlow and Cameron Allen and Lukas Dragicevic and Cristall — even if he was dealing with an injury on Wednesday — all of whom should be reason enough to prioritize landing a second first-round pick above all else at the upcoming trade deadline.

And it’s about Tanner Molendyk and Etienne Morin too, a pair of left-handed defenders whose puck-moving, problem solving and two-way intelligence absolutely sparkled throughout Wednesday night’s CHL Top Prospects game. Though they surely helped their draft stock significantly out in the valley this week, they’ll still likely go off the board in the mid-second or early third round on draft day in Nashville. Either player would immediately become this organization’s most dynamic blue-line prospect.

The hopeful way forward is clear and it’s incredible how quickly a sense of stability and optimism can return if the franchise simply stops digging. That process begins by accepting where and what this team is.

So forget the margins, the retool, the 22-year-old player that’s struggled to establish himself at the NHL level, but can maybe do it in Vancouver. The change this team needs is far deeper and more fundamental than all that. Just put down the shovel.

Out in Langley on Wednesday, a hopeful path forward for Vancouver was revealed if the Canucks were only willing to see it. Out in Seattle, there was disappointment, frustration and more of the same.

How could this organization possibly have any appetite remaining for this?
- LeftCoaster

Solid blog.

Thanks, Lefty!

What Vancouver Canucks’ perfect 2023 NHL trade deadline could look like.

By Thomas Drance and Harman Dayal


Perfection is unattainable in the NHL.

Hockey itself is a game of mistakes. The result of any given game, or even a seven-game playoff series, often comes down to a variety of factors — health, puck luck, the referee’s whistle — that fall well outside the control of any one individual.

What’s true for players is true, as well, for hockey operations departments. Like the slim margins that determine playoff success, player evaluation is fickle in nature. The best an organization can do in the NHL is take care of their business to maximize their odds of making a savvy trade, nailing a draft pick or signing a value contract.

Realistically, at this point, Vancouver Canucks fans aren’t asking for perfection or anything close to it. A defensible direction and a coherent plan would count as cause for celebration in the city of Vancouver at the moment.

With the All-Star break in full swing, the Canucks have a bit of time off and club management can regroup from the drama that has overshadowed so much of the 2022-23 campaign. Then we’ll see what sort of “major surgery” club leadership has in store, as the Canucks look to turn the page on another disappointing season.

If the pain of the past few months is going to stand up and mean something, the Canucks will have to get busy selling as aggressively as possible by the March 3 trade deadline. The stakes are massive. Some of the decisions facing the club — most notably a potential Bo Horvat trade — could define this era.

So, what would a perfect trade deadline look like from a Canucks perspective at the 2023 NHL trade deadline?

1. Sadly, Bo Horvat must be dealt
The signs have been pointing toward Horvat’s departure from Vancouver ahead of the trade deadline for a while now. Canucks GM Patrik Allvin appeared to offer a bit of hope recently on Sportsnet 650, noting that he met with Horvat’s agent, Pat Morris, on Tuesday before the club’s home game against the Blackhawks and presented another offer.


Bo Horvat. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
It already didn’t make much sense to re-sign Horvat given the skyrocketing price of his next contract and the team’s distance from viable contention. But now Andrei Kuzmenko’s two-year, $11-million extension makes the salary cap situation flat-out untenable if you tack on a massive Horvat contract to the books. It’d be pointless to run the same core back, at more expensive cap hits, for another year considering the club currently ranks 27th in the NHL by point percentage.

It will be tough to see Vancouver’s captain leave. He’s been a loyal soldier — the only Canuck who’s lived through all the pain and dark days since Mike Gillis left the organization. But Vancouver’s in no position to add another high-risk contract to the books and has a serious deficit of valuable future assets.

Canucks fans need hope right now. They’re begging to catch a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. Horvat needs to be dealt and the return must be a win.

2. Luke Schenn as well
Many NHL teams subscribe to the theory that you need a big, heavy blue line to go deep in the playoffs.

People point to the Lightning’s back end which has featured jumbo-sized defenders like Victor Hedman, Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, Zach Bogosian, Jan Rutta and Luke Schenn over the years. Montreal’s big four with Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson and Jeff Petry was lionized during the Canadiens’ 2021 trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

Teams have accordingly paid a premium at recent trade deadlines for large, hard-nosed defenders like Chiarot, Josh Manson and David Savard.

Schenn doesn’t have a long track record of top-four success the way Chiarot, Manson and Savard did, but he fits a similar mould in terms of playstyle and has championship experience. The 33-year-old will be highly sought after and should hold significant trade value. The Canucks need to cash in on that.

Some would argue that Schenn still plays at a high level, is a quality leader and should therefore be re-signed, but his next contract could be a lot more expensive than the dirt-cheap $850,000 AAV he possesses now. Last offseason, we saw Rutta — who’s 32 and plays a similar role as a third-pair quality defender for a good team who can moonlight in the top four — sign for three years at a $2.75 million cap hit with the Penguins. Erik Gudbranson checks off similar physical qualities and was overpaid with a four-year, $16-million contract as well.

Vancouver needs to take advantage of the inflated market for physical, stay-at-home defencemen by trading Schenn at the deadline.

3. Treat expiring restricted free agents like unrestricted free agents
It’s not enough for the Canucks to just take care of the obvious trades before the deadline. That’s the absolute minimum standard, frankly.

This club’s long-term needs are legion. In the wake of a dismal performance in a third consecutive season and the club’s total lack of assets at the NHL level, in terms of draft pick capital and their prospect pool, moving off of Horvat and Schenn is insufficient. The club has to go further. They have to be more disciplined about finding whatever marginal value they can.

That includes seeing if a depth defender like Kyle Burroughs can fetch the sort of return players like Nathan Beaulieu, Troy Stecher and Robert Hagg netted their respective clubs last season at the deadline (a sixth-round pick, a seventh-round pick and a conditional seventh-round pick, respectively).

Collin Delia and Spencer Martin surely haven’t put themselves into the range of netting Vancouver a Scott Wedgewood-style return (a mid-round pick at last year’s deadline), but if the club can trade either netminder for more than “future considerations” to a goalie depth-needy rival ahead of the deadline, that would be a nice win.

The club should additionally be asking themselves the tough questions, while proactively engaging in extension talks with any restricted free agents that will cost over $1 million to qualify this summer. Ethan Bear and Travis Dermott are the key examples here, and they should effectively be treated like unrestricted free agents (to a point).

Dermott’s first full Canucks campaign, meanwhile, has been waylaid by a preseason head injury that has cost him all but 11 games. He’s struggled since returning, but unsurprisingly, his game appears to be trending in the right direction as he gets additional reps back in the lineup. He’ll cost $1.5 million to qualify at season’s end.

Bear has been a solid find for the Canucks, playing major minutes since he was acquired from the Carolina Hurricanes in late October. He’ll also cost $2.5 million to qualify, which is a commitment the club will effectively have to make merely in order to retain their right of first refusal and make him a restricted free agent.

Qualifying Bear is a no-brainer, but it will also open the club up to player-elected arbitration this summer. And Bear — who has played top-four minutes, while sporting an on-ice goal differential that stacks up well when compared with most other Canucks defenders — is building himself a strong case for a raise.

His situation is subtly complicated. The club only has one healthy right-handed NHL-level defender signed beyond this season (Tyler Myers) and would do well to return Bear. His high qualifying offer level and relatively strong arbitration case create a situation where the club will have to be very delicate in managing his next deal, lest it proves inefficient.

In the case of both Bear and Dermott, if the Canucks are intent on keeping them around long-term, they should use the deadline as a pressure point in extension talks. If there are sharp, potentially efficient value bets to be made ahead of the deadline, great.

If not, it’s far better to fetch an asset in a trade for an expiring player, than it is to haggle in June with arbitration-eligible restricted players who aren’t absolute 100 percent slam dunks to receive qualifying offers.


Ethan Bear. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
4. Use fresh LTI space creatively
According to CapFriendly and the NHL’s roster page, the Vancouver Canucks have yet to put Tanner Pearson or Ilya Mikheyev — both ruled out for the balance of this season — on long-term injured reserve (LTI).

CapFriendly further estimates that, as a result of Micheal Ferland ($3.5 million) and Tucker Poolman’s ($2.5 million) presence on LTI, Vancouver has $2.23 million in available space at the moment.

Now, there are a couple of different ways this could go.

The club could, perhaps, attempt to shed enough salary ahead of the trade deadline that they get out of LTI altogether. Currently, the Canucks have $6 million worth of contracts in LTI and are using $3.8 million of that space with 20 players on their 23-man roster.

Now getting out of LTI is an attractive option. It would permit the club to duck the bonus overages that will otherwise result from Kuzmenko absolutely crushing it in his first NHL season (Kuzmenko has already hit one of his Schedule A bonuses). Any bonus overages incurred would hit the Canucks’ cap sheet as a penalty for the 2023-24 season, based on the fact they’re currently set to exceed the salary cap upper limit using the LTI mechanism at season’s end.

Unfortunately, getting out of LTI at this juncture will be exceedingly difficult to execute. It also might not even be advisable as a primary goal.

By means of illustration, let’s consider Horvat, Vancouver’s best trade asset. There are very few contending teams capable of eating the full freight of Horvat’s $5.5 million cap hit, for example, without sending salary back. The club’s priority in a Horvat trade, however, must be maximizing their return above all else, rather than focusing unduly on doing a deal with a smaller group of teams that wouldn’t need to shed commitments in a potential trade to make the cap math work.

Pursuing the ‘get out of LTI’ route could limit the Canucks’ ability to extract value at the deadline, and one suspects the club might be better off instead leaning into the skid. In Mikheyev ($4.75 million) and Pearson ($3.25 million), for example, the club has the ability to create an additional $8 million in LTI space prior to the deadline.

The sequencing would need to be done carefully, but executing this could arm Canucks management with the ability to do all sorts of creative things to net futures at the deadline. They could act as a cap space clearing house for undesirable expiring deals, for example, or as a retained salary transaction laundromat in three-team trades.

The returns wouldn’t be huge — a fifth-round pick here, a sixth-round pick there — but the club is well positioned to engineer value out of thin air purely with sharp accounting over the next five weeks. And every bit of value netted matters.

In a perfect trade deadline scenario, the Canucks would find a way to take advantage.

5. Add a protected 2023 first-round draft pick that could confer unprotected to 2024
Every year we advocate for the Canucks to prioritize landing a first-round pick that’s conditional and structured to roll over unprotected the following year. There’s always pushback. We’re told annually that no teams would ever surrender a pick like that; that this is a fantasy hockey suggestion.

Then year after year it keeps happening in the actual NHL.

Teams often overestimate how successful they will be in the playoffs and the following season. By targeting a first-round pick that can roll over to the following season unprotected, you’re opening up the possibility of striking gold if that club falters.

Ottawa took advantage of this in the Erik Karlsson trade (pick turned into Tim Stützle). Colorado ended up nabbing a top-five pick from Ottawa in the Matt Duchene deal. Columbus stole Chicago’s No. 6 pick last year with the Seth Jones trade and selected stud RD prospect David Jiricek. The Panthers are 22nd in the NHL by points percentage and owe an unprotected first to the Canadiens for the Chiarot trade.

With Horvat (or perhaps even Schenn if they’re lucky), the Canucks have a trade chip that can realistically net a conditional first-round pick that’s say top-20 or top-25 protected and can roll over unprotected in 2024. In fact, teams may desire structuring any first-round pick they surrender with these kinds of conditions because of how highly this year’s draft class is rated.

The top end of this draft is excellent and it’s pretty deep overall, but it’s getting to a point where teams may be overvaluing 2023 first-round picks in the high teens or early 20s. The Canucks can exploit this with the aforementioned conditions on any first-round pick they acquire and position themselves to effectively bet against a team for next season.

6. Make sure cap flexibility is a key part of the Horvat return
Assuming the upper limit of the salary cap only increases by $1 million and that Kuzmenko maxes out his $850k Schedule A bonuses, Vancouver is currently projected to have somewhere around $10.5 million in cap space for next season, according to CapFriendly.

The actual number should be higher because it doesn’t account for trades, buyouts and Pearson’s uncertain status going into next season. The overall point stands: The Canucks don’t have a lot of wiggle room when you account for how many needs the club will need to address, particularly with the hole Horvat could leave down the middle.


Tanner Pearson. (Bob Frid / USA Today)
Canucks management may opt to target NHL-ready contributors in a Horvat trade rather than pure futures. If they go down that route, however, they need to prioritize hyper-efficient, cost-controllable pieces rather than players who are already attached to sizable, full-market-value contracts.

That means the club should avoid a player like Brandon Carlo from Boston, who will turn 27 by early next season and is tied up with a $4.1 million cap hit. Carlo’s not young or cheap enough to be a massive value add by the time the Canucks actually enter their next competitive window. He shouldn’t be the big prize of a Horvat deal even though he checks a box as a second-pair right-shot defender.

The same holds true even for a younger, higher-pedigree player like Jesperi Kotkaniemi, if the Carolina Hurricanes are looking to swing a Horvat deal.

Good teams need a lot of players who can significantly outperform their contract. That’s how you retain sufficient flexibility to build an elite roster without running out of cap space.

Vancouver should be targeting top prospects and draft picks that can hopefully turn into productive players that provide enormous surplus value on their entry-level contracts down the line. Acquiring a player who’s already paid big bucks — especially if he’s in his mid-20s — isn’t going to leave the club with enough cap room to make substantial changes in the summer.

7. Prioritize raw, uncut futures and add at least 5 draft picks at the deadline
If the Canucks are disciplined about focusing on amassing draft capital and managing the books, the 2023 trade deadline could mark a fork in the road for this franchise and their embattled hockey operations leadership group.

There’s no easy way out of the mess that this club has created for itself over the past decade. And while Jim Rutherford and Allvin inherited much of it, some of their decisions have contributed significantly to the growing sense of hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks organization.

Canucks management has been focused on netting young players as the key pieces in returns for Horvat and Schenn, as they were in J.T. Miller trade talks at this time last year. The assets, however, that will make the biggest difference for this club in the short term and going forward are draft picks and cap space. In combination, they’re the most potent combination in hockey.

Obviously, the club would love to shed additional long-term cap commitments — like finding a Brock Boeser trade, or a taker for Myers — ahead of the March 3 deadline, and that would be fantastic, but it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult to execute.

It’s the same story if you’re counting on a prospective Horvat trade setting the club up with a future top-six centre and a future top-four right-handed defender, too. That sort of trade package has next to no relationship with anything we’ve seen at the deadline in recent history.

What the club really could achieve and would be better off focusing on is simply adding to its war chest of draft capital. Draft picks are cash in hand because they can be used to select young players on the draft floor (and the 2023 draft class looks very promising), but also because they’re the most stable, desirable form of currency to use in executing trades with cap teams.

If the club can add at least an additional first-round pick and five additional draft picks by March 3, that would set the franchise up to begin to chart a better, more flexible, more reasonable course forward.

If the club instead adds a bunch of low-upside pieces in their mid-20s, some of whom are attached to significant term and treasure, then this club will have demonstrated once again that they’re not ready to stop digging just yet.

What Vancouver Canucks’ perfect 2023 NHL trade deadline could look like.

By Thomas Drance and Harman Dayal


Perfection is unattainable in the NHL.

Hockey itself is a game of mistakes. The result of any given game, or even a seven-game playoff series, often comes down to a variety of factors — health, puck luck, the referee’s whistle — that fall well outside the control of any one individual.

What’s true for players is true, as well, for hockey operations departments. Like the slim margins that determine playoff success, player evaluation is fickle in nature. The best an organization can do in the NHL is take care of their business to maximize their odds of making a savvy trade, nailing a draft pick or signing a value contract.

Realistically, at this point, Vancouver Canucks fans aren’t asking for perfection or anything close to it. A defensible direction and a coherent plan would count as cause for celebration in the city of Vancouver at the moment.

With the All-Star break in full swing, the Canucks have a bit of time off and club management can regroup from the drama that has overshadowed so much of the 2022-23 campaign. Then we’ll see what sort of “major surgery” club leadership has in store, as the Canucks look to turn the page on another disappointing season.

If the pain of the past few months is going to stand up and mean something, the Canucks will have to get busy selling as aggressively as possible by the March 3 trade deadline. The stakes are massive. Some of the decisions facing the club — most notably a potential Bo Horvat trade — could define this era.

So, what would a perfect trade deadline look like from a Canucks perspective at the 2023 NHL trade deadline?

1. Sadly, Bo Horvat must be dealt
The signs have been pointing toward Horvat’s departure from Vancouver ahead of the trade deadline for a while now. Canucks GM Patrik Allvin appeared to offer a bit of hope recently on Sportsnet 650, noting that he met with Horvat’s agent, Pat Morris, on Tuesday before the club’s home game against the Blackhawks and presented another offer.


Bo Horvat. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
It already didn’t make much sense to re-sign Horvat given the skyrocketing price of his next contract and the team’s distance from viable contention. But now Andrei Kuzmenko’s two-year, $11-million extension makes the salary cap situation flat-out untenable if you tack on a massive Horvat contract to the books. It’d be pointless to run the same core back, at more expensive cap hits, for another year considering the club currently ranks 27th in the NHL by point percentage.

It will be tough to see Vancouver’s captain leave. He’s been a loyal soldier — the only Canuck who’s lived through all the pain and dark days since Mike Gillis left the organization. But Vancouver’s in no position to add another high-risk contract to the books and has a serious deficit of valuable future assets.

Canucks fans need hope right now. They’re begging to catch a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. Horvat needs to be dealt and the return must be a win.

2. Luke Schenn as well
Many NHL teams subscribe to the theory that you need a big, heavy blue line to go deep in the playoffs.

People point to the Lightning’s back end which has featured jumbo-sized defenders like Victor Hedman, Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, Zach Bogosian, Jan Rutta and Luke Schenn over the years. Montreal’s big four with Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson and Jeff Petry was lionized during the Canadiens’ 2021 trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

Teams have accordingly paid a premium at recent trade deadlines for large, hard-nosed defenders like Chiarot, Josh Manson and David Savard.

Schenn doesn’t have a long track record of top-four success the way Chiarot, Manson and Savard did, but he fits a similar mould in terms of playstyle and has championship experience. The 33-year-old will be highly sought after and should hold significant trade value. The Canucks need to cash in on that.

Some would argue that Schenn still plays at a high level, is a quality leader and should therefore be re-signed, but his next contract could be a lot more expensive than the dirt-cheap $850,000 AAV he possesses now. Last offseason, we saw Rutta — who’s 32 and plays a similar role as a third-pair quality defender for a good team who can moonlight in the top four — sign for three years at a $2.75 million cap hit with the Penguins. Erik Gudbranson checks off similar physical qualities and was overpaid with a four-year, $16-million contract as well.

Vancouver needs to take advantage of the inflated market for physical, stay-at-home defencemen by trading Schenn at the deadline.

3. Treat expiring restricted free agents like unrestricted free agents
It’s not enough for the Canucks to just take care of the obvious trades before the deadline. That’s the absolute minimum standard, frankly.

This club’s long-term needs are legion. In the wake of a dismal performance in a third consecutive season and the club’s total lack of assets at the NHL level, in terms of draft pick capital and their prospect pool, moving off of Horvat and Schenn is insufficient. The club has to go further. They have to be more disciplined about finding whatever marginal value they can.

That includes seeing if a depth defender like Kyle Burroughs can fetch the sort of return players like Nathan Beaulieu, Troy Stecher and Robert Hagg netted their respective clubs last season at the deadline (a sixth-round pick, a seventh-round pick and a conditional seventh-round pick, respectively).

Collin Delia and Spencer Martin surely haven’t put themselves into the range of netting Vancouver a Scott Wedgewood-style return (a mid-round pick at last year’s deadline), but if the club can trade either netminder for more than “future considerations” to a goalie depth-needy rival ahead of the deadline, that would be a nice win.

The club should additionally be asking themselves the tough questions, while proactively engaging in extension talks with any restricted free agents that will cost over $1 million to qualify this summer. Ethan Bear and Travis Dermott are the key examples here, and they should effectively be treated like unrestricted free agents (to a point).

Dermott’s first full Canucks campaign, meanwhile, has been waylaid by a preseason head injury that has cost him all but 11 games. He’s struggled since returning, but unsurprisingly, his game appears to be trending in the right direction as he gets additional reps back in the lineup. He’ll cost $1.5 million to qualify at season’s end.

Bear has been a solid find for the Canucks, playing major minutes since he was acquired from the Carolina Hurricanes in late October. He’ll also cost $2.5 million to qualify, which is a commitment the club will effectively have to make merely in order to retain their right of first refusal and make him a restricted free agent.

Qualifying Bear is a no-brainer, but it will also open the club up to player-elected arbitration this summer. And Bear — who has played top-four minutes, while sporting an on-ice goal differential that stacks up well when compared with most other Canucks defenders — is building himself a strong case for a raise.

His situation is subtly complicated. The club only has one healthy right-handed NHL-level defender signed beyond this season (Tyler Myers) and would do well to return Bear. His high qualifying offer level and relatively strong arbitration case create a situation where the club will have to be very delicate in managing his next deal, lest it proves inefficient.

In the case of both Bear and Dermott, if the Canucks are intent on keeping them around long-term, they should use the deadline as a pressure point in extension talks. If there are sharp, potentially efficient value bets to be made ahead of the deadline, great.

If not, it’s far better to fetch an asset in a trade for an expiring player, than it is to haggle in June with arbitration-eligible restricted players who aren’t absolute 100 percent slam dunks to receive qualifying offers.


Ethan Bear. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
4. Use fresh LTI space creatively
According to CapFriendly and the NHL’s roster page, the Vancouver Canucks have yet to put Tanner Pearson or Ilya Mikheyev — both ruled out for the balance of this season — on long-term injured reserve (LTI).

CapFriendly further estimates that, as a result of Micheal Ferland ($3.5 million) and Tucker Poolman’s ($2.5 million) presence on LTI, Vancouver has $2.23 million in available space at the moment.

Now, there are a couple of different ways this could go.

The club could, perhaps, attempt to shed enough salary ahead of the trade deadline that they get out of LTI altogether. Currently, the Canucks have $6 million worth of contracts in LTI and are using $3.8 million of that space with 20 players on their 23-man roster.

Now getting out of LTI is an attractive option. It would permit the club to duck the bonus overages that will otherwise result from Kuzmenko absolutely crushing it in his first NHL season (Kuzmenko has already hit one of his Schedule A bonuses). Any bonus overages incurred would hit the Canucks’ cap sheet as a penalty for the 2023-24 season, based on the fact they’re currently set to exceed the salary cap upper limit using the LTI mechanism at season’s end.

Unfortunately, getting out of LTI at this juncture will be exceedingly difficult to execute. It also might not even be advisable as a primary goal.

By means of illustration, let’s consider Horvat, Vancouver’s best trade asset. There are very few contending teams capable of eating the full freight of Horvat’s $5.5 million cap hit, for example, without sending salary back. The club’s priority in a Horvat trade, however, must be maximizing their return above all else, rather than focusing unduly on doing a deal with a smaller group of teams that wouldn’t need to shed commitments in a potential trade to make the cap math work.

Pursuing the ‘get out of LTI’ route could limit the Canucks’ ability to extract value at the deadline, and one suspects the club might be better off instead leaning into the skid. In Mikheyev ($4.75 million) and Pearson ($3.25 million), for example, the club has the ability to create an additional $8 million in LTI space prior to the deadline.

The sequencing would need to be done carefully, but executing this could arm Canucks management with the ability to do all sorts of creative things to net futures at the deadline. They could act as a cap space clearing house for undesirable expiring deals, for example, or as a retained salary transaction laundromat in three-team trades.

The returns wouldn’t be huge — a fifth-round pick here, a sixth-round pick there — but the club is well positioned to engineer value out of thin air purely with sharp accounting over the next five weeks. And every bit of value netted matters.

In a perfect trade deadline scenario, the Canucks would find a way to take advantage.

5. Add a protected 2023 first-round draft pick that could confer unprotected to 2024
Every year we advocate for the Canucks to prioritize landing a first-round pick that’s conditional and structured to roll over unprotected the following year. There’s always pushback. We’re told annually that no teams would ever surrender a pick like that; that this is a fantasy hockey suggestion.

Then year after year it keeps happening in the actual NHL.

Teams often overestimate how successful they will be in the playoffs and the following season. By targeting a first-round pick that can roll over to the following season unprotected, you’re opening up the possibility of striking gold if that club falters.

Ottawa took advantage of this in the Erik Karlsson trade (pick turned into Tim Stützle). Colorado ended up nabbing a top-five pick from Ottawa in the Matt Duchene deal. Columbus stole Chicago’s No. 6 pick last year with the Seth Jones trade and selected stud RD prospect David Jiricek. The Panthers are 22nd in the NHL by points percentage and owe an unprotected first to the Canadiens for the Chiarot trade.

With Horvat (or perhaps even Schenn if they’re lucky), the Canucks have a trade chip that can realistically net a conditional first-round pick that’s say top-20 or top-25 protected and can roll over unprotected in 2024. In fact, teams may desire structuring any first-round pick they surrender with these kinds of conditions because of how highly this year’s draft class is rated.

The top end of this draft is excellent and it’s pretty deep overall, but it’s getting to a point where teams may be overvaluing 2023 first-round picks in the high teens or early 20s. The Canucks can exploit this with the aforementioned conditions on any first-round pick they acquire and position themselves to effectively bet against a team for next season.

6. Make sure cap flexibility is a key part of the Horvat return
Assuming the upper limit of the salary cap only increases by $1 million and that Kuzmenko maxes out his $850k Schedule A bonuses, Vancouver is currently projected to have somewhere around $10.5 million in cap space for next season, according to CapFriendly.

The actual number should be higher because it doesn’t account for trades, buyouts and Pearson’s uncertain status going into next season. The overall point stands: The Canucks don’t have a lot of wiggle room when you account for how many needs the club will need to address, particularly with the hole Horvat could leave down the middle.


Tanner Pearson. (Bob Frid / USA Today)
Canucks management may opt to target NHL-ready contributors in a Horvat trade rather than pure futures. If they go down that route, however, they need to prioritize hyper-efficient, cost-controllable pieces rather than players who are already attached to sizable, full-market-value contracts.

That means the club should avoid a player like Brandon Carlo from Boston, who will turn 27 by early next season and is tied up with a $4.1 million cap hit. Carlo’s not young or cheap enough to be a massive value add by the time the Canucks actually enter their next competitive window. He shouldn’t be the big prize of a Horvat deal even though he checks a box as a second-pair right-shot defender.

The same holds true even for a younger, higher-pedigree player like Jesperi Kotkaniemi, if the Carolina Hurricanes are looking to swing a Horvat deal.

