In the darkest depths of a nascent rebuilding effort, the Vancouver Canucks had better stay busy selling before the clock strikes noon PT on the March 6 NHL trade deadline.
Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin have already executed a trio of future-looking moves, selling Quinn Hughes to soft-launch the great tank of 2025-26 in mid-December and dealing Kiefer Sherwood a month later to the San Jose Sharks for a pair of second-round draft picks. On Wednesday, the club executed their first pre-trade deadline deal, sending Tyler Myers to the Dallas Stars for a 2027 second-round pick and an additional draft pick.
While Vancouver has been able to accomplish a fair bit of business, it’s generally been quiet on the trade front around the league to this point.
There are myriad reasons for that. New playoff cap rules, rules preventing three-team trades involved double salary retention and the new logic of the cap growth era have had a chilling impact on the trade market to this point. Probable buyers, contender-level teams like the Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning that we’d expect to be aggressive over the next 48 hours or so, are still waiting on primary dominoes to fall, like New York Rangers centre Vincent Trocheck and Calgary Flames pivot Nazem Kadri.
In the NHL, moves often beget counter moves, and given that Vancouver isn’t exactly sitting on a surplus of premium rental players, it’s conceivable that the club’s efforts to sell its pending unrestricted free agents, or perhaps shed a long-term commitment (or two), could come down to the final hours before the deadline arrives mid-day Friday. Certainly, the Canucks were working the phones aggressively throughout Tuesday afternoon.
So what precisely can the Canucks still accomplish at the trade deadline? What trade chips do they still have to play? What are their most significant needs and priorities?
Your team at The Athletic breaks it all down in our 2026 Canucks NHL trade deadline primer.
Salary cap considerations
The Canucks will have an enormous amount of cap flexibility on deadline day, although it’s a resource that’s become far less valuable in a $95.5 million salary upper limit world than it was during the forced austerity of the NHL’s flat cap years.
According to PuckPedia, there are currently 17 teams — more than half of the teams in the league — that will have the ability to add $10 million or more in cap commitments on deadline day. The practical amount of salary cap flexibility in the system is far more limited than that, given that motivated buyers will have to be mindful of managing the playoff salary cap for the first time this season, but the extent to which teams are flush with cap space to a virtually unprecedented degree is illustrative nonetheless.
Gone are the days when 85 percent of the players in the league were available for virtually free to any team that could afford to take on the full freight of their contract. “Weaponizing cap space” may still occur, especially if the Canucks are willing to take on contracts with term (which they are willing to consider, although the price they’d charge is likely too significant for most teams to consider), but cap space is no longer the scarcest resource on the trade market.
No, in this era of cap growth, the scarcest resource is talent.
The Canucks will have reams of flexibility themselves to add salary to their books before the deadline passes, and added to it on Tuesday with a paper transaction that placed Thatcher Demko on long-term injured reserve. With Demko’s $5 million cap hit on Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTI), Vancouver will immediately gain the ability to exceed the salary cap by roughly $3.82 million. As of Wednesday afternoon, Vancouver had already applied for season-ending LTI for Demko. Once approved, they’ll be able to exceed the upper limit of the salary cap by the full freight of Demko’s $5 million cap hit.
That the club has gone this route is notable, in that it represents hockey operations freeing up as much flexibility as possible ahead of the deadline. As a motivated seller who wants to protect its cap flexibility this offseason, Vancouver is unlikely to add significant salary before the deadline. In the wake of the Myers deal and Demko hitting LTI, the Canucks have roughly $8.5 million in deadline cap space, according to PuckPedia’s estimates, and one remaining retained salary transaction slot to utilize (most likely for Kane, if a deal materializes).
In other words, the salary cap will not be a significant factor that shapes Vancouver’s trade deadline, and that’s a welcome change indeed.
What assets will the Canucks be willing to part with?
It will be imperative for the Canucks to shed their three experienced pending unrestricted free agents prior to the March 6 NHL trade deadline: centre Teddy Blueger, centre David Kämpf and winger Evander Kane.
