What trades have been made using first round picks in the Canucks’ range in recent years?

The 2025 NHL Draft Lottery has been held, and the Vancouver Canucks have been awarded the 15^th overall pick.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Canucks will be making the 15^th overall selection in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft. Some prospect will be selected in that slot, no doubt. And that prospect will be selected using the pick  currently in the Canucks’ possession.

Most of the clues, however – the statements of the front office, the general shape of the team, and the almighty importance of the upcoming 2025/26 season – lead us to believe that the Canucks are more likely to trade that pick than to use it themselves.

If they do, it’ll almost certainly be done in the pursuit of at least one more top-six-capable forward.

And, in the interest of gauging the sort of value the Canucks could expect to return if they did move said pick, we thought it might be useful today to take a trip through past transactions and see in what sort of trades similar picks have been involved in recent years.

For the purposes of this thought experiment, we’re going to look at the two picks on either side of the Canucks’ 15^th overall slot and the slot itself – so 13OA, 14OA, 15OA, 16OA, and 17OA. And we’re going to take things all the way back to 2018, otherwise known as the Quinn Hughes Draft, to ensure we’ve got enough examples to draw some conclusions from.

Starting, in reverse-chronological order, with:

The 2025 NHL Entry Draft

We know the 2025 draft hasn’t happened yet, but some picks have already been dealt, and those picks have now been slotted, so we can talk about it for the purposes of this article

The Flames were so desperate to cut cap and move on from certain veterans in 2022 that they gave up a conditional first round pick to dump Sean Monahan on the Canadiens.

The condition was met when Calgary’s 2024 pick fell within the top-ten, which subsequently granted the Canadiens the higher of Calgary or Florida’s (previously-acquired) first rounders in this upcoming draft. That will be the Flames’ own 16^th overall.

A year-and-a-half later, the Habs flipped Monahan to the Winnipeg Jets for a first and a third. 

The 2024 NHL Entry Draft

This one’s pretty boring, and we’ll only comment here to mention that a lot of these trades are going to be fairly simple pick-swaps. We include them for the sake of wholeness, and to give some indication of the Canuck’s potential options to pick up or down, but don’t have much additional commentary to offer beyond that.

Of interest here is that San Jose used the 11^th overall pick to select Sam Dickinson, the defender currently being held up by the Canucks as a Tom Willander contract/bonus comparable. 

Leave it to Erik Karlsson to inject a little excitement into the mix. The second-biggest Karlsson trade of all-time involved a conditional first going back to San Jose that was top-ten protected. When it fell to 14OA, the Sharks picked it up – only to flip it in the transaction mentioned above.

The cap dynamics here don’t make it a very relevant case study for trades in the current year of 2025, but this is still one of the more important trades involving a mid-round first to ever occur.

The 2023 NHL Entry Draft

You might remember this one.

Within fairly short order, the Canucks flipped the pick they received back from the Islanders for Bo Horvat (more on that in a moment) to the Red Wings for Filip Hronek.

It’s interesting to note here that the Islanders’ pick was conditional and top-12 protected. Had it fallen within the top-12, it would have automatically converted to the Isle’s 2024 pick…which was 18^th overall. In the end, a bit of a wash.

We should also note that while Karlsson might be the biggest name attached to a mid-first trade on the list thus far, Hronek is probably the most effective player, and the largest asset value.

You knew this was coming, and we’ve already covered most of the interesting stuff in the previous section. But, hey, if you were wondering whether there was precedent for the Canucks acquiring a top-six centre for a mid-round first, well, they’ve kind of set that precedent themselves.

Would a Horvat-level talent suffice if the Canucks were to trade their current 15OA? Most would probably say that the answer is ‘yes,’ especially if we’re talking the Horvat of a couple years ago. 

The 2022 NHL Entry Draft

And if the Canucks wanted precedent for a younger centre with top-six potential being traded for such a pick, here it is a year earlier.

At the time of this trade, Kirby Dach was three years separated from being drafted at 3OA in 2019, but had already developed a reputation for being quite injury-prone. That trend has definitely continued in Montreal, but Dach still shows occasional glimpses of his former potential, and can produce when healthy.

Earlier that same day, Montreal acquired the 13OA in exchange for Alexander Romanov, a young LD with a knack for physicality. Really, this was a three-way trade in two parts. And while the Canucks aren’t currently in the market for any left-side defenders, this is more recent evidence of a mid-round first being dealt for some clear-cut, prime-aged, top-four talent.

When the Jack Eichel trade finally went down, the return seemed a touch underwhelming at the time. In retrospect, both sides are probably happy with what they got. Vegas got a Cup, and Buffalo got a foundational forward in Tuch and a pick that, although it was top-12 protected, still wound up being relatively high.

Just don’t go thinking this is a workable precedent for a 1C being traded for a mid-round first. There were A LOT of extenuating circumstances at play in this particular transaction.

The 2021 NHL Entry Draft

At the time, this was thought of as way too much to trade for Ristolainen, and Philadelphia was accused of falling into the classic ‘overpaying for a guy because he’s big and shoots right’ trap. But Ristolainen has resuscitated his career, to an extent, for the Flyers, and that brings the value of this trade back into line with the rest of the list. At his best, Ristolainen is a top-four RD, and those have pretty considerable value in this league – consistently. 

Another pick swap. This time, it’s 15OA for a first that is eight spots later, a second, and a fifth, which seems to be about the going rate.

The 2020 NHL Entry Draft

This one is so time-specific as to almost be anachronistic in the present context. The Maple Leafs desperately needed to cut cap, and Patrick Marleau had a no-movement clause that he was only willing to waive to go back to San Jose or to a team that would buy him out – so he could go back to San Jose.

The Hurricanes were willing to perform the buyout, and were paid with a top-ten protected first round pick for their troubles. This sort of thing won’t be happening anytime soon with the NHL set for a series of cap ceiling increases.

Also worth mentioning: the Hurricanes used this pick on Seth Jarvis, which probably qualifies as the best use of one of the selections we’ve mentioned in this article.

The most player-heavy trade on our list is one of many transactions involving current Canucks POHO Jim Rutherford and Kasperi Kapanen. This time, it was Rutherford reacquiring his former first rounder after Kapanen had previously been dealt to Toronto (in part) for Phil Kessel.

There are too many moving pieces here to make much sense of this one, but we will note that Evan Rodrigues ended up being the player with the most staying power in the set, by far.

The 2019 NHL Entry Draft

A mid-second to jump up three spots? Seems a bit rich, but not too out of line. Philadelphia had their eyes on Cam York, and made this move to secure him.

Otherwise, a boring year for our purposes.

The 2018 NHL Entry Draft

Oddly enough, the Flyers acquired the 14OA pick in two consecutive years. This time, it was the second of two first round picks traded from St. Louis for eventual-captain Brayden Schenn. The 2018 pick was top-ten protected, and wound up being the far more valuable of the two.

This is the richest price paid for any one player on our list (aside from Eichel), but it must be said that Schenn was 25 at the time and coming off consecutive 25-goal seasons.