Two losses to open the 2024/25 season, and we’re already looking for trades to ‘fix’ the Vancouver Canucks. Classic doomspelling media!

But not really. The truth is, everyone knew coming into this season that the Canucks had some major needs that would need to be addressed via in-season transactions, with the biggest by far being a distinct lack of puck-moving defenders beyond the top pairing of Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek. The fans know it, the media knows it, and GM Patrik Allvin and Co. have even acknowledged it themselves.

As Elliotte Friedman might put it, “VCR needs a PMD.”

So, whenever any puck-moving defender of any reasonable quality hits the speculative trade market this year, you can expect a headline or two about whether or not that particular PMD is a fit in Vancouver. This is just the first of many. And it’s all about Timothy Lijegren.

At least the ‘departures’ side of this rumour is pretty sound. Liljegren enters the season on the outside of the Maple Leafs’ blueline looking in. He’s currently being healthy scratched, with Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jake McCabe, Simon Benoit, and Conor Timmins all playing ahead of him.

If that wasn’t reason enough for Liljegren to be on his way out of town, the Leafs also have two other extra defenders in Philippe Myers and the still-recovering Jani Hakanpaa who are both RHDs, like Liljegren, and whom many believe are both currently ranked ahead of Liljegren on the depth chart.

Meanwhile, the 25-year-old Liljegren is on the books for a $3 million cap hit in this season and the next. That low on the depth chart at that salary, and it’s no real mystery why the Maple Leafs want to find Liljegren a new home…and fast.

Which, naturally, leads us to wonder if Vancouver might be a fitting destination. Below, we’re going to break down the fit across three broad categories; player-wise, assets-wise, and – ominously left for the end – cap-wise.

Player-wise, Liljegren would absolutely be an example of what the Canucks don’t have a lot of, but need more of.

He is a puck-moving defender, or at least a form of one. Liljegren hasn’t exactly been handed a bounty of offensive opportunities in his career. But he managed three goals and 20 assists in just 55 games last season, and definitely still feels like someone with an offensive breakout or two left up their sleeves. There was a time, a year or so before he was to be drafted, that Liljegren was considered one of the greatest prospects in the hockey world. There’s still at least some untapped skill at play here.

Liljegren’s assets include an effortless skating stride that allows him to lug the puck up ice out of trouble, and a terrific first pass. On the PMD checklist, those are always the first two items, and Liljegren checks them off nicely.

There are some flaws, of course. He’s got some lapses in his defensive coverage, can occasionally make bone-headed decisions, and can occasionally shy away from more physical play. But those are all problems that coach Rick Tocchet and Co. should be able to handle. They’re also problems that would stand out a lot less amid Vancouver’s current blueline collection of tall angry trees.

Whereas Liljegren no longer fits within the vision of what Toronto wants to do with their blueline – mostly, making it bigger and harder to play against – Liljegren would arrive in Vancouver to a blueline where he looks a lot more like a missing piece. And he could thrive in that opportunity.

Toronto fans and media will attest that Liljegren tends to be a player who plays better the further up the lineup he travels. Due to injuries, he’s had to skate top-four minutes for the Maple Leafs on a few extended stints, and there are those who will swear they’ve been his best stints of NHL hockey.

https://x.com/JFreshHockey/status/1844808719734882654

With Tyler Myers now out of the lineup, the Canucks’ right side looks like Hronek, Noah Juulsen, and Vincent Desharnais. Their bottom-four D look to be Juulsen, Desharnais, Carson Soucy, and Derek Forbort.

It’s not hard to see how the right-handed, puck-moving, smooth-skating Liljegren both fits into and improves that group overall.

Player-wise, he’s probably exactly what they’re looking for.

Now, the Canucks are a little low on sellable assets. We can’t look at that roster and identify any odd pieces that ‘need’ to go or that the team would probably rather be rid of, as was the case with Andrei Kuzmenko last year. The Canucks are looking to add to this group, not subtract.

Any valuable assets exchanged in return for Liljegren would probably have to be non-roster assets, then.

The Canucks don’t exactly have a ton of prospects or draft picks worth putting on the market. Certain elements, like Tom Willander, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, and Aatu Räty, are too important to the plan to part with, and the Canucks have already traded away a lot of first and second round picks lately. Thankfully, it shouldn’t cost anything like that to land Liljegren, because the Maple Leafs are somewhat actively trying to get rid of him.

We don’t imagine that the bidding would rise much higher than a third round pick and change at this point. Unfortunately, the Canucks don’t have a third round pick of their own until 2027. But it wouldn’t be that difficult to put together a package of some sort that equates to a third rounder in value.

Should multiple teams get involved in the bidding, then, sure, maybe the price goes as high as a second rounder. But the Canucks would have one each of those in 2025 and 2026 to spare if they so chose. And in any case, we don’t imagine that many teams will be involved in the bidding, because not that many teams could afford Liljegren’s $3 million cap hit right now.

So, player-wise and asset-wise, there’s a fit to be found here. The problem? The Canucks are definitely one of those teams that can’t afford Liljegren’s $3 million cap hit right now.

As it stands, the Canucks are about $450,000 under the cap with 23 players on their active roster and Dakota Joshua and Thatcher Demko on IR. With Myers’ injury, we predict the Canucks will send down one of Räty, Arshdeep Bains, or Nils Åman in the days to come so as to recall Mark Friedman, but that will only result in a smidgen of extra cap space.

That’s not enough for Liljegren. It won’t even accrue to be enough for Liljegren by the Trade Deadline.

As we already mentioned, there are no obvious candidates on the roster to be sent out to create cap space right now. The Canucks kind of need all the players they have on hand, and anyone seem as extraneous (like perhaps Pius Suter in the current moment) don’t make all that much.

There’s also the fact that Toronto would very ideally like to subtract Liljegren’s cap hit from their books, not trade it out for something equivalent.

That doesn’t make very good trade partners out of the Canucks and Maple Leafs.

Retention is always an option…but not a very realistic one in this scenario. Convincing the Maple Leafs, who plan to compete and spend as much of the cap as possible this season, to take unnecessary dead cap onto their roster sounds like an impossibility, especially with two years left on Liljegren’s deal.

The Canucks could probably find a way to squeeze Liljegren at 50% retention ($1.5 million cap hit) onto their roster. What they probably couldn’t do is convince Toronto to keep the other $1.5 million on their books for the next two seasons. Not without some serious compensatory additions to the trade, at which point they’re probably paying more for the retention than the player themselves.

There is always the possibility of involving a third team. There are those basement-dwelling teams out there with ample cap space to spare, and so the Canucks could pay one of them to trade for Liljegren, and then flip him to Vancouver at 50% retention. That would, of course, cost extra assets, and the third team would have to be paid back for what they paid for Liljegren and for the retention on top of that.

It is possible, but not probable. For one, it’s needlessly overcomplicated. The truth is that, while Liljegren might have a limited market, he will have a market all the same. Chances are that the Maple Leafs can find him a new home without having to involve retention, and chances are that they’ll take that route instead of the overly-overwrought path that would be needed for him to land in Vancouver.

So, is Liljegren a fit for the Canucks, player-wise? Yes.

Would he be affordable for them, assets-wise? Yes.

But would he be a piece they could squeeze onto the books, cap-wise? No. Not unless several complicated, retention-based steps were taken first.

As such, the Canucks are probably best to skip this first opportunity at a PMD and wait for the next one to hit the market. We are, after all, only a week into the season. Surely, Liljegren won’t be the one and only quality PMD to hit the trade block this year.

Right?