Teams are calling Canucks to inquire about J.T. Miller trade availability: report

The Vancouver Canucks might be far from a playoff spot, but that doesn’t mean they’ll ever really be boring.

According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, it seems there’s at least some preliminary external trade interest in forward J.T. Miller.

“The one thing I just wanted to mention with Vancouver, just with Miller, there’s been a lot of talk about his situation,” Friedman said on Saturday’s “32 Thoughts” segment of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. “I don’t know where this is gonna go and there’s a chance it might not go anywhere. But I do think teams have called the Canucks and said ‘if we wanted to do this, what would you think about here?'”

Miller has 19 goals and 32 assists in 56 games this season, and is currently fourth on the team in points behind Petterrsson, the departed Horvat, and Quinn Hughes.

When the Vancouver Canucks signed Miller to a seven-year contract extension this past offseason, it signalled from the team’s front office that they were committed to winning.

Signing the 29-year-old winger to a $56 million deal that locked him up through 2029-30, Miller seemed to be key part of a Vancouver core that believed they were trending in the right direction back to being a consistent playoff team.

It’s safe to say that plan hasn’t exactly come to fruition this season, with Vancouver sitting sixth in the Pacific Division and some 15 points out from a playoff berth as of today.

And while many more moves are expected to come over the coming months as the team looks to rejig their roster, Vancouver already looks much different than it did at the start of the season.

Head coach Bruce Boudreau? Fired. Captain Bo Horvat? Traded to the New York Islanders. The Canucks’ playoff chances? All but gone in mid-February, and likely far earlier.

Miller himself has been the target of much criticism from the fanbase and the media this season, notably for his lack of effort on certain defensive plays, as well as the occassional on-ice outburst directed towards his own teammates.

With the team committing to such a long deal for Miller (that hasn’t even kicked in yet), like Friedman said, there’s a chance the reported trade interest “might not go anywhere.”

It’s a waiting game now, as the NHL trade deadline is set for March 3.

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