The Vancouver Canucks continue to actively shop forward Conor Garland, and leaguewide interest has been increasing with the club reportedly now willing to retain as much as 30 percent of the forward’s cap hit for the next three seasons.
ESPN’s Kevin Weekes shared an update on the Garland situation to Twitter on Wednesday morning, noting that Garland’s recent agent switch has also helped drum up more interest from potential trade partners.
Garland, 27, is under contract through the end of the 2025–26 season at a $4.95 million cap hit. The Scituate, Massachusetts product scored a goal in Vancouver’s season-opening 8–1 win over the Edmonton Oilers and had another taken back in the Canucks’ 2–0 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday.
The Canucks have already been active on the trade front to start the 2023–24 season. General manager Patrik Allvin has made three deals since the start of trading camp: Tanner Pearson and a third-round pick to Montreal for Casey DeSmith; a fifth-round pick to Toronto for Sam Lafferty; and, on Tuesday, Jack Rathbone and Karel Plasek to Pittsburgh for Mark Friedman and Ty Glover.
The Athletic‘s Chris Johnston said on his SDPN show on Tuesday that “five or six teams” have had conversations with the Canucks on Garland, with most of them appearing to be U.S.-based Eastern Conference clubs:
“What’s happened in the last week or so is Conor Garland changed agents to Judd Moldaver, pretty prominent figure in the industry now who represents Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Zach Werenski, Roman Josi,” Johnston said. “Conor Garland makes that move in part because he wants Judd to try to help find him somewhere else to play. And where we’re at right now in this moment is, I think that’s in a bit of a holding pattern.
“Finding a trade partner a week into the season maybe isn’t as easy, and I think the urgency on the end for teams for teams that are at least curious to pull the trigger on a trade is not that high,” Johnston continued. “But it sounds like there’s maybe five or six teams that at least have enough interest to want to engage in some conversations. I count among them Nashville, Washington, Columbus. I think Carolina is willing to explore there.”
For now, Garland remains with the Canucks, and the team will return to action on Thursday evening to face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena.
More must-reads: