The Canucks made the rare post-game trade on Thursday night with the Los Angeles Kings, acquiring 27-year-old centre Nic Dowd for Jordan Subban.

It’s not what you’d call a blockbuster deal, but given Dowd is expected to make his Canucks debut against the Calgary Flames tonight, it’s a deal of some consequence. And should Subban find a way to resurrect his career with the Kings, then doubly so.

There’s no clear winner in this deal. So, I wanted to get the CanucksArmy staff’s take on it, and I asked them for their thoughts on this deal.

I would have liked to see Subban get more of a chance and I don’t think that Nic Dowd is likely to do anything special as a Canuck but at the end of the day it’s a pretty “meh” trade and I understand that the Canucks wanted another NHL centre I guess – I hope Subban gets a shot as a King because it was clear that he wasn’t very high in the Canucks defensive depth chart!

The Canucks added an NHL player who should be able to help them through this stretch of injuries for an AHL player who wasn’t likely to get an opportunity in Vancouver. Subban had been passed, in my opinion, by more than a couple of defensemen in Utica this season. It sounds like Dowd is another one of those “high character” types that the Canucks are fond of, and that’s okay by me. If his work ethic can rub off on a few youngsters in Van by the end of the season, that can only be a good thing.

This move “should” also get Chaput back to Utica sooner, and the Comets need him a lot more than the Canucks do. The move also should help Chatfield and Brisebois get more ice time in Utica. At the end of the day, this move isn’t likely going to move the needle much in Vancouver, but may help them stay afloat and give other players, like Granny, opportunities that weren’t otherwise getting so far this season. So I’m “okay” with the trade.

While I can nitpick the trade all I want, it was apparent that Subban wasn’t getting a shot here so at least the Canucks got something for him rather than letting him walk for nothing. What I will say is that I’d rather seen them try to acquire a draft pick or something for the future with Subban rather than a 27-year-old stop gap centre.

In terms of potential, it’s a trade the Canucks will never win and the Kings will never lose. At the end of the day, I’m happy for Jordan Subban to get a change of scenery and hopefully more opportunity.

For me, it’s getting more attention than it should be for two reasons: 1) Subban’s family (and the fact that the other younger Subban is having a breakout year after being all but written off by Boston), and 2) the timing of the trade. Late-night trades tend to get more attention because we’re least expecting them; we’re tired, we’re drunk, whatever the case may be. The knee-jerk reaction to seeing a deal go down at 2am eastern time, especially with a Subban involved, got a lot of people going.

But ultimately? Jordan Subban was flying under the radar; people either thought he was having an off fall campaign and needed to get going again to ever get NHL consideration, or they thought he was never going to get that consideration in the first place. On the other side of the trade, Nic Dowd has been, statistically, awful for Los Angeles after what was possibly an overinflated offensive performance last year. He’s been incredibly sheltered, taking anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of his faceoffs in the offensive zone, and still can’t really drive play; the only thing he really brings is a good hand in the faceoff circle itself. Bottom line is that the Canucks get some immediate relief down the middle while Sutter and Horvat are out, for little money and with little need for retention this summer, while the Kings get a prospect that likely wasn’t going to pan out much anyway. Each team has a best-case scenario (Dowd improves with Vancouver like Granlund has, Subban regains his scoring touch and hits the NHL in the next few years as a depth offensive blue liner), but neither really did anything amazing. No one lost this trade, but no one really won it, either, because neither team gets ‘better’. It should have flown right under the radar – but after a game people wanted to move past, it was easy conversation fodder.

If Subban turns out to be nothing, Dowd is a fine return. If he turns out to be anything at all, I think it’s an obvious loss. Subban was traded when his value was likely at an all-time low. He was in the middle of probably his worst stretch in his pro career and he was still leading Utica’s defense in shots per game. Subban is such a frustrating player, even more so if you’re a fan of his game. He’s got some obvious warts, but we’ve also been exposed over the past three years to a lot of opinions from people who think they’re experts despite never having seen him play because they can parrot some talking head’s opinion about Subban back to you.

The thing that I think some people still do not understand is that it *does not* matter how glaring your mistakes are if you have a net positive impact on your team’s shot/scoring chance/goal differential. It’s like taking a math exam. If you get one question wrong on a ten-question quiz, it doesn’t matter how wrong you were. The final grade is still 90%. For the majority of his career, Subban has been a net positive player for the comets, in spite of his obvious deficiencies.

Dowd, on the other hand, seems like an unnecessary addition. The depth at C is bad, sure. But the Canucks still have 5 natural centres on the active roster, and I’m unconvinced Dowd is an improvement on any of them. I also don’t think the team is really in the position where it makes sense to move futures for short-term help. It’s been a nice little run, but the Canucks are still very much a rebuilding team.

This trade reminds me a lot of the Kassian trade in some ways. Sure, it’s not great; but at the same time, the player going back the other way had no future here. I think the upside is similar too. LA is probably getting a useful bottom-of-the-lineup piece at best. Subban had at least 8 or 9 players in front of him on the depth chart, and was basically just one of many question marks in the defensive prospect pool along with guys like Chatfield and Brisebois. At the end of the day, the pool was crowded and the Canucks jettisoned the player they didn’t believe in. I still don’t really believe he got a fair shake here, but he also never performed well enough to be too upset about it.

I like the trade because I happen to think there is a less than 1% chance that Jordan Subban becomes an impact player in the NHL. At 22 and beginning to trend downward while being passed on the depth chart in Utica by Chatfield and McEneny it was time for management to make a decision on the future of Subban in the Canucks organization.

The reality is that the Canucks depth at centre is paper thin at the moment and screaming for help, especially on the PK. Dowd helps fill that void, even if it’s only short term. Essentially, even if Dowd only plays a handful of games in a Canucks uniform, it outweighs the value of Subban never cracking the lineup.

Honestly, I’m kind of happy the Subban saga is over. It wasn’t a very good one but it was more of a distraction than anything. We’ve all talked about the name and really, we’ll never know the player as an NHLer. I don’t love the trade but I really don’t care one way or the other. Probably could have received more for him or at least someone that makes more sense. If his name was Jordan Bertuzzi or Jordan Burns or Jordan Weber he probably would have been compared the same way. The Subbans all heralded Jordan as the best of the three, at least that’s what I remember a quote saying, and until he actually proved it, he is just another prospect.

We’ve all been high on players that were “can’t miss” and they missed. I saw the trade last night and thought one thing “Great smoke screen for a terrible outing against Philly”. That was it. I went to bed after that.

We were more upset with Hodgson, Shinkaruk, and McCann. Let’s move on.