By: Trent Leith / June 27, 2025 Welcome to Trent’s Train of Thought, a series that, instead of diving deep into one topic, touches on several. This edition has thoughts on the goalie market, and the next season for the Canucks.
The Calder Cup Should be the Final #ArtyParty
In the wake of the Calder Cup win and Jack A. Butterfield award for playoff MVP, the Canucks should trade Arturs Silovs.
Hear me out. The Canucks seem sold on the Thatcher Demko – Kevin Lankinen duo for the near future. Demko is up for a new contract at the end of the season and talks seem to be happening, but Lankinen just signed a five year deal with the Canucks. Where does that leave Silovs? Simply insurance for if Demko leaves? I think it’s time for the Canucks to trade Silovs, for two main reasons.
- Silovs may be at the peak of his value. He has a year remaining on his contract, and then he is an RFA, and he is only making $850,000 against the cap. He was just named to the Latvian Olympic Roster, oh and he backstopped the Abbotsford Canucks to a Calder Cup Championship and won playoff MVP doing it. Silovs ended the playoffs with a .931 sv% and a 2.01 GAA. For comparison, Sergei Bobrovsky ended the Stanley Cup Playoffs with .914 sv% and a 2.2 GAA.
- There would be a market for him. The thin free agent class around the corner makes no exception in the goaltending department. The two highest-rated UFAs according to The Hockey Writers are 34-year-old Jake Allen and 32-year-old Anton Forsberg. If you need a goalie, you need to trade for one.
These two factors combined mean it might be in the Vancouver Canucks’ best interest to explore trading him.
Should The Canucks Mail It In This Year?
This year is another in a long stretch of unprecedented seasons. There was the Bubble season, the flat caps, the shortened season, and now we have unprecedented cap growth, with no sellers. The Penguins seem to be the only team in the league that is a full-blown seller heading into the entry draft, and as a result, there are 31 teams all trying to trade futures for players, and there isn’t a lot available.
Now, there is clearly the Quinn Hughes of it all to think about too. But if you could get him to support my crazy idea, it could make for a much better team in the 2026-27 season.
Because there are few sellers and lots of buyers who exclusively want to trade futures, there is a fantastic opportunity to do two things.
- Load up on picks for the Gavin Mackenna draft
- Free up cap space for a better free agent market
If there are 30 teams all trying to be buyers, that means some of those buyers will completely fail and wind up at the bottom of the standings. If you are a GM, that is the exact lottery ticket you should be trying to collect. Landing Mackenna could drastically alter a franchise’s trajectory; it should be on every team’s mind when making trades.
Secondly, when Connor McDavid says, “ultimately, I still need to do what’s best for me and my family. That’s who you have to take care of first.” in regards to signing an extension on July 1st, it means you should be keeping an eye on the moves the Oilers make, and if they finally get a flipping goalie.
If you clear the decks for picks and tank for Mackenna, that will likely leave you with a lot of cap space. Do you know what you can do with a lot of cap space? Throw a max deal at Connor McDavid if/when he hits the market.
It is a high risk play to both tank for a prospect, and also try and land the biggest (potential) free agent of all time, but if a team plays their cards right, they could sell this year, and be the massive buyers next offseason and potentially make a competitive team for the following season.
But is that the right move? Will that be enough for Hughes to dip? It’s tough to say, but if you could convince him that a 1-year retool could bring massive dividends, it might be worth considering with he current league climate.
The Canucks Will Be Fine, Relax
Now that I’ve done my share of fear-mongering, a more reasonable expectation for this team is to make minor improvements and be a bubble team.
Two years ago, Allvin said the Canucks will make the playoffs if everything went right for the Canucks. To put it mildly, everything went way more right than we could have expected. Few injuries, career years, PDO off the charts, it was a perfect season.
Then last season, the pendulum swung way past the mean to the other side. Petey was a shell of himself, Miller got traded, injuries piled up, and nothing at all seemed to go right for the team. But despite that, they barely missed out on the playoffs.
Assuming this team doesn’t do something drastic or ill-advised, I expect the Canucks to average out there previous two seasons next year.
In all likelihood, the Canucks will be fine. There is a lot of panic around this team, but that’s just life in Vancouver. I truly believe that the Canucks will be respectable next year unless they miss out on every single centreman they try to acquire.