Trade Talks Cooling For Conor Garland
After yesterday’s report that the New York Islanders were in serious discussions to acquire Conor Garland from the Vancouver Canucks, no completed trade has emerged. In a subsequent update from Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News, the Islanders may be pulling away from their pursuit of Garland.
Rosner stated that the Canucks are active on multiple fronts regarding Garland, suggesting that a bidding war might be starting. Additionally, Rosner believes that Vancouver’s asking price for Garland may be too much for the Islanders to stomach.
New York still has time to reconsider Garland or seek a more affordable solution. There’s no question the team could use additional offense, especially on the powerplay. Garland has scored 82 goals and 221 points in 370 games since joining the Canucks in 2021, with 55 of those points coming on the power play.
Stars Acquire Tyler Myers From Canucks
12:20 p.m.: Both teams have officially announced the deal. Dallas opened up a roster spot yesterday by placing Roope Hintz on injured reserve, so no corresponding move is required.
11:23 a.m.: The Stars and Canucks are reportedly in agreement on a trade that will send defenseman Tyler Myers to Dallas, per Darren Dreger of TSN. Vancouver will receive Dallas’ 2027 second-round pick and 2029 fourth-round pick in return while retaining 50% of Myers’ $3MM cap hit through 2026-27, TSN’s Pierre LeBrun adds.
The Stars are all-out buyers and entered the deadline with a clear need to add right-shot depth. It was a foregone conclusion that they’d add one, whether it was Myers, who Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK says had the Stars as his first choice to waive his no-movement clause, or the Flyers’ Rasmus Ristolainen, who David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period said last night that Dallas was making a push for.
Dallas has been running lefty Miro Heiskanen on his offside on their top pairing with Esa Lindell, something they’ve done frequently during Heiskanen’s career. Behind him, their right-shot options consist of Nils Lundkvist, Ilya Lyubushkin, and Alexander Petrovic. There isn’t a clear-cut top-four option among that group, at least by a Stanley Cup contender’s standards. Myers may not fit that bill at this stage of his career, either, but he’s used to logging the most minutes of the group and at least gives them a much-needed additional depth option in case of an injury.
Myers, 36, doesn’t do a ton on the score sheet this late in his career. In 57 games this season, he has just one goal and seven assists with a 1.4% shooting rate. That’s a career-low 0.14 points per game for a defender who logged a fair bit of power-play time in his prime thanks to his booming slap shot. That’s been accompanied by a -25 rating as he logs over 20 minutes a night as the struggling Canucks’ #2 righty behind Filip Hronek.
Under the hood, Myers hasn’t graded out well for quite some time. Granted, he’s been used more as a shutdown threat than a two-way one at 5-on-5 since initially signing with Vancouver back in 2019. Still, Myers controlled just 48.5% of shot attempts, 47.6% of expected goals, and 47.4% of scoring chances over seven years with the Canucks. That’s in sharp contrast to a player like Ristolainen, who’s been a net positive on the possession quality front for the last four years in Philadelphia but came with a much higher acquisition cost and cap hit, which would have limited Dallas’ maneuverability to make additional moves before Friday afternoon.
It’s certainly a cap-mindful pickup that still leaves the Stars with just over $5.5MM in cap space after moving Tyler Seguin to season-ending long-term injured reserve. Myers also gives the Stars a relatively low-cost veteran option for next season, ideally to slot in on the third pairing, with Petrovic slated for free agency and Lyubushkin checking in as a potential buyout or waiver candidate in the last year of his deal at a $3.25MM cap hit. Every dollar is crucial as the Stars look to open up space to get an extension done for pending RFA Jason Robertson.
For the Canucks, it’s not a particularly strong return for a minute-muncher like Myers with a year and a half of retention. They also didn’t have much leverage, as Myers boasted a full no-movement clause. There were comparable offers on the table, namely from the Red Wings, but Myers preferred to wait and see whether the Stars would match with a similar offer, Dhaliwal reports.
In the short term, the most direct beneficiary of Myers’ departure is 2023 first-rounder Tom Willander. The right-shot rookie now steps into Myers’ vacated spot alongside Marcus Pettersson on the second pairing and, after recording 16 points through his first 48 NHL contests, will be in line for a sharp rise in ice time from the 15:33 he’s averaged per game to date in the final month-plus of the regular season.
As the Canucks navigate the last two days before the trade deadline, they now have just one retention slot remaining. One is still being used up on Ilya Mikheyev through the end of this season.
Image courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.
Canucks Place Thatcher Demko On LTIR, Pierre-Olivier Joseph To IR
The Vancouver Canucks shared that goaltender Thatcher Demko has been placed on long-term injured reserve, and defenseman Pierre-Olivier Joseph has also landed on injured reserve, retroactive to March 2. Later on, GM Patrik Allvin announced that Victor Mancini has been recalled from AHL Abbotsford in a corresponding transaction (Twitter Link).
