Bo Horvat on the trade block: What we’re hearing about the Canucks’ latest offer

The Vancouver Canucks made an offer to team captain and pending unrestricted free agent Bo Horvat roughly two weeks ago, people involved with the negotiations confirmed to The Athletic on Monday morning.

That offer was rejected by Horvat and his representative Pat Morris of Newport Sports.

Due to the sensitive and private nature of contract talks, neither side would confirm the specific numbers involved in Vancouver’s latest offer.

We believe the club tendered their leading goal scorer a max-term offer that was well shy of $8 million — which, notably, appears to be the going baseline rate for top-line centremen.

The rejection of that offer has put Horvat on the trade block, as the club looks ahead to monetizing their long-tenured Canucks, and now the organization’s best trade chip, prior to the NHL trade deadline on March 3, 2023.

Things can obviously change in the blink of an eye with this organization. The club only recently backed into a lengthy, lucrative 7-year contract extension with J.T. Miller, who spent months on the trade block prior to the two sides reaching a surprise extension agreement in early September.

The sense we have in asking around about this situation, however, is that it’s going to be tough to stuff the genie back into the bottle in this case. Not only is this trending in a direction where a Horvat trade prior to the NHL trade deadline is likely, but the club is actively engaged in listening to offers on Horvat.

As The Athletic has previously reported, the club is ideally looking for a package including multiple young players — ideally centremen and right-handed defensemen — in a Horvat trade. The club is, for the moment anyway, poised to be reluctant to take back money to facilitate a trade or to retain salary — although everything is negotiable in high-stakes trade talks.

The club has not, to this point, granted permission to Horvat’s agent to discuss a possible extension with clubs interested in trading for Horvat. Considering the volume of expected interest in Horvat — who is a face-off specialist, power-play ace and lethal goal scorer — it’s likely such permission won’t be granted at all. That means that Horvat is likely to be dealt as a pure rental.

Obviously, this is a difficult situation. The club’s preference has long been to keep Horvat, something that’s reflected in the club’s offer. Horvat, meanwhile, is settled with his young family in Vancouver and is that rare NHL personality who welcomes the scrutiny of playing in a madcap hockey marketplace like Vancouver. Wearing the captain’s “C” in a Canadian market matters to him and his preference, all things being equal, has been to remain in Vancouver.

Unfortunately, not all things are equal. The club’s books are deeply imbalanced, a situation that new Canucks management has mostly inherited, but also compounded further with big-money deals for Miller, Brock Boeser and Ilya Mikheyev this offseason.

The organization feels that they’ve made Horvat their absolute best offer. The club’s focus, now, is on maximizing a prospective return on the trade market.

Horvat and his camp, meanwhile, are still waiting for a deal that they feel is consistent with the market price for a 28-year-old pivot who leads the NHL in face-offs taken, wins 58 percent of those draws, and is a top-five goal scorer in the league at the moment.

After nine years and 600 games in a Canucks uniform, this situation is now clearly trending toward Horvat exiting Vancouver in the months ahead. And while Canucks brass intends to be patient in navigating this situation — the club will prioritize netting the right return, rather than making a deal promptly to enhance the club’s lottery odds in the months ahead — there’s an openness to executing a potential Horvat deal relatively quickly if a rival club meets their ask.

No movement on Brock Boeser

Among the many plates that Canucks management has spinning concurrently at the moment, there’s been very little movement on Brock Boeser’s status over the past 10 days.

Boeser remains on the trade block, but this deal is proving complicated and progress has been slow.

The Canucks have had calls kicking tires on their streaky scoring winger, but his hefty contract — two years remaining beyond this season at $6.6 million per — is difficult for rival clubs to fit in under the salary cap. Allowing Boeser’s agent, Ben Hankinson of Octagon Athlete Representation, to seek out trades with rival clubs on his client’s behalf hasn’t yet lubricated the market.

It hasn’t helped matters either that Boeser’s production has flatlined a bit since reports of his availability first surfaced 10 days ago. Since he scored on Hockey Fights Cancer night three games ago, Boeser hasn’t found the back of the net and has only picked up one assist across three games.

Boeser hasn’t formally requested a trade, but if he would like to carve out a new spot on a rival team, producing would certainly help his — and the Canucks’ — cause.

Canucks fans and Canucks management have this in common: They love Luke Schenn.

The hard-nosed, high-character defensive stalwart is a pending unrestricted free agent. He’s playing major minutes for the Canucks this season, having carved out a niche on Quinn Hughes’ right side. In a league bereft of defenders capable of actually playing lockdown in-zone defense, Schenn is a throwback, and a prized one internally.

Nonetheless, at the moment, and barring the club getting on a significant heater in the 33 games that remain before the deadline, the club is leaning toward trading Schenn.

Given his profile, experience and championship pedigree, interest in Schenn is expected to be significant. The club will likely get the most calls immediately prior to the NHL trade deadline and can expect to get a solid return.

This isn’t a straightforward situation, for two primary reasons. The first is that the club would love to keep Schenn, and even if he’s dealt, the Canucks will plan on circling back to make him an offer when the unrestricted free agent market opens on July 1.

The second is that Schenn’s wife is pregnant at the moment, with the due date anticipated to be very close to the March 3 NHL trade deadline.

