If and when, with when being the key word, the Canucks trade winger Kiefer Sherwood, there really is no tried and true formula to when that might happen. Conventional thinking might lead one to believe the club would wait until as close to the March 6th NHL trade deadline as possible in order to increase leverage via the competition among clubs making a run for the Stanley Cup.
Then again, the current Canucks regime hasn’t necessarily followed that logic. They’ve either acted out of opportunism or desperation. While every situation is different, hockey operations prez’ Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin have found themselves outside of the conventional timing.
In two of the biggest deals, the sun and the moon and the stars have aligned around late January.
When the club traded captain Bo Horvat to the New York Islanders for fellow centre Aatu Raty, winger Anthony Beauvillier and a 1st-rounder in the 2023 NHL Draft, they did so on January 30th, 2023. Raty is still around with 83 NHL games under his belt, while Beauvillier is long gone. The 1st-round pick was productive, used a little more than a month later to acquire right-shot defenceman Filip Hronek from the Red Wings.
That took planning and forethought and worked out well, although Horvat has gone on to pace the Islanders in scoring and is now a member of Team Canada for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Too many centres requiring too much money and not enough salary cap played a big part in the move.
Two years and one day later, on January 31st, 2025, the club moved leading scorer and top centre J.T. Miller. The unhappy camper fetched damaged goods in since re-concussed 2nd-line centre Filip Chytil, current AHL defenceman Victor Mancini, and a conditional 1st-round pick that they flipped to the Penguins with four players for streaky winger Drew O’Connor and not very consistent D-Man Marcus Pettersson.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter how it affected an aging Rangers club — Miller is also an Olympian, by the way — it only matters how it impacted the Canucks. The toxic weirdness leading up to the deal and the aftermath left the team without centre depth while gradually tumbling it into a rebuild thought unfathomable just two years ago.
Feel free to predict an outcome for a Sherwood deal, but timing won’t be the ultimate catalyst. The Canucks will make a deal when they think they’ve found the right deal, potentially disregarding any future leverage that might become available with other suitors.
See the Quinn Hughes deal on December 12th, which we’ll leave alone for now in its entirety, although the devastation, in a way, and the disruption, are palpable. The jury is still out on the assets the Canucks acquired and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Keep in mind in the Sherwood case, there shouldn’t be any desperation and they can afford to be patient. The only thing that might lead to something kneejerk, is if the player is having a big impact on helping the club win games. That’s the last thing this franchise needs right now.
Earlier Canucks:
— Simmer’s 9; Monstrous Canucks/Kraken New Year’s Edition