Kane is the biggest ticket item of the three, a power winger with reams of playoff experience who has struggled to produce efficiently in big minutes for his hometown team this season. Kane, 34, is an acquired taste as a trade target for most teams as it is, but his wildly inconsistent physical impact this season may further restrain his value.
Vancouver is willing to retain 50 percent of Kane’s $5.15 million cap hit to facilitate a deal and would likely accept a mid-round pick in return. To this point, there’s been insufficient interest despite Kane’s representatives being involved in trying to engineer a deal. We’ll see if that changes by Friday.
The Canucks are willing to retain 50 percent of Evander Kane’s cap hit to facilitate a trade. (Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
Blueger, 31, won the Stanley Cup earlier in his career after being acquired as a depth rental by the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023. A reliable penalty killing ace, Blueger’s overall dependability and special teams utility should make him a desirable enough depth piece to return a mid-round pick before the deadline passes. While the Blueger return is unlikely to match the second-round pick the Nashville Predators were able to net in selling 6-foot-6, 230-pound right-handed centre Michael McCarron on Tuesday, returning something between a third-to-a-fifth-round pick for Blueger should be achievable.
Kämpf, 31, is in much the same boat as Blueger, but with less production over the past few seasons. Teams aren’t generally in the habit of paying significantly to acquire a fourth-line centre from the NHL’s 32nd-place team. A late-round pick would be a solid return for Kämpf.
There are also significant rumours surrounding a whole host of Vancouver’s veteran players in their late 20s who are signed to long-term contracts, all of which carry some manner of no-trade or no-movement protection.
Among the group of players that includes the likes of Jake DeBrusk, Brock Boeser and Conor Garland, Garland is the likeliest candidate to move, by virtue of his extension — signed in July — not having yet kicked in.
Garland will have a no-move clause as of the start of the 2026-27 league year on July 1, but until then, he’s available for Vancouver to openly auction on the trade market. Whether those efforts gain traction prior to the deadline or not will be a major storyline to monitor at the deadline.
Beyond Garland, the future of Elias Pettersson is always a hot-button topic in Vancouver. The struggling centre has six years remaining on his contract beyond this season at an $11.6 million cap hit that still counts among the most expensive in the sport. He also has a full no-move clause, further complicating matters.
Pettersson is one of the highest upside reclamation projects in the league, but the risk that an acquiring team would take on would be enormous. A deal of that size and complexity is always more likely to be accomplished in the offseason.
What are the club’s biggest needs?
The Canucks are in the midst of the most disappointing season in franchise history, and this is a team that needs absolutely everything.
The club’s top priority is adding draft picks, with young players as a secondary consideration. Internally, the goal is to land as many good future assets as possible ahead of the deadline, for the purpose of furthering the rebuilding effort.
The Canucks, however, would be open to making a more classic hockey trade for the right player, especially if that player is viewed internally as having a path toward increasing their value over the next 12 months (and becoming a good asset to shop at the 2027 NHL trade deadline).
Roster rules and other considerations
The AHL Abbotsford Canucks aren’t tracking to make the Calder Cup playoffs this season, which will simplify matters ahead of the deadline. Vancouver may paper down some prospects to preserve their AHL playoff eligibility anyway, but it’s unlikely to be consequential.
After the NHL trade deadline, the 23-man roster limit lifts, even though the salary cap upper limit remains in force. Thereafter, however, teams are limited to utilizing just four non-emergency recalls over the balance of the season. Vancouver may want to get a variety of AHL players like Kirill Kudryavtsev and Ty Mueller an NHL look down the stretch, but the Canucks will need to be judicious about how they manage their limited recalls.
The Canucks will also look to recruit some NCAA free agents down the stretch of this season. Vancouver currently has 47 contracts under the 50-contract limit, and should be motivated to open up some additional slots before the trade deadline to maximize its flexibility to do so.
