Right now, the Vancouver Canucks and Buffalo Sabres are two teams in varying levels of turmoil.
For the Canucks, they’re coming off one of their worst losses of the season against the Boston Bruins on Saturday and have lost three of their last four games, barely hanging onto the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference.
For the Sabres, they find themselves in the middle of a 10-game losing streak. Believe it or not, the Sabres were actually holding onto a playoff spot before their opening loss on their current streak. Currently, they sit second last in the Eastern Conference, six points out of the final Wild Card spot.
On Monday morning’s edition of 32 Thoughts, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman wondered aloud and concocted a trade hypothetical that nobody saw coming:
“I am a danger when I have too much time to think. But I had some time on Sunday to think, and I was thinking about the Sabres, and I was thinking about Rick Tocchet and what he had to say on Saturday, and then reiterated on Sunday. I want to stress this is purely in my head. Who says no? [Dylan] Cozens and Bowen [Byram] for [Elias] Pettersson.”
The Canucks have long been linked to Bowen Byram in the past. Back when they were flirting with the idea of trading JT Miller, there was chatter that Byram and Alex Newhook were the ask in return. The trade obviously never went through, but the interest in Byram remains within the organization and this regime.
Byram is on pace to have a career year, as he currently has four goals and 14 assists for 18 points in 31 games. Byram has one year remaining on his two-year $7.7 million contract, paying him $3.85 million per season. The former Vancouver Giant defenceman will be an RFA this summer.
Cozens is a new player to surface. He has shown a lot of promise so far in his five seasons in the NHL, topping out at 31 goals and 67 points in 2022-23, which earned him his current seven-year, $49.7 million contract. However, in year two of seven of his deal, the right-shot centreman is struggling with just six goals and 13 points with a minus-seven rating in 31 games this season.
Now, both of these players are not even close to the same type of player that Elias Pettersson has already proven he can be. This author, at least, thought the trade proposal was a stretch, given the pedigree of the players involved.
However, that isn’t to completely rule out the Buffalo Sabres as a trade partner for the Vancouver Canucks. So, let’s take an in-depth look at the Sabres’ current roster and determine whether there is a deal to be made between the two clubs.
The Buffalo Sabres
So, let’s first eliminate the players the Sabres likely won’t be moving.
Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin are the team’s fundamental core pieces and likely won’t be moving. Now, whether they should be the faces of a franchise is a whole other question. Alex Tuch is playing well; he currently shares the team lead in points with Thompson, and being from the Buffalo, New York, area, he is one of the few players in the league that actually wants to play in Buffalo. So, those three can be ruled out as potential targets.
If they’re serious about trying to rebuild, trading Jack Quinn (23), JJ Peterka (22), Owen Power (22), Jiri Kulich (20) and Zach Benson (19) is also out of the question. Before the rumours, Cozens and Byram would have been included on this. However, it seems like if they are to trade players with value, these would be the two.
So, who’s left? That the Canucks would have an interest in?
First off, their goaltending situation is as good as it has ever been with Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen, and have Arturs Silovs serving as a reliable third-string. So, goaltending is out of the question. Like goaltending, the forward group is fairly competitive.
Jordan Greenway has been a power forward linked to Vancouver in the past; however, with Joshua on the books for three more seasons after this, the club already has that type of player. Ryan McLeod is a 25-year-old centre, but the Canucks are sound down the middle, with Pius Suter and Teddy Blueger in the bottom six. They also have heavy hitters like Beck Malenstyn in Kiefer Sherwood, as well as young offensive forwards like Peyton Krebs in Aatu Räty, Arshdeep Bains, and Max Sasson. Forwards like Sam Lafferty and Nicolas Aube-Kubel just wouldn’t move the needle for the Canucks.
Jason Zucker might be of interest to the Canucks. He was a potential forward target the club looked into at last season’s trade deadline. But his cap hit of $5 million is a little pricey, and as it is, the Canucks are fairly healthy along the wing.
We aren’t going out on a limp to say that this team’s glaring need is on the backend.
Obviously, Byram is high on the Canucks’ list, but we’ve spoken about him already and will likely cost a pretty penny. Byram would fit in well on this team, but what would his ceiling be? Friedman mentioned how Byram would want the opportunity to play as a team’s number one defenceman, and as long as Quinn Hughes is in town, that’s just not going to happen in Vancouver.
That leaves Mattias Samuelsson, Connor Clifton and Henri Jokiharju as NHL-calibre defencemen on the Sabres roster.
We can quickly nix the idea of Clifton and Jokiharju, as while they are on an NHL roster, the Canucks have enough depth defencemen who are struggling as is.
Samuelsson is a 24-year-old left-shot defenceman who has just one goal and one assist for two points with a minus-two rating in 16:41 minutes of average ice time per game. The 6’4″ 225-lbs defenceman half fits what the Canucks are looking for. He’s got the size and penalty-killing prowess – averaging 3:12 minutes of penalty-killing time this season and over two minutes in the past four seasons – the Canucks value on their back end, but he isn’t the greatest puck mover.
After being healthy scratched in early November, Samuelsson himself came out and said that he wants to improve his puck moving by being cleaner and smarter with the puck and by moving it up north. Acquiring him would not solve the Canucks’ inability to move the puck up the ice on the back end, but would help defensively.
Another gripe on Samuelsson is his contract. For his production and poor analytics this season, he’s not worth the contract he’s on. The Swedish defenceman signed a seven-year, $30 million contract that pays him $4.29 million per season for the next five seasons after this. That’s a high-cap hit with a lot of term for a player who has underperformed and got scratched by an already struggling Sabres club.
So, to answer the question, unless they can make a trade to acquire Byram that doesn’t cost them a player of Pettersson, the Sabres do not sound like great trade partners for the Canucks.
If Friedman can make up trade hypotheticals, why can’t we?
Suppose the Canucks moved their 2025 first-round pick with one of the three promising defensive prospects (Elias Pettersson, Sawyer Mynio or Kirill Kudryatsev) along with a roster forward like Nils Höglander. Would that be enough to acquire Byram from the Sabres?
I’m not sure that would be enough, with how Byram is playing this season and how he’s team-controlled for the next few seasons, given his RFA status.
The Canucks don’t have the prospect depth to entice a rebuilding team to take one of their lesser assets if they’re unwilling to move on from Jonathan Lekkerimäki or Tom Willander to help the current team. We aren’t saying they should move on from those two, either, but highlighting that prospects like Räty, Bains and Sasson aren’t enough to acquire a high-end player.
