The final countdown is on the clock for the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline – Friday at 3 pm ET – and it’s looking like any big decisions out of the Vancouver Canucks front office may just come down to the wire this year.
Over the past few years, there have been a handful of trade deadline transactions out of Vancouver that have made waves around the league, and some that have gone under the radar. Today, we’ll be looking at the recent trade deadline moves of the Canucks, and how they worked out (or didn’t work out) with the benefit of hindsight.
2024 Trade Deadline
Canucks Receive
- Elias Lindholm (C)
Calgary Flames Receive
- Andrei Kuzmenko (LW)
- Hunter Brzustewicz (D)
- Joni Jurmo (D)
- 1st-round pick in 2024 (Matvei Gridin)
- Conditional 4th-round pick in 2024 (from New Jersey via the Curtis Lazar trade)
It’s hard to believe this trade was only a year ago. The Canucks were all-in on a push to the playoffs. They did not make it to the Cup finals, but winning a round and taking the Edmonton Oilers all the way to a Game 7 is still quite admirable in my books. The Canucks have been brought back down to Earth since then.
This trade was announced just before the 2024 All-Star Game in Toronto, which already had JT Miller, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser and Thatcher Demko representing the Canucks. With Lindholm added to their ranks at the game, it felt like an all-out takeover.
It’s not a reach to say that Elias Lindholm did not work out the way everyone hoped in Vancouver. They weren’t able to re-sign him, which wasn’t likely to begin with. As a true rental, it was a decent move. He was injured shortly after his start with the Canucks and he never quite reached the level of production that was hoped, although he did have 10 points in 13 playoff teams with the club. Elias Lindholm was just fine in the end.
As for Kuzmenko, he was just flipped to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for forwards Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee. It’s looking like his rookie breakout year with 74 points was an outlier and will not be replicated, but he still has value as a middle-to-bottom six forward.
Now, being the most recent trade deadline, it’s hard to make any decisive calls on the prospects and picks involved in this trade just yet. Brzustewicz was taken in the third round in 2023 via the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers. Looking back, it might have been too hasty to give him away. Joni Jurmo has played most of his career thus far in Finland and has split his time between the AHL and ECHL this year, but he’s only 22.
The first-round 2024 pick ended up being 28th overall, with which the Flames selected Russian winger Matvei Gridin. Gridin signed an entry-level deal with the team and is currently playing in the QMJHL. In 2024, he was a USHL All-Star and led the league in scoring. Success in juniors does not always translate to the NHL, but, as it stands, Gridin certainly looks like a promising pick-up for the Flames.
This was the only trade the Canucks made close to the 2024 Trade Deadline.
2023 Trade Deadline
There’s a lot to unpack here. The Canucks were bonafide sellers at the 2023 deadline, which saw the infamous firing of head coach Bruce Boudreau in favour of current coach Rick Tocchet. The Canucks managed to limp to a sixth-place finish in the Pacific Division this year, but how do their deadline moves measure up two years on?
Canucks Receive
- Anthony Beauvillier (F)
- Aatu Räty (C)
- Conditional 1st-round pick in 2023 (traded to Red Wings for Filip Hronek – selected Axel Sandin-Pellikka)
Oh, Tito. Beauvillier has also been floated as a tradeable player recently. Becoming a perpetual deadline acquisition is a little bit like “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride”. The Canucks have enough forward depth that Beauvillier isn’t the one who got away by any means. Räty increasingly looks like the real asset in return. He’s easily one of the strongest players on the Abbotsford Canucks, and this skill and progress has shown in his handful of games up with Vancouver thus far. Plus, his proficiency in the faceoff dot gives him a boost.
The Canucks quickly flipped that first-round conditional pick to the Detroit Red Wings – we’ll explore this more down below.
New York Islanders Receive
- Bo Horvat (C)
Chances are you remember exactly where you were when this trade happened. The winter of 2023 was a bad time, to say the least.
Bo Horvat is the only recent trade deadline loss that really still gives this author pause. Of course, Horvat wasn’t happy with the team, which had its fair share of drama on the ice and behind the scenes during this time. Ultimately, the Canucks didn’t have the cap flexibility to sign him. Low-balling and backing yourself into a corner is never a situation you want to be in with your team captain. They weren’t willing to make the moves necessary to sign him – fair enough, for the time, but Horvat’s presence would be helpful right about now.
If Horvat could have and wanted to stay for an appropriate dollar amount, most Canucks fans would have been happy. We could have easily seen him gracefully handing over the captaincy to Quinn Hughes without issue – something veteran John Tavares did with Auston Matthews on the Toronto Maple Leafs just last year. The reality is that the Canucks had the difficult choice between Bo Horvat and J.T. Miller for a top-six centre, they banked on Miller, and now they have neither. Hindsight is 20/20.
Canucks Recieve
- Vitali Kravtsov (RW)
New York Rangers Receive
- Will Lockwood (RW)
- 7th-round pick in 2026
Lockwood was and still is an AHL regular, who’s now in the Florida Panthers system. Kravtsov left the Canucks in free agency and returned to the KHL in Russia. It wasn’t a terrible loss, but don’t consider one less player in the Canucks pool a win. We won’t even know who the late-round draft pick involved will be until next year.
