Things appear to be falling apart for the Vancouver Canucks. They had a terrible start to the season. If you recall, they lost the first seven games of the regular season. The Canucks have rebounded since their awful start, however they're still out of a playoff position. It appears Bo Horvat and the organization can not agree to terms on a long-term contract, so it's likely that he will be traded away. Vancouver also has the Brock Boeser situation to take care of. It seems likely that Boeser will be traded out of Vancouver as well after he was going to be a healthy scratch on Hockey Fights Cancer Night. Boeser played the game anyways due to injury but he was upset with the fact he would be a healthy scratch.
On top of all of those issues, Vancouver is in salary cap trouble and they desperately need some flexibility. Because of this, other Vancouver players have been rumored to be traded away. Tyler Myers name has been in trade talks for a while now. So has Connor Garland. In order to partial retool this team, Vancouver might be forced to take lousy returns on players like Myers, Garland, Pearson, Ekman-Larsson and Boeser.
Ekman-Larsson and Myers have no trade clauses in their contract so it could prove tougher to move these players. However trading away these veteran forwards would give Vancouver the much need cap flexibility it is searching for. Additionally, it has not worked out with the roster they have anyways. So you could see some players simply traded away for not much in return.
It looks like this is a season to forget already for the Vancouver Canucks. Trading away multiple veteran players will not make this roster better this season either. However, it is not all bad news in Vancouver. They have two stud players in Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes that they can build around. So the next few seasons in Vancouver might not be as competitive as they'd like but this could turn into a quick turnaround. Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin has some big decisions to make moving forward.
Earlier this year Jim Rutherford said his team wasn't in need of a "rebuild" but in need of a "build" insinuating that there wasn't even a foundation in place in Vancouver to build from. Rutherford and Alvin will have the difficult job of trying to undo the multitude of mistakes made by Jim Benning and the previous Canucks' regime.