Good teams need a lot of players who can significantly outperform their contract. That’s how you retain sufficient flexibility to build an elite roster without running out of cap space.

Vancouver should be targeting top prospects and draft picks that can hopefully turn into productive players that provide enormous surplus value on their entry-level contracts down the line. Acquiring a player who’s already paid big bucks — especially if he’s in his mid-20s — isn’t going to leave the club with enough cap room to make substantial changes in the summer.

7. Prioritize raw, uncut futures and add at least 5 draft picks at the deadline
If the Canucks are disciplined about focusing on amassing draft capital and managing the books, the 2023 trade deadline could mark a fork in the road for this franchise and their embattled hockey operations leadership group.

There’s no easy way out of the mess that this club has created for itself over the past decade. And while Jim Rutherford and Allvin inherited much of it, some of their decisions have contributed significantly to the growing sense of hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks organization.

Canucks management has been focused on netting young players as the key pieces in returns for Horvat and Schenn, as they were in J.T. Miller trade talks at this time last year. The assets, however, that will make the biggest difference for this club in the short term and going forward are draft picks and cap space. In combination, they’re the most potent combination in hockey.

Obviously, the club would love to shed additional long-term cap commitments — like finding a Brock Boeser trade, or a taker for Myers — ahead of the March 3 deadline, and that would be fantastic, but it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult to execute.

It’s the same story if you’re counting on a prospective Horvat trade setting the club up with a future top-six centre and a future top-four right-handed defender, too. That sort of trade package has next to no relationship with anything we’ve seen at the deadline in recent history.

What the club really could achieve and would be better off focusing on is simply adding to its war chest of draft capital. Draft picks are cash in hand because they can be used to select young players on the draft floor (and the 2023 draft class looks very promising), but also because they’re the most stable, desirable form of currency to use in executing trades with cap teams.

If the club can add at least an additional first-round pick and five additional draft picks by March 3, that would set the franchise up to begin to chart a better, more flexible, more reasonable course forward.

If the club instead adds a bunch of low-upside pieces in their mid-20s, some of whom are attached to significant term and treasure, then this club will have demonstrated once again that they’re not ready to stop digging just yet.
- LeftCoaster

Totally agree.

Thanks, Lefty!

What Vancouver Canucks’ perfect 2023 NHL trade deadline could look like.

By Thomas Drance and Harman Dayal


Perfection is unattainable in the NHL.

Hockey itself is a game of mistakes. The result of any given game, or even a seven-game playoff series, often comes down to a variety of factors — health, puck luck, the referee’s whistle — that fall well outside the control of any one individual.

What’s true for players is true, as well, for hockey operations departments. Like the slim margins that determine playoff success, player evaluation is fickle in nature. The best an organization can do in the NHL is take care of their business to maximize their odds of making a savvy trade, nailing a draft pick or signing a value contract.

Realistically, at this point, Vancouver Canucks fans aren’t asking for perfection or anything close to it. A defensible direction and a coherent plan would count as cause for celebration in the city of Vancouver at the moment.

With the All-Star break in full swing, the Canucks have a bit of time off and club management can regroup from the drama that has overshadowed so much of the 2022-23 campaign. Then we’ll see what sort of “major surgery” club leadership has in store, as the Canucks look to turn the page on another disappointing season.

If the pain of the past few months is going to stand up and mean something, the Canucks will have to get busy selling as aggressively as possible by the March 3 trade deadline. The stakes are massive. Some of the decisions facing the club — most notably a potential Bo Horvat trade — could define this era.

So, what would a perfect trade deadline look like from a Canucks perspective at the 2023 NHL trade deadline?

1. Sadly, Bo Horvat must be dealt
The signs have been pointing toward Horvat’s departure from Vancouver ahead of the trade deadline for a while now. Canucks GM Patrik Allvin appeared to offer a bit of hope recently on Sportsnet 650, noting that he met with Horvat’s agent, Pat Morris, on Tuesday before the club’s home game against the Blackhawks and presented another offer.


Bo Horvat. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
It already didn’t make much sense to re-sign Horvat given the skyrocketing price of his next contract and the team’s distance from viable contention. But now Andrei Kuzmenko’s two-year, $11-million extension makes the salary cap situation flat-out untenable if you tack on a massive Horvat contract to the books. It’d be pointless to run the same core back, at more expensive cap hits, for another year considering the club currently ranks 27th in the NHL by point percentage.

It will be tough to see Vancouver’s captain leave. He’s been a loyal soldier — the only Canuck who’s lived through all the pain and dark days since Mike Gillis left the organization. But Vancouver’s in no position to add another high-risk contract to the books and has a serious deficit of valuable future assets.

Canucks fans need hope right now. They’re begging to catch a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. Horvat needs to be dealt and the return must be a win.

2. Luke Schenn as well
Many NHL teams subscribe to the theory that you need a big, heavy blue line to go deep in the playoffs.

People point to the Lightning’s back end which has featured jumbo-sized defenders like Victor Hedman, Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, Zach Bogosian, Jan Rutta and Luke Schenn over the years. Montreal’s big four with Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson and Jeff Petry was lionized during the Canadiens’ 2021 trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

Teams have accordingly paid a premium at recent trade deadlines for large, hard-nosed defenders like Chiarot, Josh Manson and David Savard.

Schenn doesn’t have a long track record of top-four success the way Chiarot, Manson and Savard did, but he fits a similar mould in terms of playstyle and has championship experience. The 33-year-old will be highly sought after and should hold significant trade value. The Canucks need to cash in on that.

