Canucks primed to trade forwards making $36 million and $27.5 million

The Vancouver Canucks aren't so much an "if" of NHL trade season before the March 6 deadline.

No, the question for the Canucks is more like "Who stays?" Because a heck of a lot of guys are candidates to be dealt.

Once Vancouver traded Quinn Hughes, it was clear this will be a full-on rebuild. That puts just about everyone into the picture.

Included in that are Conor Garland and Jake DeBrusk. ESPN's Greg Wyshynski names both as trade candidates in a new article released on Thursday.

They both have a lot of money still due to them, so they wouldn't be rentals for an acquiring team. Vancouver would need to find a real believer to pull such a trade off.

"Depending on how deep the trading goes in Vancouver, Garland and DeBrusk could be part of it," Wyshynski writes. "Garland hasn't even started the six-year, $36 million deal he signed in July. He has 25 points in 46 games for Vancouver. DeBrusk, 29, has a full no-move clause and five more years on his contract at $5.5 million AAV. He's not having the offensive season he had in 2024-25 (28 goals), but he's a solid winger that can slide into a team's middle six."

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The Canucks have to keep a few players, right? They've also been rumored to be shopping Elias Pettersson, who is also under contract for a bunch more years, and he's even more expensive than Garland and DeBrusk.

If players like these begin to move, it's essentially blowing the whole thing up in Vancouver, and not long after getting these contract extensions done, too.

This isn't what anyone with the Canucks wanted. But they're trending toward a full-blown rebuild that will need to succeed. If it doesn't, they could be in serious trouble for the years ahead.

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