Canucks: No shortage of trade candidates if front office can find dance partners

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If your team isn’t winning, there are a few things you can do.

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Coaches can try new lines.

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Management can fire coaches.

Alternatively, you can shuffle your roster through trades.

Jim Rutherford, president of hockey operations for the Vancouver Canucks, said last week it was getting close to having to make some roster decisions.

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This roster is very similar to what he and his staff inherited from the Jim Benning administration. The coach has changed, but the team is still struggling as much as it was before Bruce Boudreau took over for Travis Green behind the bench.

Management could have opted to move on from Boudreau, but if the team struggled in a similar fashion under two coaches, they could come to the conclusion that it was not the coaches that needed to change, but the roster that needed to be shaken up. have a nature

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“We may get to a point where we have to consider trading one or two players, but that’s unthinkable in the offseason,” Rutherford said last week.

But the deal isn’t for itself, he added: “The only way we can do that is to trade that player and get something, at least stay the same as it is now, and get a few more young assets.”

So what kind of trades can they make? Here are four players who could entice another team with a trade.

Bo Hobatt

The captain leads the way for obvious reasons. He has scored a lot of goals even though his contract has expired.

Capped at just $5.5 million this season, Horvat will draw a lot of interest from teams looking for a power-play threat to win many faceoffs.

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And his cap hits can be further reduced by trading him through the third team.

He’s a very attractive trade chip, with 14 goals and 6 assists in 17 appearances.

As Rutherford himself pointed out, the more he plays, the more valuable Hobatt’s trade chips become. At this point, it seems a safe assumption that the Canucks captain will be traded rather than re-signed.

Tyler Myers

A giant defenseman is no longer an offensive threat. In his youth, especially in Buffalo, he was a big attacking threat from the blue line.

Currently, he is considered a reliable deep blue liner with 14 clean sheets and just 4 assists. And he was most of the time.

There are occasional chaotic moments.

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Of course, Myers isn’t paid like the Depth Blueliners, which makes his trade value harder.

Considering Myers is now 32, no other team is willing to give up a young defense in return, especially if the Canucks are unwilling to keep a portion of his salary.

Moving Myers will almost certainly be a sideways move.

At least one report this week suggested the Toronto Maple Leafs may be interested in the Blueliners, but league sources suggested the interest was lukewarm at best. rice field.

connor garland

The player the Leafs are probably more interested in is Conor Garland, but it’s less clear how he’ll fit under the salary cap.

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The intrepid winger is a fan favorite and has been a solid points producer with 3 goals and 6 assists in 16 appearances this season.

But how happy is he in Vancouver? There was second-half success on the ice, but the team failed to make the playoffs. And there was a lot of commotion on the ice.

Garland builds a house in the Boston area near where he grew up. He signed a five-year deal worth $4,950,000 a year with the Canucks before last season, but multiple sources have confirmed to the Post Media that he’ll comply with the move closer to home.

Coyote will be the ninth overall when he hits the market in the summer of 2021, as part of a deal that saw Garland and Oliver Ekman-Larson move to Vancouver after a delayed first-round pick. The right to pick was withdrawn from the Canucks.

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Can the Canucks crack open a pick for him? Rutherford feels that GM Patrick Allbin should look for players in trades instead of draft picks.

Jack Rathbone

This was supposed to be a year of opportunity for Jack Rathbone, but for the second season in a row he has been left out of training camp on the NHL roster and has seen limited playing time in the NHL.

Using his coaching knowledge of the Sedin twins and Yogi Svejkovski, he continues to work hard in practice, usually being one of the first skaters to hit the ice and the last to leave.

He clearly wants to make himself a better player.

But Rathbone is behind Riley Stillman and Kyle Burroughs on the depth charts, and if Tyler Dermott finally returns to the lineup after a concussion — although Dermott practiced Thursday wearing a no-contact sweater , was absent from Friday morning skating — Rathbone will be late, also a veteran.

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Do other NHL teams still see the former Harvard captain as an advantage? Can the Canucks turn his potential into value elsewhere? Does it stand out more that you weren’t able to do it?

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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