What were the Boeser offers and did Rantanen mess things up for Vancouver Canucks?
The Vancouver Canucks had a very quiet trade deadline day, surprisingly holding onto all their pending unrestricted free agents, including Brock Boeser.
That surprised many, as Boeser was viewed as one of the top rental wingers on the market. However, Patrik Allvin was blunt in explaining that there wasn’t a lot of interest in the 40-goal scorer.
The Canucks were reportedly after a first-round pick, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. That never seemed to materialize, so no trade was ever made.
While no trade made it over the line, there were interested teams, including the Carolina Hurricanes. They had a busy deadline day, dealing away star winger Mikko Rantanen — whom they acquired earlier in the season — in a huge deal with the Dallas Stars.
There are multiple reports on what discussions between the Hurricanes and Canucks looked like. The Hurricanes needed a top-six winger and had extra picks to play with after acquiring two firsts in the Rantanen deal.
“Some say Tulsky called Vancouver in the last half-hour of the deadline, offered up one of the two first-round picks from the Rantanen deal for Boeser,” said CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal on the Donnie & Dhali show.
While one of those first-round picks may have been on the table, it doesn’t appear like it would have been a one-for-one deal.
It seems as if the Hurricanes were trying to trade a first-round pick and possibly Jesperi Kotkaniemi for Boeser and one of the Canucks prospects, as explained by Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston. Allvin wanted to hang onto his team’s best young players and didn’t make that trade.
“There was no first-round pick offered,” added TSN’s Darren Dreger on Sekeres & Price today when discussing Boeser trades.
“If the Vancouver Canucks had a first-round pick on the table, Brock Boeser would no longer be a Canuck,” said Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli on Sportsnet 650. “I don’t think they got close to what they were looking for, and anyone who had reported or said that they got a first-round pick thrown at them late by the Carolina Hurricanes, just not true.”
Talks between the Canucks and Hurricanes ended up going nowhere. One factor in that was timing, as the Rantanen deal took up much of the Hurricanes’ resources.
“We were limited in what we could do until that trade closed, and that was held up because the trade couldn’t close until he got his contract done with his new team. That didn’t leave us a lot of time at the end of the day to try and get our deals done,” said Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky on local Carolina radio.
“We went looking, we were aggressive in pursuing a couple of players, ultimately things went a different way.”
Was Tulsky talking about Boeser? It would align with some of the reporting from the past few days.
Had the Hurricanes had more time, perhaps they could’ve worked with the Canucks on a Boeser deal and found a solution. As it happened, there was little time to get a deal done.
Another limiting factor was the Canucks desire to remain competitive this season. This group never wanted to take a step backward and would’ve likely wanted to flip that first-round pick.
This management group tends to flip strong draft picks earned through trade. They did so after dealing away both J.T. Miller and Bo Horvat. They would have likely wanted to do the same at this deadline, and making a last-minute deal would’ve made that tough.
The Rantanen saga ended up having an outsized impact on the NHL as a whole. It’s not often players of his calibre get moved, much less traded twice in the same season, and many teams waited for that deal to finish before moving onto their own business.
The result is that Boeser is still a member of the Canucks. The two sides will attempt to continue contract negotiations but barring one side making major concessions, there is likely no deal on the horizon.