Canucks – Sherwood Postmortem
Now that it’s sank in a little; it seems a bit hard to believe the Canucks traded Kiefer Sherwood when they did, and to a team that might be kicking their ass in the Pacific Division standings for the foreseeable future, with or without Sherwood.
The San Jose Sharks are far ahead of the crumbling Canucks on the improvement trajectory; their rebuild centered around young superstar and 19-year-old Team Canada Olympian Macklin Celebrini.
And no, rationalize all you want, getting two second rounders in return, one in 2026 and the other in 2027, is not even close to getting a 1st-round pick in return for the late blooming, energizer forward. The Sharks will finish somewhere in the middle of the pack this season, playoffs or not, with a second-round NHL Draft pick to match. Next season they’ll likely finish even higher.
Could the Canucks have landed a first-rounder from somewhere else? We’ll never know, will we.
The trade deadline is March 6th and there’s a lengthy Olympic break between now and then. Would it have killed Vancouver management to wait a portion of that month-and-a-half to see if their leverage increased with teams wanting to improve their playoff chances? Hell, there’s a handful of clubs that don’t even know if they’re buyers or sellers right now.
A player on the rise offensively who brings playoff character and grit? Nahhh, who’d want that around the beginning of March as the seedings start falling into place.
Sherwood found his game in Vancouver while given the ice time and opportunity to mature and discover his scoring touch. Good for him.
“But I also give our staff a lot of credit, because they worked with him,” pointed out Canucks GM Patrik Allvin after the deal was made on Monday. “That’s how he was able to take his game to the next level, playing both special teams and obviously finding the consistency of scoring a lot of goals.”
Well, congratulations. Maybe a new business model: Canucks player development for other franchises.
That said, Vancouver actually tried to sign Sherwood to an extension months ago. For all of his kind words upon exiting the organization on Monday, apparently there wasn’t enough money around to make that happen. Or maybe he was just another guy ultimately wanting out.
Sherwood’s a happy guy, particularly because the Canucks pulled the trigger sooner than later. Why remains the big question. Put it this way; would have they done worse by waiting?
“You never know,” Allvin said about waiting for a better deal.
The club didn’t need to get any worse on the ice. They’re awful, and this decision falls right in line.
Earlier Canucks:
— Canucks Jim Rutherford; NHL’s Greatest Ventriloquist
Everyone is the smartest person in the room nowadays. You would have been the same person saying why didn’t they move sooner and they might have done way better. The media in this market love to stir up sh__t with the fan base
I’m an advocate of waiting until close to the deadline, particularly in cases like this one, a valuable asset who’s a pending UFA. The item that put me over the top to produce this story in the end was hearing a “pundit” say that the two 2nd-rounders were the same as a 1st rounder. Ahhhh, nope. Sometimes a club gets lucky, but they’re definitely not the same thing.