Shane Wright Prefers Trade To Canucks

Despite asking the Seattle Kraken for a trade a few weeks ago, nothing has materialized on the trade front for center Shane Wright. Still, that could change relatively soon, as Ben Kuzma of The Province reported in an article that Wright prefers a trade to the Vancouver Canucks, and there is mutual interest from the Kraken’s northern rival.

As Kuzma points out in his article, Vancouver’s interest in Wright is pretty self-explanatory. Bottoming out since scoring 73 goals and 191 points in 162 games for the Canucks from 2022 to 2024, the organization has no idea what they’ll get from top-line center Elias Pettersson next season. Additionally, Filip Chytil has remained extremely concussion-prone as he enters what should be the prime years of his career. Aatu Räty is one of the best faceoff takers in the NHL and is coming off a solid IIHF World Championships performance for Team Finland, but hasn’t shown any top-six scoring potential in the game’s best league to date.

For what it’s worth, Wright isn’t coming off the greatest season, either. The former fourth-overall pick of the 2022 NHL Draft scored 12 goals and 27 points in 74 games for the Kraken last season, averaging 13:48 of ice time per game. Additionally, he was less than responsible in the faceoff dot, finishing with a 39.7% success rate while starting 71.3% of his shifts in the offensive zone.

Still, he’s not far removed from being the projected first overall pick of the 2022 NHL Draft. Yes, nobody is knocking the Montreal Canadiens for their selection anymore, but Wright rightfully believes that he has another level to climb to. Given that he’s only 22 years old, he fits right into the Canucks window and is exactly the type of reclamation project the team should be seeking out.

Before last season’s disappointing results, Wright seemingly took a meaningful step forward in his development. The Burlington, ON native scored 19 goals and 44 points in 79 games for Seattle, averaging 14:04 of ice time per game. It wasn’t enough offensive production to lead the Kraken in scoring, but Wright still finished with one more point than Matty Beniers in three fewer games.

In his article, Kuzma theorized that Vancouver could trade one of their own disgruntled forwards as part of the package for Wright. Without any reports to the contrary, winger Jake DeBrusk still wants out of the Canucks organization and would give Seattle some of the top-six scoring help they’ve been looking for over the last few months. Kuzma admitted that Vancouver would likely need to toss in a second or third-round pick to get the deal over the finish line, but DeBrusk should be a decent starting point.