The star netminder’s ailment is well known to this point, as he’s not played since January 10 unfortunately dealing with ongoing hip issues. On the other hand, Joseph left last night’s action with an undisclosed injury, and he’ll be forced to miss Vancouver’s next four contests at least.
Thomas Drance of The Athletic added that the plan is for Demko to go on season-ending LTIR pending league approval. For now the club gains $3.82MM in cap space, but assuming the placement is approved the Canucks will have $5MM in relief. Prior to the Olympic Break it was already confirmed that the Canucks were shutting down Demko for the rest of the year to undergo surgery on the hip.
As his fate was already known, the cap savings could come in handy shortly if the Canucks take on any unfavorable expiring contracts as part of their sell off. Sitting dead last in the league, Demko’s three year extension worth $8.5MM per season takes effect next season just in time for what could be hardcore rebuilding days ahead. Suffice to say, it’s a contract which shows the dramatic turn for the Canucks compared to last summer’s optimism. His campaign comes to an untimely end after just 20 games played, winning eight.
Owner of another contract which no longer aligns with the team’s new direction, Kevin Lankinen will hold things down between the pipes for the time being. The 30-year-old received an extension worth $4.5MM per year, running through 2029-30. The Finn is no stranger to backstopping a non-contender as he broke into the NHL with the Blackhawks in 2020. Lankinen’s stats this year are career worsts at a .874% save percentage and 3.69 goals against average, but his Canucks are the worst NHL team by a considerable margin.
Coming back up, Mancini has been in the AHL for just under a month, last playing January 27 against San Jose. With no stats other than a fighting major in 10 games as a Canuck this season, he’s been more productive for Abbotsford, with 12 points in 34 games. The 23-year-old will be a restricted free agent this summer, and he figures to have more opportunities with the Canucks next year.
Roster management aside, hopefully Demko can use the time to finally heal up with brighter days ahead. Still just 30, the California native is nothing short of elite when healthy. He’ll have to look ahead to 2026-27, but Joseph could return as soon as March 12 against Nashville, eager to prove something as his contract expires this summer with restricted free agent status.
Islanders Linked To Conor Garland
4:24 p.m.: Myers is no longer part of conversations between the Islanders and Canucks, Rosner reports. Whether that’s because he invoked his no-movement clause is unknown.
3:11 p.m.: The Islanders are in “serious discussions” to acquire winger Conor Garland from the Canucks, Stefen Rosner of NHL.com reports. Defenseman Tyler Myers could also be headed to the Isles in the deal if he’s willing to waive his no-movement clause, something that’s been holding up a deal ever since he was removed from Vancouver’s lineup to avoid an injury risk last week.
The Isles aren’t alone in their push to acquire Garland this week, particularly among their competitors in the Eastern Conference playoff race. CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal had the Isles’ pursuit of Garland this morning, along with the Bruins and Senators as interested parties. As we covered over the weekend, there’s a connection between Garland and Sens head coach Travis Green, who used to oversee him in Vancouver.
Nonetheless, Rosner’s reporting indicates the Islanders have at least emerged as frontrunners, even if it’s not a done deal. The Isles have been looking to add players with term after adding Ondrej Palat and Carson Soucy in a pair of trades before the Olympic break, and are open to moving a first-round pick to do so, general manager Mathieu Darche said in January.
The Isles have persisted through a pair of early-season blows that saw defender Alexander Romanov and winger Kyle Palmieri – both important supporting pieces – sustain season-ending injuries (although Romanov could be an option to return in a first-round playoff series). Soucy and Palat emerged as cheap replacements weeks later, but the Isles have gone 6-2-0 since acquiring them to boost their playoff chances up to around 75%, per MoneyPuck.
That has Darche looking to reward his team for pushing through the blows dealt by the Romanov and Palmieri injuries, and he’s comfortable sparing the assets to do it with the success he had in restocking the organization’s cupboards at last year’s draft. Now armed with a franchise cornerstone on defense in Matthew Schaefer, he’ll need to assess what he’s willing to move to boost an offense that ranks 21st in the league at 2.92 goals per game.
Garland would go a long way toward doing that and, with the six-year, $36MM extension he signed last summer yet to kick in, is far from a rental option. In addition to boosting their forward corps this season, he becomes a controllable insurance policy for next year and beyond in case they can’t manage to come to agreements with pending UFAs Anders Lee and Jean-Gabriel Pageau before July 1.
That’s assuming the 29-year-old’s struggles this season are more a product of him being on a last-place team in Vancouver rather than individual decline. The 5’10” winger has never been an exceptional finisher, relying more on consistent shot volume to hover around 20 goals a year. Even so, his shooting percentage is down to 6.8 this year, resulting in him only lighting the lamp seven times through 49 games. On the whole, his 25 points make for his worst per-game showing since his rookie year in Arizona back in 2018-19.
Between 2019 and 2025, though, Garland was incredibly consistent. Aside from a career-best 0.80 points per game rate in the shortened 2020-21 season, his average stayed in a relatively small window between 0.57 and 0.68. Just last season, his 19 goals and 50 points were only a few short of setting a career high in each category.
Myers isn’t a pure rental either, but is a shorter-term pickup with another year left after this one at a $3MM cap hit. His shutdown ability is less of a need with the Isles already boasting the fifth-best defense in the league, but they could view him as a short-term upgrade over Scott Mayfield , who’s struggled to control possession in his third-pairing role. That’s in spite of Mayfield having better boxcar stats across the board this season, but Myers has dealt with a much more difficult workload in higher deployment.
If the Isles were to acquire both, they’d have to move out a contract if Vancouver isn’t retaining any salary, even with Garland’s current $4.95MM cap hit before it jumps to $6MM next season. That could be winger Anthony Duclair if he’s willing to waive his no-trade clause – David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported over the weekend that they were shopping him.
Canucks’ Guillaume Brisebois Clears Waivers
3/2: Birsebois has cleared waivers and can now be assigned to the minor leagues per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
3/1: In the midst of several notable NHLers waived earlier today, another name is set to run through the wire. Canucks defenseman Guillaume Brisebois has landed on waivers, per the team, although according to GM Patrik Allvin the transaction is with the intent to reassign him to AHL Abbotsford.
Brisebois, 28, was drafted in the third round by Vancouver back in 2015. Rarely seen in today’s league, the 6’2″ lefty has managed to stick with the organization for the long haul, mainly in the AHL but appearing in 30 games over the years with the Canucks, where he’s recorded three points. He got into three games back in January, not recording any stats and averaging 15:48 a night.
Brisebois debuted with Vancouver in February 2019, an entirely different era where Alexander Edler and Loui Eriksson were still wearing the blue and green, so it’s impressive for him to still be around. Summoned at times over the years when they’re thin on the back end, Brisebois has skated in more than eight contests in an NHL campaign just once, 2022-23, where he played in 17.
The Quebec native is a free agent at season’s end, but until then, a claim seems unlikely. Whatever comes next for the veteran, it has been a nice run in the Canucks organization, a 2025 Calder Cup champion, and still in the mix as part of a 2015 draft class headlined by stalwart Brock Boeser. With the Canucks at the bottom of the league, and Abbotsford hardly faring better, it would be nice to see Brisebois get some more action this spring considering his contributions to the organization over the past several years.
Senators Reportedly Likely To Have Interest In Conor Garland
- As the Vancouver Canucks chart their course through an uncertain competitive future, one veteran name drawing interest ahead of the trade deadline is that of winger Conor Garland. According to Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen, Senators head coach Travis Green is a “huge backer” of Garland, dating back to his own days as head coach of the Canucks, and as a result “it would be no surprise if the Senators checked in on” Garland. The 29-year-old has seven goals and 26 points in 49 games this season, and would instantly plug in somewhere in Ottawa’s top-nine. The main area of contention regarding a Garland trade is likely to be his contract, as his six-year, $6MM AAV contract kicks in next year. That contract has a full no-move clause attached.
Canucks Listening On Jake DeBrusk
Canucks winger Evander Kane is a known piece of trade bait after his struggles producing at home in Vancouver, especially given his pending free-agent status, but he’s not the only ‘Nucks winger on the market this spring. Vancouver is also listening to offers on Jake DeBrusk after being informed he is willing to waive his no-movement clause, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports.
It’s not at all surprising that the Canucks would listen to offers for DeBrusk, given the way their season has played out and considering their bevy of other bloated long-term commitments. The Canucks signed DeBrusk to a seven-year, $38.5MM contract with a $5.5MM cap hit in free agency in 2024 after he spent the first seven years of his career with the Bruins. DeBrusk was two years removed from a 50-point showing and had hit 25 goals three times in Boston, so he was viewed as an important piece to help replace a Vancouver middle six that had lost Elias Lindholm and Ilya Mikheyev that summer.
Things have gone quite poorly in Vancouver since his arrival, though. Their offense, which scored 3.40 goals per game in their Pacific Division-winning 2023-24 campaign, dropped to 2.84 GF/G last season and further to 2.54 this year. They’re in a seven-point hole in last place in the league coming out of the break and have no hope of re-entering the playoff picture. They’ll want to sell off as much as possible to accelerate the rebuild that began with the Quinn Hughes trade earlier this season, but without any high-end pending UFAs to dangle, moving largely consistent producers with control like DeBrusk has to be a consideration.
While DeBrusk’s 13 goals in 57 games this season are one of the worst per-game outputs of his career, his overall point production – adding 15 assists for 28 points – has been enough to rank third on Vancouver in scoring behind Elias Pettersson and Filip Hronek. He’s also been brought down by a terrible 8.3% finishing rate, nearly half of last year’s mark and well below his career average. Averaging north of 17 minutes per game, he’s generating shot attempts at a career-best rate, although his usually above-water possession metrics leave something to be desired.
All that said, DeBrusk is ripe for an increase in production with a change of scenery. At a $5.5MM cap hit, his career average of 24 goals and 46 points per 82 games becomes attractive in a rising cap environment, especially as he’s cost-controlled for five more seasons with gradually relaxing trade protection. Producers with similar recent offensive track records, like Michael Bunting and Anders Lee, are projected to earn as much or more on the open market this summer.
Considering teams are facing what now looks to be a historically weak UFA class this summer, next week’s deadline could be a chance for clubs to do early bidding to address future holes in their roster. DeBrusk will be of interest to many in need of short and long-term top-nine help. Among the teams to have placed exploratory calls on DeBrusk are the Kraken and Red Wings, plus the Bruins exploring a reunion with him, per Pagnotta, but all of those conversations still appear to be in their early stages.
Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings Interested In Tyler Myers
Last night, in the NHL’s return to action after the Olympics, multiple reports indicated that the Vancouver Canucks will be healthy-scratching veteran defenseman Tyler Myers for trade-related purposes. Speculation began surrounding a few teams, but Myers can control his destiny given the no-movement clause in his contract. It was believed at the time of reporting that Myers would be okay with a few destinations.
Still, Detroit, or any team acquiring Myers, would arguably be acquiring him at a career lowpoint. The 17-year veteran has registered only one goal and eight points in 57 games for the Canucks this season with a -25 rating. While Myers has never been relied upon for his offensive prowess, that output projects as the lowest-scoring season of his career across a full season.
Canucks Scratching Tyler Myers For Trade-Related Reasons
Feb. 26th: Although early speculation linked Myers to the Edmonton Oilers, TSN’s Ryan Rishaug reported that the Oilers are not one of the teams that are interested in acquiring Myers.
Feb. 25th: With the trade deadline now just a week and a half away, we will soon be seeing an uptick in players being held out of the lineup to avoid any injury risk before a potential trade. The Rangers did it with Artemi Panarin before the Olympic break and now the Canucks will be doing so with a veteran as well. Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK and The Athletic reports (Twitter link) that blueliner Tyler Myers will be scratched tonight against Winnipeg for trade-related reasons. This comes on the heels of a report from ESPN’s Kevin Weekes (Twitter link) that Vancouver is fielding plenty of calls on the veteran and that he could be on the move soon.
TSN’s Darren Dreger adds (Twitter link) that the Canucks went to Myers with this trade option a couple of days ago. With a full no-move clause, Myers has full control over his situation and he and his camp are still pondering the potential change of scenery. Clearly, even though a deal might not be imminent, the team isn’t taking any chances and is holding him out just in case.
The 36-year-old came into the NHL with plenty of fanfare in 2009 after being the 12th overall pick by Buffalo the year before. With Myers jumping into a top-pairing role right away, expectations were quite high that he could be a legitimate franchise defender.
While he hasn’t been able to live up to that hype and ultimately struggled in a prominent role over the years, Myers has still been a steady second-pairing defender for the better part of the last decade. He’s in the middle of his seventh season in Vancouver, one that has seen his offensive production basically dry up altogether as he has been limited to just a goal and seven assists in 57 games. However, he remains a key defensive defender for them and sits second on the team in blocked shots and third in shorthanded playing time.
Myers is in the second season of a three-year, $9MM contract that runs through the 2026-27 season. With a $3MM cap charge that is certainly affordable for the role he plays (he’s averaging over 20 minutes per game once again), that and the fact he’s not a rental player should certainly have Vancouver well-positioned to command a quality return, especially with a lack of quality right-shot options available.
A move shouldn’t necessarily be considered an automatic, however. Myers has made it known over the years that his desire has been to remain with the Canucks no matter what, which played a role in his below-market contract with them. Assuming the other suitor is a legitimate playoff contender, it will be interesting to see if the allure of making a push for a Stanley Cup is enough to make him agree to be moved.
Photo courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.
Blueger Wants To Stay In Vancouver But No Extension Talks Yet
- Speaking with reporters including Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre, Canucks center Teddy Blueger noted that he’d love to remain with the team but as of yet, there haven’t been any discussions about a possible contract extension. The 31-year-old has been limited to just ten games this season heading into tonight’s action due to injury but has been surprisingly productive in those, notching five goals and three assists. Known as more of a checking center throughout his career, Blueger is likely to garner interest before next week’s trade deadline from teams looking to shore up their bottom six. He’s a pending unrestricted free agent with a $1.8MM cap charge.