VANCOUVER – Serenity now. Serenity now. Serenity… ah nuts, who are we kidding? These are the Vancouver Canucks.
To them, “serenity” is just a message in a fortune cookie.
The strange, harmonious calm that had enveloped the team since training camp opened was crushed Tuesday when Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that winger Conor Garland and Canucks management have agreed that the player’s agent can approach other National Hockey League teams to seek a trade.
In other words, Conor Garland wants out.
He didn’t deny this while stickhandling through tough questions from reporters — never let it be said that Conor Garland is afraid to go in the corners — and Canucks management didn’t deny it, either.
Oh, and did we mention there is a regular-season opener for the Canucks on Wednesday against the Edmonton Oilers, who also have their own Connor — McDavid?
Let’s go!
After the Canucks did everything in their organizational power over the last few months to move past the clutter and melodrama from two seasons of unprecedented, debilitating upheaval, to proactively head off potential distractions so that everyone’s focus would be sharp and their minds clear for game one, the story-of-the-day on the eve of their season was that Garland wants to be traded.
“I’m just really more focused on just tomorrow’s game,” Garland said, trying but failing to break the media forecheck after Tuesday’s practice at Rogers Arena. “We put in a lot of work these past couple of weeks to get ready. Big test against a really, really good team, so we’re just all excited to get going tomorrow.”
But is the report accurate that his agent is seeking a trade?
“That’s not my focus,” Garland said. “That’s, that’s his focus. My focus is tomorrow night and having a good practice today, and we did. So just excited for tomorrow.
“That’s his business, right? That’s not my business. I’m not an agent, I am a hockey player. I play hockey and tomorrow is the home opener and I’m excited about that. And that’s what my sole focus is on.”
Garland did confirm that he recently changed agents, firing Peter Cooney and hiring Judd Moldaver. Cooney negotiated the five-year, $24.75-million contract Garland signed with the Canucks two summers ago, soon after previous Vancouver general manager Jim Benning acquired him from the Arizona Coyotes in a blockbuster trade.
“Conor Garland and the Vancouver Canucks have reached an understanding that he is able to look for trades with other teams in the NHL to see if there’s a better fit for him,” Friedman told sportstalk television hosts Rick Dhaliwal and Don Taylor. “As you guys know, the Canucks are very tight to the cap. And I think this is a situation where they’re looking to see if there are other options available to him. He has a new agent, Judd Moldaver, who’s very aggressive. Although he wouldn’t comment… from what I understand and what I was told, he is pretty aggressively calling around to teams and seeing what the potential fits are.”
The report came minutes after current Canucks GM, Patrik Allvin, met with reporters to discuss the start of the season.
Allvin inherited Garland and a lot of other stuff when he was hired in Jan. 2022 to replace Benning, and the Canucks are believed to have regularly plumbed the trade market on Garland since then as the new management group tried to break the stranglehold of the NHL salary cap.
But with the cap more or less flat since COVID arrived in 2020, there hasn’t been much trade interest in a handy five-foot-nine winger who has averaged 18 goals and 49 points in his two seasons in Vancouver but is owed another three years at an annual cap hit of $4.95 million. The actual money due over the final three years of Garland’s contract is $17 million.
So, he’s probably not going anywhere soon.
Of course, not many people know what is actually happening. But had a bearded, sword-eating, lion-taming, lizard-lady skated out with the Canucks circus on Tuesday, she/it/they would have received less attention than Garland.
There is a screaming irony, as well, that Garland is the central figure in this latest installment of the Canuck soap opera because the 27-year-old from Boston said just last month how quiet and serene the atmosphere was around the hockey team after two years of chaos.
“Last year was a little bit of a distracted feeling,” Garland told us. “There was a lot going on. Our captain situation, the coaching situation, we had a lot going on. So it’s nice that it’s quiet. And now it’s up to us.”
Smart and thoughtful, he said the root of such drama in sports has always been losing.
“When you don’t win, a lot of stuff comes out,” he explained. “I’m sure teams deal with stuff, but they win and you never hear about it. I mean, look at the New England Patriots: (Tom) Brady and (Bill) Belichick couldn’t stand each other their last couple of years. But they win two Super Bowls and you don’t hear about it until six years later. Winning hides a lot. When you lose, more stuff comes out. More stuff that might not even be true comes out, so it sounds worse.
“I know this market is crazy. I mean, I’ve just done the most I can. I’ve gotten off social media. Once a couple rumours were out and then nothing came, I said ‘enough is enough.’ You can only be distracted for so long until it just eats at you. I understand when you don’t perform, that’s what happens. If I perform, I’m sure the rumours will go away. So it’s up to me to play better and help this team because we have a team that can make the playoffs this year.”
And one month later…
“I think it came out, like, I changed agents in the last 48 hours,” Garland said Tuesday. “So there hasn’t been a whole ton of conversation. I don’t think there’s anything really to put to bed. For us as players — maybe you guys don’t realize it — you’re just such in a tunnel during the season. You’re focused on playing each game. I’m a big routine person; I just focus on every day. And right now I’m excited. I’ve got a chance to play on the first line tomorrow with two great players against a really good team. I’m most likely going to play against the best player in the world, so that’s probably where my focus is at.”
Yes, Garland is expected to skate alongside Elias Pettersson and Andrei Kuzmenko on a line that will probably see a lot of McDavid.
Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, who has been in Vancouver less than a year but had Garland on his last team in Arizona, expressed surprise at the report.
But these are the Canucks. Should anybody be surprised?