Why the Canucks should have avoided trading for an expensive piece like Filip Hronek

Canucks president Jim Rutherford smiled as if the proposed three-year timeline to turn the Canucks around was generous.

It was a mid-January press conference, before Bruce Boudreau had been fired and Bo Horvat traded, and he was being grilled by media about the club’s publicly-stated plan to turn the franchise around quickly rather than commit to a rebuild.

Rutherford cut colleague Thomas Drance off in the middle of a question about the thought process behind a faster turnaround and asked what “soon” meant. Drance responded with three years and that’s where Rutherford’s expression shifted as if three years was a liberal timeline. Rutherford responded that he was unequivocally confident the Canucks could be turned around in that timeframe and perhaps even sooner.

That response and press conference wasn’t received well in the Vancouver market. How on Earth will they successfully pull that off?

The Canucks have now unveiled a signature, era-defining move for how they plan to retool: trading the conditional 2023 first-round pick they got from the Islanders in the Horvat trade and their own second-round pick to Detroit for Filip Hronek and a fourth-round pick.

Hronek is a 25-year-old top-four right-shot defenceman. He’s always provided strong value offensively and as a puck transporter, but he’s had a breakout in his all-around game this season after previous years where he’s been shaky in his own end. Here’s what Red Wings colleague Max Bultman said about Hronek when he and I discussed a fit with Vancouver in the context of a possible Horvat trade about a month ago:

“The defensive side is probably where Hronek has taken the biggest step this season, at least to my eye. At first, I thought it was mainly a product of his deployment with Olli Määttä early on, but he and Määttä have been split up for a while now and his defensive numbers have largely held up. The Red Wings are giving up 2.44 expected goals per 60 minutes with Hronek on the ice at five-on-five this season, according to Evolving Hockey, which is second on the team to only Jake Walman.

“I wouldn’t call him a shutdown guy, mind you. But I think he has earned at least two-way credibility at this stage.

“The big question for both teams, though, might be how much stock you’re putting into this season. Is it a breakout, or will it be an outlier? I think I’d lean more toward the former, given his age and the fact he’s finally out of the overexposed role he was in early in his career. But it’s certainly fair to question whether he keeps this up in a different defensive structure, or an environment where he’s asked to be the defensive stalwart.”

The Canucks are betting that Hronek’s breakout as a two-way force is real while the Red Wings are presumably less confident it will last and prefer to cash in while his stock is at an all-time high. Hronek represents a massive upgrade on the blue line, especially with his puck-moving ability.

From Vancouver’s perspective, this trade shares similarities from when the club acquired J.T. Miller from Tampa Bay in 2019:

Hronek is on a friendly $4.4 million cap hit but only until the end of next season. At that point, he’ll be an arbitration-eligible RFA. Hronek will have a really strong case for a significant raise given his big point totals and ice time, at which point he’ll be on a market-value contract, not a team-friendly rate. Tyler Myers’ deal expires so some money will free up by that point.

This trade will help the Canucks attempt a retool that can get them back into the playoffs sooner rather than later, but the path to building an eventual actual Cup contender looks highly improbable with this direction.

In this hard-cap league, Stanley Cup calibre teams need players on sweetheart, bargain contracts that they’ll outperform by big margins. It’s the only way to fit an elite roster under the cap. The Colorado Avalanche, for example, had a lot of cost-effective talent on their 2022 Stanley Cup team:

Boston is widely considered the best team in the league this year. The Bruins don’t have a single forward making $7 million or higher — Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci making a combined $3.5 million, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand have cap hits that start with a six.

Once Elias Pettersson gets a massive payday at the end of next season and Hronek gets a raise, every core player on the Canucks will be on a full-market value contract with the exception of Thatcher Demko. That’s going to greatly limit Vancover’s cap flexibility to substantially improve. Draft picks that can develop into young ELC talent are the best way for the Canucks to eventually supplemented Pettersson and Quinn Hughes with necessary good players on bargain contracts, especially since the Canucks have anchors like Oliver Ekman-Larsson that make the financial picture murky.

Just look at the cap picture for next season. Vancouver already has $83.6 million in contracts. How will they take the next step to improve the roster? They don’t have a whole lot of cap flexibility, excess draft picks or a strong prospect pool that will graduate a lot of high-end players soon.

Almost every year, the Canucks chase a splashy acquisition to accelerate the building process for a team that’s near the bottom of the league standings. The trade in a vacuum might not look bad in the end if Hronek fulfills his potential. But yet again the Canucks are showing they lack long-term vision and patience by prematurely accelerating.

(Photo of Filip Hronek: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)