As the rumours roll on, the Vancouver Canucks are once again the biggest story in hockey.

On Tuesday, our colleague at The Athletic Josh Yohe reported the Canucks fielded and walked away from an offer from the New York Rangers involving a potential Mika Zibanejad for J.T. Miller trade. Zibanejad is still an enormously skilled power-play specialist but his foot speed and two-way game are trending in a direction that looks very much like a “worst-case scenario for what it could look like as Miller ages into his mid-30s” already, so Vancouver’s lack of interest is unsurprising.

That report was later confirmed by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, with a fascinating wrinkle: The talks appear to have stalled when the Rangers refused to include large, young, authoritative blueliner Braden Schneider in the deal.

Throwing more gasoline on a Canucks speculation conflagration that has refused to cease raging over the past eight weeks, our colleague Pierre LeBrun noted on Tuesday that the club is gauging the trade market for both Elias Pettersson and Miller to get a sense of prices around the league. LeBrun also pointed out and revealed Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet, whose contract expires beyond this season, has something very much like Bruce Boudreau’s mutual option that both sides will have the opportunity to exercise after this year to keep him under contract.

If the stress of this nightmare campaign and the reports of inner turmoil are as dire as some reports have alluded to — “If this drama-filled season doesn’t straighten itself out, how does Tocchet view things in Vancouver? Just something to file away,” was how LeBrun captioned it on Tuesday — Tocchet could seemingly opt to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.

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Let’s digress to discuss Tocchet before moving on to what it all means. There’s naturally been increased criticism of Tocchet in the Vancouver market over the past several weeks, which is inevitable whenever a closely followed team’s form lists the way Vancouver’s has of late. Make no mistake though, the reigning Jack Adams winner and the second-winningest head coach in franchise history by point percentage would be in extraordinarily high demand if he were to shake loose beyond this season — as he should be.

Honestly, when one considers all they have dealt with this season — Thatcher Demko’s injury limiting him to just seven games played, Dakota Joshua missing an extended stretch after undergoing surgery following a testicular cancer diagnosis, Derek Forbort’s personal leave after his father’s death, Brock Boeser’s concussion, Miller’s personal leave, Filip Hronek’s long-term injury, Quinn Hughes and Pettersson sustaining concurrent injuries, a torrent of noise — that the Canucks have still held it together and remain in a playoff spot in the Western Conference is commendable.

It hasn’t been perfect. The club’s efforts to juice its rush offence have effectively failed after a promising start to the campaign. It’s fair to quibble with some of the recent lineup decisions on the back end, specifically the removal of Erik Brännström from the lineup given the Canucks’ significant puck-moving needs, but that’s a marginal line of criticism at best. Overall, Vancouver has continued to produce exceptional defensive results and solidly above-average special teams on both sides of the puck, which has helped keep it afloat through a worst-case-scenario first half.

On a night-to-night basis, this team has battled through some inconsistency and obviously a head coach wears that, but of late, the battle level has been higher, even as the team has largely run out of juice with one of its top centremen and its entire top pair sidelined. Any honest summation should conclude the Canucks look prepared every night, and it’s difficult to imagine there’s a bench boss who would have them performing better than they are given the circumstances.

As these various storylines unfold in overwhelming unison, there’s a big picture point worth bearing in mind: Competitive windows in the NHL can be extraordinarily fragile.

Less than 12 months ago, the Canucks were ransacking the New York metropolitan area and looking like the Harlem Globetrotters. The Canucks looked like a contender, with a clear multiyear runway as a potential elite side.

Now, just a year later, the Canucks are scraping to hang on to a wild-card spot — they’re tied with the Calgary Flames for eighth place, but hold the regulation-wins tiebreaker and are ahead by point percentage — with salacious rumours dogging some of their biggest stars and informed speculation about the future of their coach shaping the league-wide conversation.

Given how quickly things can change in hockey, the Canucks’ decision to buy aggressively on Elias Lindholm in early February (adding to their previous purchase of Nikita Zadorov) looks somewhat different with the benefit of hindsight. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any team with a realistic window to win, and when those windows arrive, the price worth paying for marginal upgrades is massive.

This isn’t to say Vancouver’s window has already slammed shut or expired. There are scenarios where this team can stay afloat through the 4 Nations Face-Off break and get hot down the stretch with a fully operational lineup. Purely from an on-ice perspective, it’s probably not as dire as it seems at the moment.

It is, however, a reminder that it’s worth it to strike when the iron appears to be heating up. If anything, should the balance of this season and whatever comes next unfold less stably, we may look back at the 2023 trade deadline and wonder if Vancouver’s aggressive front office should’ve pushed to do even more.

The Canucks were reportedly interested in acquiring Braden Schneider as part of a Mika Zibanejad-J.T. Miller trade with the Rangers. (Sergei Belski / Imagn Images)

The Schneider thing

The Canucks have been linked heavily to Schneider in the past, and that’s sensible. He’s a rare commodity and we’ve long been admirers of his game in this space, dating back to his draft year.

As we consider Friedman’s latest report, however, I think it’s worth pointing out Schneider’s defensive game hasn’t developed at the NHL level in the way you’d have hoped it might over the past season and a half.

Some of that might be due to the Rangers’ permissive defensive environment. The Canucks management team isn’t hesitant about betting that their more predictable system can help defenders find their game, but still, while playing third-pair minutes for the Rangers this season, Schneider’s offensive game has looked far ahead of where his defensive play is at this stage of his career. And, notably, Schneider’s role hasn’t dramatically increased since the Jacob Trouba trade. In fact, Will Borgen, who the Rangers acquired in a subsequent deal with the Seattle Kraken, has also been playing ahead of Schneider since landing in Manhattan.

This isn’t a player that we’re down on by any means. It’s always worth rolling the dice on players with Schneider’s profile. There’s an authority to his physical game and a deceptive skill level, too. Highly skilled younger defenders often figure out the defensive side of the game as they mature in their mid-20s — Hronek is a good example of this archetype — which makes Schneider an interesting potential acquisition from a Vancouver perspective.

There is significant risk here, however, especially when the consideration is acquiring a player like Schneider in exchange for an established top-of-the-lineup star.

For every young defender that levels up defensively in their mid-20s, there is a multitude of skilled, third-pair defenders with pedigree that never take that next step and develop into impact matchup options or offer credible play beyond the third pair. In Schneider’s case, it’s worth noting that as the Rangers’ non-Adam-Fox-minutes problem has hit a level that’s become critical this season, Schneider has been a part of the problem instead of a potential part of the solution.

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Young talks World Juniors

Over the past week and a half, Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin and director of player personnel Scott Young took in a series of World Junior games in Ottawa, watched Vancouver’s AHL affiliate in Laval and were in attendance together to witness the Canucks’ 5-4 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Monday.

On Tuesday, The Athletic caught up with Young on his drive back to the Boston area to discuss some of what he saw from Vancouver’s top blue-line prospects in Ottawa, including Boston University and Team Sweden standout Tom Willander.

We asked Young what he looks for when evaluating prospects in a small-sample international tournament like the World Juniors, and he explained that the standard is a bit different based on the experience level of the players in question.

Willander was eating up huge minutes for Sweden in his second go-around at the tournament, and the Canucks were thrilled with his offensive progress and excited to see him take on more of a leadership role. The expectations are somewhat different for players at the tournament for the first time, like Team Canada’s Sawyer Mynio and 2025 seventh-round pick Basille Sansonnens, who was representing Team Switzerland.

“We don’t want to be harsh,” Young noted.

Young didn’t work too hard to contain his excitement about what he saw out of Willander in the quarterfinal and the bronze medal game, however.

“You look at Tom, he’s out there and he’s the one setting up Axel Sandin Pellikka’s one-timer,” Young said of Willander’s performance when asked if Sweden’s unique depth on the right side of its blue line impacted his evaluation. “He’s the one distributing up top, he’s the one putting it in his wheelhouse for one-timers and Tom did a great job delivering pucks to the net and got a couple of goals.

“He’s got a good knack for seeing when there’s bodies at the net and numbers for his team and he delivers the puck with a good, quick release from up top.

“I think he’s a very good puck-mover, he’s an excellent skater with great edges. He’s now been able to play on his toes a bit more this year which, to me, shows he’s taking charge more.”

The Canucks are expected to sign Willander after his sophomore campaign at Boston University, and depending on how the balance of this season unfolds (both for BU and the Canucks) and how his entry-level contract is structured, we could see him debut in the NHL at some point later this season.

“The biggest thing about him is he’s consistent in his play,” Young said. “He’s not someone who, when he gets his opportunity, he’s not going to try to do too much. He’s going to be the same player and he’s just gotten better and better.”

As for Mynio, who was dealt by the WHL’s Seattle Thunderbirds to the Calgary Hitmen this week, the club was impressed by how he earned a larger role as his first appearance at the World Juniors unfolded.

“The thing you want to see with Sawyer is he’s such a smooth skater, and he’s got great footwork,” said Young. “He’s poised with the puck, too, and he moves the puck really well. I only got to see his game in the quarters at the World Juniors, but his poise and calm demeanour on the back end didn’t change. He wasn’t nervous, and he just played his game and he got more ice time as the game went on. It looked like he earned the coaches’ trust. After sitting out a couple games, he didn’t leave the lineup.

“He’s going to be able to move the puck smartly. I don’t see him beating rushes but I see him being able to handle them calmly.”

The puck-moving ability of Vancouver’s blue line has shaped up to be something of an Achilles’ heel this season, but between younger prospects like Mynio and Willander and AHL blueliners like Kirill Kudryavtsev and Elias Pettersson, the club is confident reinforcements are coming.

The big question is, how does that assessment — and the Canucks’ performance in the weeks ahead — impact what they consider on the trade market between now and the deadline?

(Top photo of J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)