Ill-fated deal for the Canucks will haunt the organization for years to come
It's been two years to the day since the Vancouver Canucks and Arizona Coyotes pulled off a blockbuster trade hours ahead of the 2021 National Hockey League draft. The deal saw the Canucks acquire Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Conor Garland in exchange for Loui Eriksson, Antoine Roussel, Jay Beagle -- all on expiring contracts -- along with a first round pick in the 2021 draft, a second round selection in the 2022 draft and a seventh rounder in 2023.
It was a move that felt at the time like one last job-saving attempt for then general manager Jim Benning. However, as it turned out, Benning was relieved of his duties just 25 games into the next season. And with Ekman-Larsson bought out of the final four seasons of his hefty contract by the organization last month, he, too, is no longer with the Canucks organization. However, the shadows of Ekman-Larsson -- and by extension Benning -- will hang over the Canucks through the 2030-31 season.
That leaves Garland as the only piece of the trade that remains with the Canucks. And it's been evident for months now the hockey club has been shopping him around the league, too.
In his two seasons in Vancouver, Ekman-Larsson played 133 games scoring seven goals and adding 41 assists. Garland, meanwhile, has logged 158 games in Canuck colours scoring 36 goals and totalling 98 points. Since the ill-fated trade, the Canucks have had three head coaches, two general managers and no playoff appearances.
Over that span, the Canucks have amassed an overall record of 78-67-19 collecting 175 points along the way. By comparison, Arizona has gone 53-90-21 amassing just 127 points in 164 games. But the payoff of the trade for the Coyotes has already been felt and will continue to be for years to come.
Dylan Guenther, the player selected ninth overall in 2021, has already scored six goals and collected 15 points in a limited role in the 33 NHL games he's played. The 20-year-old, who scored the golden goal to help Canada win the World Juniors in January, is expected to push for full-time employment in Arizona next season.
The 'Yotes peddled the second round pick they received in the trade and sent it to Minnesota for Jack McBain, a 23-year-old centre, who scored 12 goals and 26 points in his first full season in the NHL last year.
And the ripple effects of the 2021 deal surfaced again at last month's draft in Nashville. Arizona actually swapped the 2023 seventh rounder they received from the Canucks to San Jose for a seventh rounder in last year's draft. They used that pick to select Adam Zinka, a 19-year-old right winger from Slovakia. That left the Sharks to use the original Canucks seventh round pick to take Yegor Rimashevsky this year.
For their parts, Eriksson, Roussel and Beagle all performed like the aging veterans they were in their one season in the desert. Eriksson had 3 goals and 19 points in 73 games. Roussel managed 4 goals and 8 points in 53 games that season while Beagle was limited to just 33 games scoring once and adding an assist. But the Coyotes were willing to absorb those deals for a season to get pieces that will help them for years to come.
The bottom line is that Jim Benning saw what he thought was an opportunity to get out from under the final years of the bloated contracts of Eriksson, Beagle and Roussel. But it came at such a steep price for an organization that had next to nothing in its prospect pool. And then, as it turned out, the Canucks got off to a brutal start months after the trade leading to an unprecedented organizational house cleaning that saw Benning, John Weisbrod, Travis Green and Nolan Baumgartner all relieved of their duties two months into the season.
It was a trade that never should have happened in the first place. The Canucks needed to take their lumps for one more season and then make the most of the $12 million in cap flexibility they would have had available to them when Eriksson, Beagle and Roussel became unrestricted free agents. Guenther would surely have shot to the top of the team's prospect pool and who knows what the Canucks would have done with the second round pick a year later.
It was a bad deal for Vancouver on the day it went down. And two years later, it doesn't look any better.