Some would argue that Schenn still plays at a high level, is a quality leader and should therefore be re-signed, but his next contract could be a lot more expensive than the dirt-cheap $850,000 AAV he possesses now. Last offseason, we saw Rutta — who’s 32 and plays a similar role as a third-pair quality defender for a good team who can moonlight in the top four — sign for three years at a $2.75 million cap hit with the Penguins. Erik Gudbranson checks off similar physical qualities and was overpaid with a four-year, $16-million contract as well.

Vancouver needs to take advantage of the inflated market for physical, stay-at-home defencemen by trading Schenn at the deadline.

3. Treat expiring restricted free agents like unrestricted free agents
It’s not enough for the Canucks to just take care of the obvious trades before the deadline. That’s the absolute minimum standard, frankly.

This club’s long-term needs are legion. In the wake of a dismal performance in a third consecutive season and the club’s total lack of assets at the NHL level, in terms of draft pick capital and their prospect pool, moving off of Horvat and Schenn is insufficient. The club has to go further. They have to be more disciplined about finding whatever marginal value they can.

That includes seeing if a depth defender like Kyle Burroughs can fetch the sort of return players like Nathan Beaulieu, Troy Stecher and Robert Hagg netted their respective clubs last season at the deadline (a sixth-round pick, a seventh-round pick and a conditional seventh-round pick, respectively).

Collin Delia and Spencer Martin surely haven’t put themselves into the range of netting Vancouver a Scott Wedgewood-style return (a mid-round pick at last year’s deadline), but if the club can trade either netminder for more than “future considerations” to a goalie depth-needy rival ahead of the deadline, that would be a nice win.

The club should additionally be asking themselves the tough questions, while proactively engaging in extension talks with any restricted free agents that will cost over $1 million to qualify this summer. Ethan Bear and Travis Dermott are the key examples here, and they should effectively be treated like unrestricted free agents (to a point).

Dermott’s first full Canucks campaign, meanwhile, has been waylaid by a preseason head injury that has cost him all but 11 games. He’s struggled since returning, but unsurprisingly, his game appears to be trending in the right direction as he gets additional reps back in the lineup. He’ll cost $1.5 million to qualify at season’s end.

Bear has been a solid find for the Canucks, playing major minutes since he was acquired from the Carolina Hurricanes in late October. He’ll also cost $2.5 million to qualify, which is a commitment the club will effectively have to make merely in order to retain their right of first refusal and make him a restricted free agent.

Qualifying Bear is a no-brainer, but it will also open the club up to player-elected arbitration this summer. And Bear — who has played top-four minutes, while sporting an on-ice goal differential that stacks up well when compared with most other Canucks defenders — is building himself a strong case for a raise.

His situation is subtly complicated. The club only has one healthy right-handed NHL-level defender signed beyond this season (Tyler Myers) and would do well to return Bear. His high qualifying offer level and relatively strong arbitration case create a situation where the club will have to be very delicate in managing his next deal, lest it proves inefficient.

In the case of both Bear and Dermott, if the Canucks are intent on keeping them around long-term, they should use the deadline as a pressure point in extension talks. If there are sharp, potentially efficient value bets to be made ahead of the deadline, great.

If not, it’s far better to fetch an asset in a trade for an expiring player, than it is to haggle in June with arbitration-eligible restricted players who aren’t absolute 100 percent slam dunks to receive qualifying offers.


Ethan Bear. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
4. Use fresh LTI space creatively
According to CapFriendly and the NHL’s roster page, the Vancouver Canucks have yet to put Tanner Pearson or Ilya Mikheyev — both ruled out for the balance of this season — on long-term injured reserve (LTI).

CapFriendly further estimates that, as a result of Micheal Ferland ($3.5 million) and Tucker Poolman’s ($2.5 million) presence on LTI, Vancouver has $2.23 million in available space at the moment.

Now, there are a couple of different ways this could go.

The club could, perhaps, attempt to shed enough salary ahead of the trade deadline that they get out of LTI altogether. Currently, the Canucks have $6 million worth of contracts in LTI and are using $3.8 million of that space with 20 players on their 23-man roster.

Now getting out of LTI is an attractive option. It would permit the club to duck the bonus overages that will otherwise result from Kuzmenko absolutely crushing it in his first NHL season (Kuzmenko has already hit one of his Schedule A bonuses). Any bonus overages incurred would hit the Canucks’ cap sheet as a penalty for the 2023-24 season, based on the fact they’re currently set to exceed the salary cap upper limit using the LTI mechanism at season’s end.

Unfortunately, getting out of LTI at this juncture will be exceedingly difficult to execute. It also might not even be advisable as a primary goal.

By means of illustration, let’s consider Horvat, Vancouver’s best trade asset. There are very few contending teams capable of eating the full freight of Horvat’s $5.5 million cap hit, for example, without sending salary back. The club’s priority in a Horvat trade, however, must be maximizing their return above all else, rather than focusing unduly on doing a deal with a smaller group of teams that wouldn’t need to shed commitments in a potential trade to make the cap math work.

Pursuing the ‘get out of LTI’ route could limit the Canucks’ ability to extract value at the deadline, and one suspects the club might be better off instead leaning into the skid. In Mikheyev ($4.75 million) and Pearson ($3.25 million), for example, the club has the ability to create an additional $8 million in LTI space prior to the deadline.

The sequencing would need to be done carefully, but executing this could arm Canucks management with the ability to do all sorts of creative things to net futures at the deadline. They could act as a cap space clearing house for undesirable expiring deals, for example, or as a retained salary transaction laundromat in three-team trades.

The returns wouldn’t be huge — a fifth-round pick here, a sixth-round pick there — but the club is well positioned to engineer value out of thin air purely with sharp accounting over the next five weeks. And every bit of value netted matters.

In a perfect trade deadline scenario, the Canucks would find a way to take advantage.

5. Add a protected 2023 first-round draft pick that could confer unprotected to 2024
Every year we advocate for the Canucks to prioritize landing a first-round pick that’s conditional and structured to roll over unprotected the following year. There’s always pushback. We’re told annually that no teams would ever surrender a pick like that; that this is a fantasy hockey suggestion.

Then year after year it keeps happening in the actual NHL.

Teams often overestimate how successful they will be in the playoffs and the following season. By targeting a first-round pick that can roll over to the following season unprotected, you’re opening up the possibility of striking gold if that club falters.

Ottawa took advantage of this in the Erik Karlsson trade (pick turned into Tim Stützle). Colorado ended up nabbing a top-five pick from Ottawa in the Matt Duchene deal. Columbus stole Chicago’s No. 6 pick last year with the Seth Jones trade and selected stud RD prospect David Jiricek. The Panthers are 22nd in the NHL by points percentage and owe an unprotected first to the Canadiens for the Chiarot trade.

With Horvat (or perhaps even Schenn if they’re lucky), the Canucks have a trade chip that can realistically net a conditional first-round pick that’s say top-20 or top-25 protected and can roll over unprotected in 2024. In fact, teams may desire structuring any first-round pick they surrender with these kinds of conditions because of how highly this year’s draft class is rated.

The top end of this draft is excellent and it’s pretty deep overall, but it’s getting to a point where teams may be overvaluing 2023 first-round picks in the high teens or early 20s. The Canucks can exploit this with the aforementioned conditions on any first-round pick they acquire and position themselves to effectively bet against a team for next season.

6. Make sure cap flexibility is a key part of the Horvat return
Assuming the upper limit of the salary cap only increases by $1 million and that Kuzmenko maxes out his $850k Schedule A bonuses, Vancouver is currently projected to have somewhere around $10.5 million in cap space for next season, according to CapFriendly.

The actual number should be higher because it doesn’t account for trades, buyouts and Pearson’s uncertain status going into next season. The overall point stands: The Canucks don’t have a lot of wiggle room when you account for how many needs the club will need to address, particularly with the hole Horvat could leave down the middle.


Tanner Pearson. (Bob Frid / USA Today)
Canucks management may opt to target NHL-ready contributors in a Horvat trade rather than pure futures. If they go down that route, however, they need to prioritize hyper-efficient, cost-controllable pieces rather than players who are already attached to sizable, full-market-value contracts.

That means the club should avoid a player like Brandon Carlo from Boston, who will turn 27 by early next season and is tied up with a $4.1 million cap hit. Carlo’s not young or cheap enough to be a massive value add by the time the Canucks actually enter their next competitive window. He shouldn’t be the big prize of a Horvat deal even though he checks a box as a second-pair right-shot defender.

The same holds true even for a younger, higher-pedigree player like Jesperi Kotkaniemi, if the Carolina Hurricanes are looking to swing a Horvat deal.

Good teams need a lot of players who can significantly outperform their contract. That’s how you retain sufficient flexibility to build an elite roster without running out of cap space.

Vancouver should be targeting top prospects and draft picks that can hopefully turn into productive players that provide enormous surplus value on their entry-level contracts down the line. Acquiring a player who’s already paid big bucks — especially if he’s in his mid-20s — isn’t going to leave the club with enough cap room to make substantial changes in the summer.

7. Prioritize raw, uncut futures and add at least 5 draft picks at the deadline
If the Canucks are disciplined about focusing on amassing draft capital and managing the books, the 2023 trade deadline could mark a fork in the road for this franchise and their embattled hockey operations leadership group.

There’s no easy way out of the mess that this club has created for itself over the past decade. And while Jim Rutherford and Allvin inherited much of it, some of their decisions have contributed significantly to the growing sense of hopelessness that has engulfed the Canucks organization.

Canucks management has been focused on netting young players as the key pieces in returns for Horvat and Schenn, as they were in J.T. Miller trade talks at this time last year. The assets, however, that will make the biggest difference for this club in the short term and going forward are draft picks and cap space. In combination, they’re the most potent combination in hockey.

Obviously, the club would love to shed additional long-term cap commitments — like finding a Brock Boeser trade, or a taker for Myers — ahead of the March 3 deadline, and that would be fantastic, but it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult to execute.

It’s the same story if you’re counting on a prospective Horvat trade setting the club up with a future top-six centre and a future top-four right-handed defender, too. That sort of trade package has next to no relationship with anything we’ve seen at the deadline in recent history.

What the club really could achieve and would be better off focusing on is simply adding to its war chest of draft capital. Draft picks are cash in hand because they can be used to select young players on the draft floor (and the 2023 draft class looks very promising), but also because they’re the most stable, desirable form of currency to use in executing trades with cap teams.

If the club can add at least an additional first-round pick and five additional draft picks by March 3, that would set the franchise up to begin to chart a better, more flexible, more reasonable course forward.

If the club instead adds a bunch of low-upside pieces in their mid-20s, some of whom are attached to significant term and treasure, then this club will have demonstrated once again that they’re not ready to stop digging just yet.
- LeftCoaster

Wow. That was a tedious read/scroll.
Sounds like a summary of what's been talked about in Carol's old thread.