What I’m hearing about Canucks’ plans to sell, scouting NHL Draft prospects and the rebuild – The Athletic
If the theory of rebuilding is appealing, the reality of the Vancouver Canucks performing this haplessly is a different sort of challenge.
The Canucks have held a lead for a total of eight minutes in their last nine games. Three games into their current road trip, they’ve been outscored on aggregate 15-4. It’s a total that’s actually felt even worse, with three of those four goals scored in garbage time of an already decided game against Buffalo last week.
In Toronto on Saturday night, Vancouver’s recent run of miserable results hit something of a climax.
The Canucks were thoroughly pushed around. Thatcher Demko sustained a lower-body injury, was placed on Injured Reserve on Sunday and is at least week to week. The night was punctuated by costly giveaways from all three of Vancouver’s promising young defenders, with the club reassigning Elias Pettersson (the defender) to Abbotsford in the wake of the loss and recalling Victor Mancini.
It was one of those nights in which, yes, the resurgent Maple Leafs were especially sharp, but the Canucks were also soundly out-competed. Vancouver generated little of anything offensively, and by night’s end, had been hopelessly buried 5-0 on the scoreboard.
Losses to the Maple Leafs register in the Vancouver market. These are big games, by regular-season standards, played exclusively in prime time on “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturday night.
A game against the Maple Leafs isn’t just Game 44 on the regular-season calendar. This is the big stage, and these games are imbued with a sense of elevated stakes by Canucks fans and ownership alike.
Accordingly, on Sunday, we saw that there were material roster consequences for a shoddy performance the previous evening. Big picture, however, Canucks hockey operations leadership isn’t going to overreact to a poor performance in a single game, or even a dismal run of form across the past few weeks.
The Canucks believe that with centre Marco Rossi out due to injury, the roster has once again fallen below a baseline level of functional effectiveness down the middle of its forward group.
With Elias Pettersson performing less like a superstar and more like a supporting piece, the injury to Rossi — like the injury to Filip Chytil in October — has left Canucks head coach Adam Foote to deploy a second-line calibre pivot, and three fourth-line or depth contributors at centre.
Personnel-wise, the Canucks believe, and with some cause, that with this level of talent at centre, they’re simply too overmatched on a game-to-game basis, and the results reflect precisely that.
There’s a certain built-in irony to the act of tanking. On some level, if we focus on the micro, it’s clear that if the Canucks are going to lose, then Vancouver’s decision makers would prefer to lose in a specific sort of way — with a team that intends to keep a good deal of veteran talent around, while prioritizing player development and playing structurally sound hockey.
If we zoom out, however, there’s no sense of internal surprise that the brief post-Quinn Hughes trade bump has evaporated. In the wake of the Hughes trade, the Canucks were prepared to permit the tanks to roll down Griffiths Way. It isn’t fun to watch or endure, but this barren patch of results serves the club’s long-term interests, a fact that Canucks hockey operations understands.
That understanding doesn’t take the sting out of the dreadful reality of losing in bunches. It doesn’t entirely blunt the feeling that the Canucks’ recent performance has fallen beneath a certain standard that the club does want to maintain — regardless of who is in or out of the lineup — even as Vancouver is prepared to maximize its draft lottery odds at the expense of its playoff odds down the stretch.
On Sunday, as both Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford dropped any pretence of “retooling in a hybrid state” and explicitly utilized rebuild-centric terminology in interviews with Canucks.com and Sportsnet, there was one notable change. It’s a change that matches what I was hearing from team sources while working the phones on Sunday.
At least in terms of what the club is projecting about its intentions, the Canucks are now comfortable noting both publicly and in trade talks with various teams that they’re willing to listen on veteran players, even those with term who have recently committed to the organization.
This isn’t an indication of some massive change in organizational philosophy. The club would prefer for it to be viewed as a clarification.
Vancouver still wants to be thoughtful about keeping veteran players around to insulate their younger professionals. It’s a priority to maintain a certain level of structural fortitude.
Based on what I’m hearing, the organization believes that its veterans have bought into doing precisely that to this point in the process.
There is material disappointment internally, however, in the underperformance of various Canucks players. Brock Boeser, for example, hasn’t scored a goal in 19 games, a stretch that extends back to Nov. 28. Jake DeBrusk was a recent healthy scratch and has almost exclusively produced on the power play. Evander Kane was dropped to the fourth line on Saturday night.
If a sensible offer is made for one of the Canucks’ veteran players with term and money remaining on the deal, the club will now at least consider it. Vancouver isn’t at the point of thinking about the value on the roster solely in the context of depreciating assets, but as the losing and under-performance continue, the Canucks seem more open-minded about exploring their options than they were at the start of the Christmas break.