Schenn has earned a ton of respect for the way he’s carried himself in this league and the club is aware of his unique family considerations. The club will take it all into consideration in attempting to facilitate a deal that works for all sides.

Bear market

Ethan Bear has been a tremendous find for the Canucks, and club brass has been thrilled by his contributions. There’s a very high regard for this player in the offices above Griffiths Way.

Renovating the right side of the Canucks’ blue line has been a priority since the moment Jim Rutherford and company arrived on Canada’s West Coast. For new Canucks management, Bear is an early proof of concept.

Acquired for a fifth-round pick, Bear is essentially the living embodiment of management’s belief in their ability to get this club turned around — with an upgraded blue-line group and additional pace and toughness throughout the lineup — quickly. And to do so even amidst the crushing weight of the Canucks’ host of inefficient cap commitments.

Bear, however, is playing a major role for the Canucks. Since his acquisition from Carolina the pending restricted free agent is holding down top-four minutes at even strength. His arrival also coincides rather neatly with the club beginning to win games with more frequency than they did in October.

All of which will bolster Bear’s arbitration case significantly.

This is where things get a bit sticky. Bear is going to be due an expensive $2.2 million qualifying offer and is building the sort of arbitration case where the number could be hefty, but not so hefty that the club would be entitled to walk away from a potential award.

That gives Bear and his agent Jason Davidson of Thunder Creek Professional Player Management a fair bit of leverage in potential extension talks.

To this point, those talks haven’t occurred. Bear has only appeared in 19 games for the Canucks and the organization seems intent on getting a longer look before discussing Bear’s Canucks future at greater length.

Expect the two sides to begin talks in the new year, most likely in February or March. Keeping Bear in the fold will be a priority for the club, and perhaps a pricey one, if he can continue to maintain the level that he’s shown through his first handful of games in a Canucks sweater.

No Rathbone trade request

It’s been a tough go for Jack Rathbone.

The 23-year-old puck-moving defender isn’t far removed from being the Canucks’ top prospect. He signed a one-way contract — the first of his career — this past summer and went into Canucks training camp with seemingly little competition for an opening night role on the left side.

Then the club made a trade for Riley Stillman, Rathbone performed poorly in the six games he played, was a constant healthy scratch for a month and now finds himself once again down on the farm in Abbotsford.

There’s some rumors in the industry about a Rathbone trade request, but as of Monday morning, multiple sources close to the situation confirmed to The Athletic that there has been no formal request for a trade from Rathbone and his agent Jerry Buckley of Buckley Sports Management.

Obviously, this has been a frustrating couple of months for the player. As such, this remains a fluid situation.

For now, however, Rathbone hasn’t requested a trade and remains focused on earning his way back into the Canucks’ plans at the NHL level.

The buyout thing

The Canucks need to carve out additional salary cap space in the worst way, but it hasn’t been easy.

The flat cap makes it extraordinarily difficult for NHL teams to move mid-range salaries, particularly when those salaries are tied to players with term and some variety of no-trade protection.

We’ve previously reported that the Canucks would seriously consider accepting relatively unbalanced returns in order to clear a salary like the one attached to players like Tyler Myers, Tanner Pearson, Conor Garland or Boeser. All of those players are signed beyond this season and all of them except Garland have some form of no-trade protection built into their deal.

Moving off of money like that is much easier said than done in the contemporary NHL.

That Pearson remains injured, recently had a setback and underwent an additional procedure a couple of weeks ago — as team sources confirmed to The Athletic last week — only makes this entire effort more complicated.

If the club can’t find trades that work for some of their bigger contracts, expect buyouts to be a serious consideration this offseason.

From Keith Ballard to Brandon Sutter, buyouts — even of the compliance buyout variety — have traditionally been a tough sell to Canucks ownership. The club has a ton of offseason priorities to attend to, Andrei Kuzmenko chief among them, however, even if they do trade Horvat and Schenn prior to the trade deadline.

Whatever is required to carve out additional cap space will be seriously considered by Canucks brass.

Lekkerimäki not quite ready

Canucks 2022 first-round pick Jonathan Lekkerimäki is on the roster for Team Sweden at the 2023 World Junior Championship.

The Tre Kronor’s U20 national team will meet up tomorrow and travel later this week for the tournament, but Lekkerimäki’s status is still in doubt. We’re hearing that, for the moment, Lekkerimäki is not yet 100 percent in the wake of a concussion that he sustained in late November.

Canucks not in on Chychrun

In a perfect world, the Canucks would strongly consider adding a player like Jakob Chychrun to their roster.

Though often injured, Chychrun is 24 years old, he’s a skilled two-way defender and he’s signed to a sweetheart contract. He’s been extremely productive since returning to the lineup for a short-handed Arizona Coyotes team that is being completely open about showcasing their best defender for a potential trade.

All of that fits the Rutherford, Patrik Allvin template of a potential trade target. The Canucks, however, aren’t in on Chychrun.

The asking price for Chychrun includes multiple first-round picks and the Canucks simply aren’t in a position to pay that sort of price. Vancouver’s 2023 first-round pick is flatly not in play.

(Photo of Bo Horvat: Bob Frid / USA Today)