Canucks "trying to establish the market value" of trade pieces: report

Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports

The Vancouver Canucks, winless in seven games to start the 2022-23 season, are sending out feelers across the league.

The Canucks have an 0-5-2 mark and sit at the bottom of the Pacific Division and Western Conference, as well as the overall NHL standings.

It has them gauging the trade value on all but their untouchable players, which apparently doesn’t include captain Bo Horvat, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Freidman.

Horvat can become an unrestricted free agent at season’s end.

“I think when you’re in the kind of stretch that they’re in it’s very hard to say ‘we’re going to reward a player with a big extension whether or not he’s deserving.’ But I do think right now that the Canucks have a couple of untouchables,” Friedman said on The Jeff Marek Show on Thursday. “I’m not interested in causing a firestorm, I’m just stating this as a fact, right now I don’t think Horvat is one of them.

“I think what they’re doing right now… it doesn’t mean they’re going to trade him or anyone else… but I think what they are doing is they are trying to establish the market value of some of their players.”

"Vancouver showed in the summer that they can go from "this is going nowhere" to "this is getting done" very fast."@FriedgeHNIC weighs in Bo Horvat's contract situation with @JeffMarek.#Canucks pic.twitter.com/dZaYmNlPOI

— Sportsnet 590 The FAN (@FAN590) October 27, 2022

Horvat is in the final season of a six-year, $33 million contract signed in 2017.

If and when it expires, he’s able to hit the open market.

“I think there’s a stalemate there right now. Vancouver showed in the summer that they can go from ‘this is going nowhere’ to ‘this is getting done’ very fast,” Friedman said. “Everything I think about when it comes to Bo Horvat has that in the background. Vancouver kept telling J.T. Miller ‘no, no, no, no, no’ and then out of nowhere they said yes. I think about that all the time. That’s number one.

“Number two, I think it’s always harder to do it when you’re going in a stretch like that, and it’s very clear to me from what the Canucks have said publicly and what I think they’re out there doing privately, that everything is under review.”

Horvat is in his fourth season as Canucks captain and has six points (four goals, two assists) in seven games this season.

The 27-year-old has 372 points (174 goals, 198 assists) in 579 games in the NHL, all with Vancouver.

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