Four potential trade destinations for Canucks’ Brock Boeser

The Vancouver Canucks have signed three pending unrestricted free agents since the calendar flipped to February, but the biggest news is the high-profile player that was omitted from the recent bout of business.

With less than two weeks remaining until the March 7 trade deadline, longest-tenured Canuck Brock Boeser remains without a contract extension.

The soon-to-be-28-year-old is in the final year of a three-year, $19.95 million contract that he signed ahead of the 2022-23 season. His tenure with his draft team has been up and down and that is particularly true since he signed the bridge deal.

His 2022-23 season, much like the rest of the team, started bleakly and it culminated in the near healthy-scratch of the winger in December 2022. He remained in the lineup, but the fractured relationship between Boeser and the Canucks led to the beginning of trade speculation.

But the old adage is true — winning solves everything. Boeser and the Canucks enjoyed a resurgent season in 2023-24, one in which the winger scored 40 goals and the Canucks won the division for the first time since 2015.

Hitting career-highs in points and goals wasn’t enough for Canucks management to commit to Boeser long-term in the off-season and the speculation has spilled into this year. An early-season concussion, for which he missed seven games, derailed his very achievable plans to match his production from last year, and he has yet to fully right the ship. Boeser has 18 goals and 35 points in 48 games — on pace for the third-highest goals total of his career — but he’s certainly not scoring at the same clip and hasn’t been the same game-breaker he’s shown he’s capable of being.

All of this has led the Canucks to an impasse of sorts. The team is sitting precariously in the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference, leaving them in the murky middle between buyer and seller.

Do they keep their own player as a rental and risk losing him in the open market? Do they trade him now and risk crashing out in the first round of the playoffs, or worse: Accept defeat and fail to meet the post-season entirely?

For his part, Boeser has been steadfast in his desire to remain with the Canucks, but is also accepting of the reality that an extension in Vancouver might not happen.

“I’ve said how much I love it here and I’m more than willing to come back,” Boeser said to Postmedia‘s Patrick Johnston on Monday. “Obviously, I’d love to re-sign but if that’s not the case, go to UFA and be just fine. That’s made me less stressed and just focussing on helping the team win.”

Whichever road the Canucks choose, Boeser is bound to attract suitors from across the league. Here are four teams that could benefit from having a player like him join its roster. 

Minnesota Wild

Starting with perhaps the most obvious destination, there are plenty of reasons why Boeser seems like a good fit for the Wild.

Aside from the fact it would be a homecoming for Boeser (we’ll get to that shortly), he fills a hockey need for the Wild. Despite sitting third in the Central Division, four points ahead of the Colorado Avalanche with one game in hand, the Wild have just a plus-five goal-differential.

Since star winger Kirill Kaprizov was injured on Jan. 26, the Wild were shut out on back-to-back nights heading into the 4 Nations break and to make matters worse, general manager Bill Guerin said on Saturday that Kaprizov may be sidelined for longer than expected.

Without their perennial 40-goal man, the Wild’s top-six doesn’t generate nearly as much offence. As it stands, Boeser’s point total would be fifth-highest on the Wild, a noticeable improvement on the right wing and could provide a boost to their struggling, Kaprizov-less power play that’s sitting 24th in the league at 19.2 per cent.

Boeser would also provide a jolt in the post-season. It’s been nearly a decade since the Wild won a playoff round and with 12 points in seven post-season games with the Canucks in 2024, Boeser could be the sparkplug needed to get Minnesota over the finish line.

It helps, too, that the Wild play spitting distance from Burnsville, Boeser’s hometown. It certainly decreases the odds that his acquisition would be a pure rental, if the Wild can work out the number on a long-term extension.

The interest in Boeser has been there for the Wild for quite some time. Guerin hoped to make a trade work when the forward was placed on the block in 2022-23, per The Athletic‘s Michael Russo, but couldn’t hack it within the Wild’s cap situation. It would take significant number-crunching, and perhaps willingness on the part of the Canucks to retain some salary, but with the cap expected to rise significantly over the next three seasons, it’s possible that Minnesota takes a run at the hometown talent.

Florida Panthers

The defending Stanley Cup champions are no strangers to taking big swings in pursuit of greatness and with their competitive window as wide as ever, there’s no reason to believe that this year will be any different.

Per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Panthers are in need of a right-shot defenceman and Seth Jones fits the bill, but how does a Matthew Tkachuk injury factor into their deadline plans? Injured at the 4 Nations Face-Off, there’s concern that Tkachuk’s ailment could be long-term, though coach Paul Maurice said on Monday that he expects the left-winger to play for the team again this year — whether that’s in the regular season or playoffs is still to be determined.

In the meantime, is it possible that this club also pursues a top-six winger like Boeser, who could reasonably supplement some of the offence in Tkachuk’s absence?

Boeser wouldn’t outright replace Tkachuk, who has twice eclipsed 100 points and is a point-per-game in four consecutive seasons, but he’s on pace for 27 goals and can provide some goal-scoring ability to complement the Panthers’ big guns.

Last season’s 57-goal man Sam Reinhart has the first-line right-wing spot cemented, but Boeser could be an upgrade on Evan Rodrigues, who has performed well for the Panthers as a secondary scorer but has never eclipsed 43 points in a season — something Boeser has done seven times and is on pace to do again this year.

This deal could be lucrative for the Canucks going the other way. Florida currently still holds its first-round pick for 2026, a draft class largely believed to be deeper than 2025. If the Canucks can fetch a first-rounder for Boeser — and the Mikael Granlund trade package suggests that is very doable — then having an additional 2026 first-round pick can be an incredible asset, especially if the Canucks decide to make additional moves at the deadline.

Los Angeles Kings

The Canucks aren’t a team who fear intra-divisional trades. See last season’s Elias Lindholm-Andrei Kuzmenko trade with the Calgary Flames or the shipping of Vasily Podkolzin to the Edmonton Oilers earlier this season. For that reason, it’s not crazy talk to consider a trade between the Canucks and their divisional rival the Kings.

So how would Boeser fit? For starters, he could assist in sparking their dismal power play, which sits at 15.2 per cent and is good for second-worst in the Western Conference, behind only bottom-feeding Anaheim. Boeser has 14 power-play points so far this season, hit a career-high of 25 last season and has never dipped below 14 in a full year. He’s also got 40 power-play goals since the 2021-22 season, despite missing some games in nearly every year in that time.

Much like the Wild, the Kings are also in search of a difference-maker come the post-season. They haven’t won a playoff round since winning the Stanley Cup in 2014 and the Oilers have bounced them from the playoffs three years running. If they do face a familiar foe this spring — entirely possible given the makeup of the Pacific Division — Boeser has some experience scoring against the Oilers, with 10 goals and six assists against Edmonton since the start of the 2023-24 season.

For the Canucks, the Kings have some draft capital, but more intriguingly they have some solid, if not underused, young players that might be of interest to Vancouver. Might they try to nab 23-year-old Alex Laferriere, which would free up a spot for Boeser on the Kings’ second line? Or perhaps Brandt Clarke, the defenceman selected eighth overall in 2021 but has not been given runway with the Kings and has spent the majority of the season playing fourth-line forward or sitting in the press box?

The Kings are also strapped for cap space so would likely have to send a player out to make the deal work. Either way, this could be an interesting dark-horse candidate to land Boeser.

Utah Hockey Club

This one could also be a bit far-fetched, especially considering they’re actively competing with the Canucks for the second wild-card spot in the West, but this is a team that could benefit from a player with Boeser’s acumen and at this stage of his career.

While in Arizona, it felt like this team was in rebuild purgatory, drafting promising young players with talent but no results to show for it. In Salt Lake City, now with an owner willing to invest in the team, Utah has taken a step forward this season and is closer to the playoffs than it has been since the 2020 bubble.

Utah is in the stage of a rebuild where it requires experienced, skilled players rather than draft picks — of which it has much to spare — and Boeser could supplement the leadership group both in experience and talent.

Boeser has also played with top-line winger Nick Schmaltz, developing chemistry on the ‘CBS’ line at the University of North Dakota alongside Drake Caggiula, and led the Fighting Hawks to an NCAA championship in 2016.

With just under $6 million of projected cap space ahead of the deadline, Utah could reasonably make the numbers work on a Boeser trade. Of course, since the team isn’t in a playoff position, it makes little sense to acquire Boeser as a rental, so general manager Bill Armstrong will likely only make this trade if he believes his team can sign Boeser to a long-term extension. With some contracts coming off the books for Utah at the end of this season, it’s possible it has the cash to do that.