Canucks take advantage of Garland's 'flexibility' in trade with Blue Jackets

CHICAGO — Amid the addictive day-to-day drama of deadline week, the Vancouver Canucks’ late-night trade of Conor Garland was a medium-sized deal.

In the context of their season, the classic rebuild-trade — surrendering to the Columbus Blue Jackets a good player with contract term for second- and third-round draft picks — is emphatic evidence of the seismic shift the Canucks have undertaken.

In less than three months, in the middle of a season that opened with Vancouver planning to return to the National Hockey League playoffs, the team has traded veterans Quinn Hughes, Kiefer Sherwood, Tyler Myers and Garland for three talented prospects and seven draft picks that include the Minnesota Wild’s first pick in June and four second-round selections spread over three drafts.

Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin is trying to add more picks before the trade deadline passes at noon Pacific time today, still shopping unrestricted-free-agent-eligible forwards Teddy Blueger and Evander Kane.

But Garland, unencumbered by trade restrictions ahead of the six-year, $36-million extension that starts July 1, was the most tradeable big piece that Allvin had.

The Canucks traded Garland because they could.

“That was the flexibility we had here,” Allvin told Sportsnet Friday morning. “This was not our intention to move on from Conor when we signed him last summer. But where we’re sitting here today and how the season has gone, we decided to go in a different direction and we felt this was a good deal for us and for him. But it’s always hard to trade players that have been part of an organization for a long time.”

Unlike Allvin’s first three NHL trades this winter, the return for Garland feels modest, especially since a frenzy of insider reports this week — allegedly up to eight teams bidding on the winger who turns 30 next week — raised hopes in the market of another first-round pick coming to the Canucks.

Allvin declined Friday to comment on the number of teams that made offers on Garland except to say: “You only need one team to make a deal, and this was the best offer we had.”

Part of the unpopular Oliver Ekman-Larsson trade that brought him to Vancouver from the Arizona Coyotes in 2001, Garland’s standing on the team was often as volatile as the Canucks’ performance.

He was frequently rumoured in trades and bounced around the lineup before establishing himself under former coach Rick Tocchet, who knew and believed in Garland from their time together in Phoenix, as a reliable, play-driving winger who could power a third line.

Allvin re-signed Garland on July 1 after a 19-goal, 50-point season, the American’s fourth straight campaign of 46 to 52 points, to be part of the Canucks core as the team planned to rebound from last year’s injuries and upheaval.

Garland has just seven goals and 26 points in 50 games this season, and last scored on Dec. 16, two games after the stunning trade of Hughes to Minnesota changed everything for the Canucks.

Always accountable and often self-deprecating, Garland recently laughed at himself for failing to get trade protection in his expiring contract.

It took a week for the Allvin to close the Myers trade on Wednesday due to the defenceman’s no-movement clause. On Thursday, St. Louis Blues defenceman Colton Parayko used his trade protection to scuttle a deal with the Buffalo Sabres.

Garland’s lack of trade protection set him apart from senior teammates and gave Allvin a significant chip to play. At least Garland gets to go to a Columbus team whose 4-2 win Thursday night against the Florida Panthers moved it within one point of a wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference and within three points of three other teams in playoff position.

From the Boston area, Garland is also much closer to home, where his wife, Meghan, is expecting the couple’s second child in late April.

With a relentless motor and that hunger players develop when they’ve had to battle for their NHL existence, Garland will help the Blue Jackets and should provide solid value well into his 30s.

It will be up to the Canucks what they do with Columbus’s third-round draft pick in June and second-rounder in 2028.

“Getting into this rebuild, spreading out the picks here over the next couple of years gives us even more flexibility to use them potentially as trade chips as well,” Allvin said. “We’re definitely open to creative ideas to help the team get better.

“Going back to the last couple of years, the landscape has changed. You’re never happy being in this situation. Nobody wants to be here. It’s nothing that we were planning on when the season started, but this is the direction we’re going and accumulating picks was important for our future.”

Allvin offered no predictions about further trades today.

Kane and Blueger have been on offer since November.

Over the next three drafts, the Canucks possess four first-round selections and six second-round slots. The third-rounder they acquired from the Blue Jackets fills a gap for the Canucks in June after they sent their own third-round pick to the Calgary Flames in the Nikita Zadorov trade two years ago.