The Vancouver Canucks made possibly the biggest trade of the season last week, trading away one of the best defensemen in the league, Quinn Hughes, to the Minnesota Wild. The return featured three young first-round selections in Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren, and a 2026 first-round pick on top of all of that.
Related: Grading Canucks-Wild Blockbuster Trade for Quinn Hughes
The key is that they’re all young. Brock Boeser, who is 28 years old (turning 29 in February), just signed a seven-year contract that carries an average annual value of $7.25 million with the Canucks on July 1. Included in the agreement was a No-Move Clause (NMC) for the first four years and then a 15-team Modified No-Trade Clause (M-NTC) for the last three.
Boeser cannot be moved out of Vancouver for the first four seasons, and by then, he’ll be 33 years old; he might’ve made a mistake signing that contract, and back in July, he didn’t even know it.
Years Leading Up
The Canucks took a long road to get to this point. Years of misery, one phenomenal season of making the playoffs, making it to the second round, but injuries came to haunt them, and they lost to the Edmonton Oilers, and now they’re back at the bottom of the league. Different coaches, different managers, and lastly, constantly trading core pieces and seeing them go.
Bo Horvat was traded to the New York Islanders at the age of 27 back in 2023. Horvat had 54 points at the time of the trade after playing in 49 games; he went on to have 16 more points with the Islanders, tallying 70 points in 79 games in total in 2022-3. Now, this season, before his lower-body injury, he was on a tear, as he had 31 points in 32 games, and can still be on pace to have one of the best seasons of his career.
Before the trade, though, there was a disconnect between Horvat and J.T. Miller in the locker room. The Canucks chose Miller over Horvat. Well, Vancouver ended up losing both of them, as back in January, Miller was traded to the New York Rangers in the season after he had a 103-point campaign. Miller went on to have 35 points in 32 games with the Rangers after the trade, but New York ultimately missed the playoffs.
Brock Boeser is congratulated by J.T. Miller of the Vancouver Canucks after scoring a goal (Photo by Derek Cain/Getty Images)
To add, just last season, head coach Rick Tocchet didn’t want to coach this team anymore and left. Now, with Hughes just recently traded, and with them probably having the weakest roster in the NHL, gearing up to fully tank for Gavin McKenna with more moves on the horizon, Boeser could be in for a long ride.
The Timeline Doesn’t Match
The Canucks are trending towards rebuild mode, if they aren’t there already. Rossi is 24 years old, Buium is 20, and Ohgren is 21, and those were the three players acquired in the Hughes transaction. Vancouver never committed to a full rebuild, but it appears they are now, and are finally prioritizing the future, which is something they desperately needed to do.
The thing is, rebuilds normally take a few years, maybe more. While the Canucks aren’t starting fresh since they have a couple of key pieces already, it’s still not going to be a quick walk in the park.
Boeser has nine goals and 17 points in 32 games this season and is on pace to finish with only 41 points. If he does, it’ll be the worst season of his hockey career so far to date. With the poor supporting cast around him, this is going to be the case for a while; he’ll put up more career lows in the future.
There’s always a trade that can happen, but that won’t come so easily. If the Canucks were to try to trade Boeser, they would have no leverage whatsoever because of all of the clauses in his contract. The first four years, it’s likely he’ll stay with that NMC to be a veteran presence on a young, rebuilding lottery team. Once that part of the deal passes, you have a 15-team list that Vancouver cannot trade him to, so the team will still be handcuffed.
By the time they’re competing again, Boeser will be 34 or 35 years old, and his contract will be up. In 2031, his production will most likely be on the decline after all the years in the slumps, and Vancouver will probably say thank you for your service, but we’re heading in a different direction.
Granted, he can always waive his NMC and NTC beforehand if he feels unhappy, as the front office is generally good at getting things done in a timely fashion. However, this will still be a big blow for him, as he was an unrestricted free agent over the summer. Boeser could’ve left for a contender and taken the same amount of money, like Nikolaj Ehlers did, leaving the Winnipeg Jets for the Carolina Hurricanes (the Hurricanes are first in the Metropolitan Division, and Ehlers has 24 points).
The Canucks will continue to sell, as Elias Pettersson, Kiefer Sherwood, Conor Garland, and more names have popped up as possible trade pieces. The fire sale is coming, and unfortunately, for Boeser, in the meantime, he’ll be stuck watching it all go down around him.