The Kiefer Sherwood market
By all accounts, the widely reported numbers the Canucks exchanged with Kiefer Sherwood’s camp were largely informal.
The Canucks clearly engaged with their heavy-hitting, productive pending unrestricted free agent winger to get a sense of the price of a possible extension, but they didn’t make Sherwood a formal offer.
Nonetheless, with no traction being found in these largely conceptual contract talks between the team and the player, it’s now evident which way this is trending. The prospect of trading Sherwood before the trade deadline is the club’s firm expectation.
There’s a lot of interest in obtaining Sherwood’s services, from a variety of suitors and for a variety of reasons. He’s a unique trade asset.
To this point, however, the Canucks haven’t received the sort of significant offer that would make them move now.
Rutherford, obviously, has a hard-won reputation for getting his business done early, but that’s largely been as an aggressive buyer. In Sherwood’s case, the club is willing to hold until much closer to the deadline if teams don’t match its ask. Vancouver, in fact, seems to believe that Sherwood’s value could be highest when potential bidders are on the clock and considering the full gamut of the available options.
To this point, Vancouver hasn’t given permission to Sherwood’s camp to negotiate with other teams. Doing so could permit a potential extension to be priced into the acquisition cost of a Sherwood trade.
When Vancouver sold Bo Horvat as a pending unrestricted free agent a few years ago, the club never allowed Horvat or his representative Pat Morris to discuss a possible extension with potential trade partners. It seems they’re more open to doing so in Sherwood’s case this time around.
As the Canucks attempt to seek out the best possible return for Sherwood in a trade, they would be willing to take back an inefficient contract or bundle Sherwood with additional assets if that can maximize his value.
This is a critical one for the Canucks to get right, given their dearth of other marketable trade assets.
Selling Evander Kane
It’s been a tough fit for Kane in Vancouver. The veteran power forward has looked a bit faster and more engaged over the past few weeks, but he was dropped down the lineup this weekend. Generally speaking, Kane is going to need to play better to resuscitate his value.
Given the Canucks’ direction, the pending unrestricted free agent winger isn’t in Vancouver’s plans beyond this season. He will likely be dealt prior to the trade deadline. Getting onto a playoff team and having an opportunity to demonstrate that he can still produce at the heaviest time of the year is going to be in Kane’s best interest, too.
At this point, it seems like the Canucks may be able to recoup the mid-round pick they paid for Kane this summer, but that might be all that the club can expect. The sense I get is that the trade market for Kane is lukewarm at the moment. If Kane can perform and produce more consistently over the next handful of weeks, that would certainly be helpful for all parties involved.
Amateur scouting meetings and draft preparation
The Canucks are currently in 32nd place in the NHL by point percentage. They own first waiver priority, and if the season ended today, they’d have the best odds in the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery.
This would be a huge deal for a franchise that has never owned the top pick at the NHL Draft. At the moment, however, the apex of the 2026 draft order is muddled. This isn’t a year with a consensus No. 1 prospect like Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini at the top of the draft order.
To this point, in the first half of his NCAA rookie season with Penn State, Gavin McKenna hasn’t replicated the generational production he managed in his draft-minus-one and draft-minus-two seasons in the WHL. Meanwhile, Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg has produced at a historic rate on the best team in the SHL. Stenberg also looked to be the more complete, elite wing prospect at the World Junior Championship.
There’s still a lot of road to run in sorting this out, and this industry-wide conversation will shift again before draft day. At this point, however, this is no longer necessarily the McKenna draft.
Down in California, where the Canucks met for amateur scouting meetings, the sense I get is that five players could very much end up at the top of Vancouver’s draft list. I’m confident that McKenna, Stenberg, defenceman Keaton Verhoeff and freshly minted Boston University pivot Tynan Lawrence are in that mix.
Based on conversations with team sources, I believe that the fifth skater is either super athletic Latvian defender Alberts Šmits or the dynamic American defender Chase Reid.
Vancouver’s amateur scouting staff is still in the midst of compiling its mid-term list, and a lot can change between now and draft day. Based on what I’m hearing, however, I think that the club views Stenberg as the more pro-ready prospect among the elite wingers at the top of this draft class. I also think that Vancouver’s severe positional need for quality centres will cause Canucks scouts to monitor Lawrence’s progress at Boston University very closely in the second half of the campaign.
Much like the hockey scouting industry itself, the sense I get is that the Canucks view McKenna as an elite prospect, but that it’s possible that he won’t sit atop their draft list come late June.
