Making Trades: Moving up to 3rd overall

The draft is upon us this week, with speculation and rumours running rampant as teams get ready for the big weekend.

Over the past few weeks, there have been suggestions that the Columbus Blue Jackets, who currently possess the 3rd overall pick, would consider trading down. If that is the case, the Canucks should be at least interested. The price would need to make sense, but it’s clear that there is a difference between Jesse Puljujarvi and whoever will be available at 5th overall.

The Canucks are not in a position to put together a package of picks and prospects, but with some creativity, there could be a deal to be had.

Before we get started, Dan Murphy said last week that the Canucks weren’t looking to move up, but things can obviously change:

This should obviously just be viewed as an exercise to see if it’s possible to move up from 5th overall to 3rd overall.

Two weeks ago, the Florida Panthers made a trade with the New Jersey Devils sending injured forward Marc Savard in a cap dump deal. The full deal was Marc Savard and a 2018 2nd round pick for journeymen Paul Thompson and Graham Black. The key here is the 2nd round pick. The Panthers paid a 2nd round pick (and taking on a contract spot) to alleviate themselves of the cap space hit.

How does that relate here?

Well, I mentioned last month the Blue Jackets are in a bit of a cap pickle and are looking to get themselves out of it and the likely candidate to move is Scott Hartnell. This was confirmed by Darren Dreger, who did mention yesterday, that the Blue Jackets are looking to move Hartnell (or another contract out):

The last tweet is important, as the Blue Jackets aren’t going to make a trade for the sake of trade. But lets look at it from the Canucks perspective.

Although Hartnell is 34 years old, he is still a very serviceable player who would help the Canucks. He was in John Tortorella’s doghouse for 1/2 the season and he still finished the year with 23 goals. He plays a feisty game and would be able to play anywhere in the top 9 and contribute. He posted a 49.5% CF for Columbus last season, which relative to how bad the Blue Jackets were is very impressive. For comparisons sake, Daniel Sedin ended the season with 49.3%.

Yes, age is a concern but Hartnell seems to be ignoring father time quite well. He has scored 20 goals/82 games for the past 6 seasons and 10 of the last 11 seasons.

There are some differences that even Hartnell and Savard in terms of cap hit burden – Savard only has one year left, where Hartnell has 3 years left at $4.75 million per season left. Hartnell would actually contribute to his new team, whereas unfortunately Savard is unable to do so. So taking all those things into consideration, it’s fair to suggest taking on the cap burden of Hartnell is ‘worth’ close to a 2nd round pick, maybe slightly below that.

This thought process was reinforced last week when the Blackhawks had to give up Teuvo Teravainen to unload Bryan Bickell’s contract.

The Blue Jackets could get value for Hartnell by trading him elsewhere though, so the Canucks may need to make the offer better. However, we aren’t privy to what the market is providing, so other teams may be trying to pry assets from Columbus to rid themselves of Hartnell’s contract.

Looking from the Canucks perspective, they don’t have to force the Blue Jackets to lose more pieces to move Hartnell, they could actually get value back.

At the moment, the Blue Jackets currently owe their 2017 or 2018 2nd round pick to the Canucks for hiring John Tortorella. So as part of the deal, that future considerations would be eliminated.

Now the Canucks are offering 5th overall, 2nd round pick (2017 or 2018 CBJ) and taking on Hartnell (which is close to 2nd round pick value).

In my opinion – that’s close. So you would have to figure out what else the Canucks may need to add to close the gap. What can they offer:

If it requires Hansen to be added, it’s a full stop for me. I would rather have Hansen or try and trade him to another team.  Columbus also is looking to move out salary, so adding $2.5 million in Hansen may not be in their plans, unless they could flip him.

There is value in trading with the Canucks for Columbus GM Jarmo Kekalainen in that he isn’t taking a big step down in the draft, is alleviating himself of some cap pressure and also adding assets. That small step in the draft would be an important part to stress in conversations. The Columbus Blue Jackets AHL affiliate, Lake Erie Monsters, just won the Calder Cup – so they have tonnes of help on the way and whoever they select at 5th would join the group shortly.

It makes sense for the Canucks, as they improve their current team by adding Hartnell and Puljujarvi, improve their quality of draft pick for a player who could play next season without giving up drastic amounts of current or future assets. That CBJ 2nd round pick that is owed is really found money – Tortorella was a disaster of a season, and they got a 2nd round pick for it.

The Canucks would need to make some more cap space to add Hartnell and another UFA winger – but that’s not impossible. 

As I suggested off the hop, this is likely a fruitless endeavour as they likely won’t be able to offer up enough to move up. Even if the Canucks remain at 5th, they will get a great prospect but Puljujarvi is worth the time exploring to move up. If you need a refresher, here’s his first goal from his hat-trick in the gold medal game of the U18’s: