The Vancouver Canucks remain a mid-tier team, writes Adam Proteau. How does that affect the players on the hot seat to excel this upcoming season?

We're in the final stretch of the NHL’s 2023 off-season, but our continuing THN.com hot seat series is still going strong. In this series, we’re breaking down the pressures felt by each NHL team’s players, coaches, GMs and team owners.

We’ve been moving through the league’s teams in alphabetical order and identifying one player, coach, team owner or GM as an individual sitting on their team’s hot seat, facing major pressure to post excellent results this season, or find themselves in the franchise’s doghouse. A second person will sit on the warm seat as someone unlikely to be fired or traded imminently but who may be dealt or released sometime this coming year. A third individual will go on the cold seat as a person extremely likely to stay with their team for the foreseeable future. On occasion, we’ll select four or five players per file, thanks to ties in one or two categories.

Canucks’ Hot Seat: (tie) Brock Boeser, RW, and Anthony Beauvillier, LW

The Canucks’ status as a mid-tier team makes it entirely possible, if not probable, that GM Patrik Allvin will trade some of his veteran players this coming season as the franchise tries to get younger and better. 

To that end, it’s well within the level of possibility that Vancouver moves on from a pair of 26-year-old veteran wingers, Boeser and Beauvillier. The former is under contract for the next two seasons at a $6.65-million salary cap hit, while the latter is entering the final season of a contract worth $4.15 million annually. Those are reasonable numbers for teams interested in adding experienced, above-average help on the wing.

Neither Boeser nor Beauvillier has any no-trade or no-move clause in their contracts in 2023-24, which frees up any team for Allvin to ship them to. A team such as the Boston Bruins has the cap space to make a deal work for either player beyond this season, but the B's would need to ship out some money to fit Beauvillier or Boeser under the cap for this season.

Regardless, both players are in their prime, and if the Canucks dig themselves a hole early in the 2023-24 campaign, we expect Allvin to find new homes for both wingers.

Canucks’ Warm Seat: Tyler Myers, D

Other than free-agent signees Ian Cole and Matt Irwin, the 33-year-old Myers is now Vancouver’s elder statesman. While he settled into a second-pairing defense group last season, Myers is about to play the final year of a five-year, $30-million deal that has a 10-team no-trade clause, per PuckPedia. He had been mentioned in trade rumors this past season, but with $5 million of his $6-million cap hit being paid out as a signing bonus on Sept. 1, Myers is an even more attractive asset for potential trade suitors.

Myers has never been the most swift-afoot player, but his size and snarl make him a trade target at this stage of his career. Next summer, there’s virtually no chance the Canucks will re-sign him at the same pay rate he’s been paid at the past four years, but teams closer to a long Stanley Cup run may offer him more, both financially and competitively, than Vancouver will be able to.

Myers can still offer approximately 20 minutes of ice time per game, and on a true Cup contender, he’d be a key piece of the puzzle. The fact he isn’t in such a role for the Canucks is an indicator that his time in Vancouver will end, probably not before the season begins but very likely before the 2024 trade deadline.

Canucks’ Cold Seat: Quinn Hughes, D

Still only 23 years old, Hughes enters Year 3 of a six-year, $47.1-million contract. He’s already proven he’s relatively underpaid at $7.85 million per season, posting a team-high 69 assists and 76 points, the third-best total on the roster last year. Hughes also led Vancouver in time on ice in 2022-23, averaging 25:40 over 78 games. He continues to improve, year in and year out, and he’s nowhere near his peak.

Amazingly, Hughes does not have any form of trade protection in his deal, but Allvin would be a fool to rationalize a way to move him. Hughes’ salary makes him a serious bargain, and if the Canucks turn their fortunes around and become legitimate Cup contenders between now and the summer of 2027, they’ll have a great chance to re-sign Hughes to a contract extension.

Other Vancouver players probably are just as much of a lock to remain Canucks as Hughes is. One of them is forward J.T. Miller, whose annual average value and contract length is enough to scare away potential trade partners, and the other is star forward Elias Pettersson, who will be an RFA next summer and holds the hammer in long-term contract negotiations. It’s Hughes that is locked in, in a good way, for the next four seasons – second only to Miller, who, likely regrettably for Canucks brass, is signed for the next seven years.

Hughes is a bona fide star whose best days remain ahead, and Vancouver’s long-term fortunes will ultimately be decided in no small part by Hughes’ ascent to the very top of the NHL’s group of defensemen. He’s a core component of the Canucks’ blueprint for success, and he’s going to stay in Vancouver for as long as he pleases.