The Vancouver Canucks gave up a lot of players over the course of Friday evening, as two major trades in the span of a few hours rocked this franchise to its core. But they are not, it would seem, giving up on the 2024/25 season being a significant one.

How do we know that? Well, primarily because shortly after trading JT Miller (and Erik Brännström and Jackson Dorrington) to the New York Rangers in exchange for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and a conditional first round pick, the Canucks then turned around and traded that same first rounder to Pittsburgh (along with Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais, and Melvin Fernstrom) for two pending UFAs in Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor.

Teams that don’t think this could be their year don’t typically trade for a couple of rentals. And, yes, either Pettersson or O’Connor could still be extended at any point over the next few months, and then they’re not rentals anymore. But they are for the time being, and that signals that GM Patrik Allvin and Co. are still willing to bet a good portion of their chips on the outcome of the 2024/25 season.

All of which then raises the question: are the Canucks a better or worse team in the immediate aftermath of these two trades?

Under the old adage that the team who walks away with the best player wins the trade, then the answer is ‘no.’ Pettersson may be considered a borderline top-pair defender at this point in his career, and Chytil and Mancini may still have upward potential, but Miller scored 103 points literally last year, and spent most of this year at a point-per-game before things started to fall apart.

The Canucks gave up Miller, and they ended Friday without having acquired any player who could be considered even close to better in the current moment. Some would say that means they are a worse team.

But that’s only one measure. It should be noted here that the Canucks gave up three current roster players and a currently demoted defender (plus a longshot prospect in Fernstrom) for three current roster players and a currently demoted defender. Pieces in, pieces out, it’s an even swap, and that allows us to look at the exchange of talent a little more holistically.

If we were to do a ranking of the most valuable players in these trades, it probably goes something like this:

Miller>Pettersson>Chytil>Mancini>O’Connor>Heinen>Brännström>Desharnais.

And if we’re going by present value to an NHL roster, all that does is slide Mancini a little further down the list behind O’Connor and Heinen (maybe.)

So, one might say the Canucks gave up the best player in this trade, and received back the second, third, fourth, and maybe fifth best players.

One might even get into the whole ‘addition by subtraction’ angle with Heinen and especially Desharnais, especially once their contracts are factored in, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

Here, we prefer real math. As in statistics. And there are a few ways we can perform a quick and dirty before/after on these transactions.

If we’re looking at just raw point-totals in and out following the trades, it looks like this:

Thankfully, the games played here are close enough that we don’t need to get into points-per-game. On the surface, one might think that the Canucks did well here in losing a 1C and walking away with only five fewer cumulative points.

This methodology is obviously flawed, in that points aren’t even close to the only measure of an NHL player’s impact. But, if we’re being brutally honest, points do represent the majority of Miller’s own impact on the 2024/25 season specifically, and it would appear that the Canucks received the better defensive players pretty much across the board here, at least the way Miller was playing defence this season.

So, if that’s the case, and they walk away with only five fewer points, one could argue that’s a win in the present moment. Especially since it’s actually just a swing of two points if we’re only counting players currently on the roster. (Shout-out to Appleboy in the comments for correcting our counting here!)

It’s also worth mentioning that the Canucks sent away some $12.25 million from their current books and brought back only some $9.39 million. That extra $3 million or so in space could add up to more than $10 million of effective spending space by the March 7 Trade Deadline.

We don’t know yet how the Canucks might spend that money. But there’s certainly potential to use it well, either to further firm up the blueline and/or to replace some of the offence lost from Miller.

But, really, when we’re talking about what the Canucks lost here, we should be talking more about the Miller of last year. The 103-point version. Because when we’re talking about whether the Canucks are better or worse following these trades, what we really should be talking about is whether the Canucks are better or worse than the team they were last year following these trades. Because, if they’re not, then what’s the point of putting any chips in on 2024/25?

And the 2024/25 team had a 103-point Miller on it.

It’s harder to feel like the combined contributions of Pettersson, Chytil, O’Connor, and whatever the team decides to ask of Mancini in the present moment could ever measure up to the impact of 2024/25 Miller on the team.

Did the Canucks address some of their weaknesses in this trade? Yes. They got pretty much the best puck-moving defender they could, securing the best overall defender freely available on the market in the process.

But then the swing in centre depth from Miller to Chytil is so considerable as to virtually wipe out any upgrade to the blueline. If we’re looking at percentages right here, right now, we can do it this way: the Canucks had, prior to this trade, probably 2/2 centres (100%) they felt they needed on a contending team, and (being generous to Myers here) probably 2.5/4 (62.5%) of the top-four D. Now, they’ve got 3.5/4 of the D (87.5%), but until we see a lot more from Chytil, no one has him as a contender’s 2C, so they’re down to 1/2 centres (50%). It’s not fancy math, but it is math.

The long-term effects of these trades will take some time to figure out, and be dependent on things like how Miller ages and whether or not Pettersson re-signs. But those are irrelevant to the outcome of 2024/24, where it sure feels as though the Canucks have lessened their odds of winning this year.

But maybe not.

One wonders if a drastically better blueline, now with a top-four of Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, Tyler Myers, and Pettersson, could have a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats effect on the forward corps in general, allowing them to replace more of Miller’s production via committee. If an additional defender was going to make that happen, Pettersson is probably the one to do it.

Really, though, we are left where we had to know we would be following a Miller trade. With a drastic need for Elias Pettersson to bounce back into the true 1C he once was.

In the immediate, present-day aftermath of these trades, one has to feel that these current Canucks are worse off, and they’re especially worse off than the 2023/24 edition of the team.

But these 2024/25 Canucks, post-trades, with Elias Pettersson playing at his best? Now, that might feasibly be a better team.

We hate to put it all on one player’s shoulders. But it is, as they say, what it is.