With the trade deadline now having come and gone many Canucks fans are asking themselves just what is this franchise doing after one of the more puzzling days under this management’s leadership. In the weeks and months leading up to deadline day the club made several moves seemingly priming themselves to pull the trigger on a massive move for today, yet nothing happened. It’s not so much what they did as what they didn’t do. On one of the busiest hockey days of the year Vancouver went completely radio silent, not making a singular trade and then waltzing management out for a press conference where they said a whole lot of nothing? The Canucks have been major players in the trade market this campaign with their season seemingly having gone off the rails after early tensions between star players. They have been making all the right moves going into March with a Miller trade that saw them recoup a younger center with high upside and additionally a first round pick which they used flipped the Pittsburgh for an established veteran defenseman and a speedy depth forward. In making all these trades the club opened up their cap space as well allowing for a big splash where they could pick up a big name heading into the final stretch before the playoffs. This noise grew even louder when Boeser extensions hit a snag and seemed inevitable that at the very least the Brockstar was on his way out for something. However, deadline day has come and gone and nothing was done. It appears that this is the group that management wants to head into the postseason with, despite the poor on ice performance for the better part of the season.

Following the deadline, Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin met with the media where he made some puzzling comments to say the least. He stated that “he’d have to run out of here if you knew what the offers for Boeser were” leaving the imagination to assume… what? Does this mean that teams were low balling the franchise on their goal scoring winger? Or does this mean the team values him and wants to keep him? Many have assumed the former and that can’t be something you like to hear as a player. Many people around the media have jumped to say that this is a bluff and a negotiation tactic from the general manager, but I ask at what cost? I can only assume the comments have demoralized Boeser if anything and is just an odd comment to make and has been criticized rightfully so. Additionally he said that this isn’t a day to judge the management’s resume with the club, and yet THESE ARE THE DAYS TO JUDGE! Of course hindsight is 20/20 and it’s difficult to predict where this team will be sitting or even look like a year from now, but days like today are where management groups are make or break. The trade deadline, free agency, and draft day are the days where management makes the tough decisions on changing the roster and to say that this isn’t a deeply important day for the future  of this franchise is blatant blame deflecting. I don’t know if Canucks management slept in past their alarm this morning or what, but they dropped the ball immensely today and this won’t be forgotten by the fan base anytime in the near future.

https://x.com/Sportsnet/status/1898118860932534283

This management has been known for their tight ship they run with short leashes and not being afraid to call out players and even their own coaches to the media, but to what length? We all remember when this same group was practically waving the fired sign in coach Bruce Boudreau’s face for weeks before finally sending him packing. Just this season President Jim Rutherford aired Pettersson and Miller’s dirty laundry to the media, despite it being known already, that’s not something you air out about your own players especially after both have denied the rumours, effectively sand bagging them. They’ve let go of several members of their front office due to personal differences and it seems as though the way they’ve chosen to run this club is getting old and getting old quickly.

Between now and playoff time there is little that Rutherford and Allvin can do to change this roster. It is what it is now for this season and they won’t be able to make any big moves until the draft at the end of June. This leads us to believe they must have had some sort of plan in place that fell through. For my own sanity I need to believe this, and so let’s look at what management had hoped to happen prior to the deadline. Several times throughout the course of this season they have come out to state they believe in this group and this is a playoff team that they’ve constructed so the plan was undoubtedly to pick up a piece to help push themselves over the hump that they’ve seemingly been on for about 40 games of the season. I have to imagine the club at least took a run at securing Mikko Rantanen. Any trade I conjured up would of course be simply speculation, however they were apparently preliminary talks between Carolina and Vancouver involving a swap of Pettersson and Rantanen that hit a snag when a Vancouver prospect became a part of the ask. It’s clear that they were looking for a high end, top line forward that can slot in where Miller used to play, preferably a center. They would need someone who could help fill in after the potential absence of Brock Boeser in free agency. Martin Necas would have been a perfect early season candidate however he of course has since been traded to Colorado in exchange for Rantanen, leaving…who? Some interesting names for Vancouver to have been looking at would’ve been Cozens or Peterka from Buffalo. Cozens was traded to Ottawa earlier today and was said to have been part of the package Vancouver had preliminary talks about early in the season with Buffalo on an Elias Pettersson trade. Both players were unlikely to see playoff ice anytime soon within Buffalo making for perfect trade targets on a desperate franchise. Peterka would be a perfect slot in for Miller as he’s young with extremely high upside and could probably be acquired by Vancouver without having to give up a core roster player.

https://x.com/TheChargingBUF/status/1590869125886189569

Ultimately it’s hard to know just what exactly went on behind the scenes on deadline morning, but what we do know is that nothing was done to bolster this roster and now the team is teetering on the edge of playoff spot sitting just above purgatory where they’re too mid to progress forward. We can only hope that six months from now while we’re gearing up for pre-season hockey that the club has made some moves to improve the roster and propel this team into contendership.