Canucks made the right trade at the wrong time... again
Filip Hronek is a really good defenceman, one that will help the Vancouver Canucks’ back end for years to come.
The 25-year-old blueliner has 38 points in 60 games this season — good for 19th among NHL defencemen. Hronek was averaging 21:32 of ice time per game with the Red Wings and has been utilized as a top-pairing defenceman in Detroit for four seasons.
The Canucks are paper thin on defence, particularly on the right side. So Hronek, who shoots right, fills a need.
So the Canucks are an improved team with the addition of Hronek, at least in the here and now.
That’s why it took so much to get Hronek, with the Canucks giving up the New York Islanders’ conditional first-round pick and their own second-rounder in this year’s draft. Top-four defencemen, particularly right-side blueliners in their mid-20s, don’t come cheap.
It was a reasonable deal to make for a lot of teams, but not one in the Canucks’ situation.
Vancouver is the sixth-worst team in the NHL by points percentage and has been realistically out of playoff contention for months. They’re about to miss the playoffs for a third straight season, and will have failed to qualify for the postseason in seven of the past eight years.
That’s not usually the profile of a trade deadline buyer.
In the past three drafts, the Canucks have picked just once in the first round, and once in the second round. Needless to say, their prospect cupboard is virtually bare because of it.
So even though the draft pick GM Patrik Allvin traded wasn’t their own — it’s the pick acquired in the Bo Horvat trade — the Canucks should be stockpiling draft picks, not trading them.
Hronek is the right player, but it’s the wrong time for this kind of move.
The Canucks have made this mistake twice in recent years, under former GM Jim Benning.
Benning traded a first-round pick to get J.T. Miller in 2019, following a season where the Canucks missed the playoffs by nine points. Miller has been outstanding for Vancouver, scoring 271 points in 261 games since the trade — and on a bargain contract.
But was the Miller deal a home run?
For a team ready to contend, it certainly would have been. But it didn’t move the needle for the Canucks, who are back to the drawing board four years later, with Miller set to turn 30 years old this month.
Benning traded a top-10 pick in 2021 to shed salary and add Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Conor Garland. That deal has most certainly blown up in their face, despite helping the Canucks field a more competitive lineup last season.
All three deals have one thing in common, they’re shortcuts taken by an impatient franchise that refuses to take a more realistic approach to building a Stanley Cup champion.
The result so far has been years of failure, aside from a one-year blip in 2019-20.
The Canucks are currently armed with just one pick in the first two rounds of the 2023 draft, which prospect experts say is loaded with talent. They do have two third-rounders and three fourth-rounders — for now anyway.
Can the Canucks win a Stanley Cup with this approach? It’s possible, but it’s not a path any recent Cup winner has taken.
It’s not that the Canucks should never trade draft picks. There is a time and a place for it.
When you’re a Stanley Cup contender looking to push yourself over the top, that’s when you trade a first-round pick. When you’re a good, young team in a playoff spot and are loaded with prospects on the way, that’s when you trade a first-round pick to help become a contender.
But for a perennial bottom-feeder with few high-end prospects in their organization? Well, it’s no wonder fans are furious and observers outside of Vancouver are confused.
It doesn’t make sense.
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