Vancouver Canucks Receive
- Josh Bloom (LW)
Buffalo Sabres Receive
- Riley Stillman (D)
In the last year, Josh Bloom won the Memorial Cup, has two Abbotsford Canucks games under his belt, and is currently with the Kalamazoo Wings in the ECHL. Riley Stillman played up with the Canucks, but between Buffalo and now the Carolina Hurricanes, he likely won’t pan out as a full-time NHLer. Stillman is five years older than Bloom, and a solid call-up option for defence is currently fulfilled by Elias Pettersson (D-Petey), so this trade is fine in retrospect.
Vancouver Canucks Receive
- 3rd-round pick in 2023 (Sawyer Mynio)
Toronto Maple Leafs Receive
- Luke Schenn
We enjoyed Luke Schenn’s time in Vancouver, so please do not take this as a personal slight against you, sir, but the last thing the Canucks blue line needs is a fading shutdown defenceman entering the twilight years of his career. Just this week, he became a deadline acquisition again when he was traded from the awful Nashville Predators to the only marginally less awful Pittsburgh Penguins.
This third-round pick, however, would end up turning into Sawyer Mynio. The young defenceman served as the captain of the WHL’s Seattle Thunderbirds before he was traded to the Calgary Hitmen, and his entry-level contract goes until the end of next season. He’s a prospect to keep an eye on and earned the fifth spot in our CanucksArmy midseason prospect rankings!
Vancouver Canucks Receive
- Filip Hronek (D)
- 4th-round pick in 2023
Detroit Red Wings Receive
- 1st-round pick in 2023 (via the Islanders in the Horvat deal)
- 2nd-round pick in 2023
A consistent top-pairing right-defenceman partner for Quinn Hughes was not a want but a need. This is an instantaneous “win” for the Canucks. It’s hard to picture the current Canucks defence without Hronek, whether it’s through his powerful slapshot or quiet underrated support of his fellow blue liners. Although there are concerns about Hronek’s longevity, considering his repeated injuries, his ability to play to his contract in an 82-game season shouldn’t be a concern.
With their fourth-round pick, the Canucks picked up centre Ty Mueller, currently playing in the NCAA.
Most interestingly, the first-round pick via the Islanders became defenceman Axel Sandin-Pellikka for the Red Wings. Pellikka was named the best Swedish-born defenceman in the SHL in 2024 and is still playing overseas. The 19-year-old freshly signed his ELC with Detroit in May of last season.
Losing Pellikka might just sting for both the Islanders and Canucks in the long-term if he turns out to be a shiny NHL-calibre defenceman, but when it comes to making the most out of Quinn Hughes’ prime years, Filip Hronek is the preferred player here.
Vancouver Canucks Receive
- 4th-round pick in 2024
New Jersey Devils Receive
- Curtis Lazar
We’ve already seen this fourth-round pick, too. This was the same pick that the Canucks sent to the Calgary Flames in the Elias Lindholm. It ended up with the Philadelphia Flyers, who took Finnish prospect Heikki Ruohonen. So far, this is turning out to be a bit of a “nothing-burger” in terms of what it means for the Canucks.
Vancouver Canucks Receive
- Future considerations
New York Rangers Receive
- Wyatt Kalynuk
Who amongst us hasn’t been traded for future considerations? Kalynuk is now playing professionally overseas in Finland, so the Rangers have nothing, and the Canucks…also have nothing.
Outlook on the Recent Canucks Deadlines
The Canucks have a considerable pool of prospects to show, either junor-league hopefuls like Sawyer Mynio, or AHL regulars like Aatu Räty who has already seen their debuts with the parent club. Just by glancing at the last few years, the Canucks have been successful at the trade deadline – if anything, the true losses to their roster in recent years have been in free agency. Chris Tanev, Tyler Toffoli, and Jacob Markstrom, for example, all signed elsewhere in 2020 and were considered significant losses to this day. That might tell us about the direction the team should take in negotiations with pending UFA Brock Boeser, but sellers remorse is rarely talked about, as much as buyers remorse.
Where to Go From Here?
It’s hard to determine what the Canucks might do this year, based on their recent patterns at the deadline. After all, the current management era of Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin only began midway through the 2021-2022 season.
It doesn’t seem like this version of the Canucks are a win-now team. If they want to say they are, that’s good and fine and all. For morale reasons, you need something to play for, even if you’re pretending to an extent. But things are not looking optimistic for any kind of postseason run. If the Canucks do manage to secure a Wild Card slot, it’s hard to picture the team the way they look right now winning a playoff round.
With Carson Soucy traded on Thursday to the New York Rangers and Brock Boeser and Derek Forbort both still on the trading block, the team may just end up looking quite different after this weekend.
The trade deadline is always one of the most stressful weeks in the NHL, and the Canucks have some more decisions to make before Friday’s 12 pm PST trade deadline. We’ll see if they make any moves to add to this list of recent trade deadline moves.
