The Vancouver Canucks and the Ottawa Senators are two Canadian franchises that have faced somewhat similar circumstances of late. For instance, both had their American captains more or less force their way into an out-of-town trade. But the results for the two teams have been very different.

Last year, the Canucks tanked into a last-place finish, and are once again in the league basement to start the 2026-27 campaign. The Senators, meanwhile, pushed through to a postseason appearance last year, and even without Brady Tkachuk and his natural hat-tricks, they’re off to a hot start this year. The 6-3-0 Senators are third in their division, seventh in the league overall, and firmly in a playoff spot despite considerable injuries already.

And since the Canucks and the Senators are in such opposite situations now, it makes sense that they might be able to help one another out via a trade. Especially since each side seems to have what the other side might be looking for.

For the Senators, that’s offence, which makes sense. They dealt Tkachuk, their leading scorer over the past several seasons running, for three first round picks and a second. That’s a great haul, but it included exactly zero pieces that would impact the Ottawa lineup this year. The Senators did flip one of those picks to the San Jose Sharks for William Eklund, but that only does so much to replace Tkachuk, who’s scored as many as 37 goals in a season in recent history.

It’s goals, specifically, that the Senators are short on. Despite their 6-3-0 record, they’re only a plus-1 on the 2026-27 season (as of this Sunday morning writing), having scored 24 goals and allowed 23. Those 24 goals scored are the 12^th lowest total in the league, and the lowest by a team in a clear playoff position. They’re also, notably, considerably less than the 30 goals the Canucks have produced themselves already.

The fact that Eklund got hurt early in the year – out 10-12 weeks with a torn ankle tendon – isn’t helping matters much. But with or without Eklund, the Senators have a clear forward deficiency, and a goal-scoring forward deficiency at that.

They’ve got some good-to-great players lined up in their top-six, including Eklund, Tim Stutzle, and Drake Batherson. Their centre depth, which features Dylan Cozens and Shane Pinto behind Stutzle, is at least decent. But then the rest of the forward corps seem decidedly understaffed. The remainder of the top-nine includes an agèd Claude Giroux as their best piece, and then a bunch of names like Stephen Halliday, Andre Burakovsky, Nick Cousins, and Mike Amadio, who are all at least somewhat questionable in that role.

It’s not too hard to see, on paper, why the Senators are lacking in the goal-scoring department.

Nor is it hard to see where the Canucks could step in. The Canucks have, if anything, an overabundance of forwards, and while the trade of Aatu Räty to Toronto has alleviated the immediate surplus, they’d still most likely prefer to trade another forward or two at some point between now and the upcoming offseason.

The Canucks would especially like to move one or more of the veteran forwards on their roster, some of whom specialize in goal-scoring, and you can start to see the potential trade come together here.

The first and most obvious name to consider is Jake DeBrusk. Not only was he the subject of heavy trade speculation all summer after making since-walked-back comments about not wanting to play through a rebuild, but DeBrusk was also specifically linked to the Senators a time or two.

DeBrusk can, of course, score goals. He’s scored as many as 28 in a season, and almost always scores at least 20. His five-on-five goal-scoring seems back to normal this year after an anomalous showing last year, and he’s a proven commodity on the power play, which would be good news for the Senators, who sit 28^th overall with a 12.8% success rate on the year.

Fitting DeBrusk’s $5.5 million cap hit into Ottawa’s salary structure would prove a slight challenge, but not an impossibility. For one, it’s becoming increasingly a bargain rate for a player of DeBrusk’s calibre. For another, the Senators’ current $2.6 million or so in available cap space is projected to accrue to more than $11 million by the Trade Deadline. That means the Senators could make a trade to fit DeBrusk now, or simply wait until closer to the deadline when they’d be able to fit him in without any other moves.

DeBrusk does have a full no-movement clause until July 1, so he ultimately controls his destiny. But if he wants to stay in a Canadian market, which is something he’s seemed to express in the past, he might want to jump at this opportunity to do so before that clause converts to a 15-team no-trade clause in July, at which point DeBrusk could be dealt to any number of destinations.

While DeBrusk may be the most logical name here, he isn’t the only one. The Senators have also been linked in some rumours to Brock Boeser before. And while Boeser looks slower than ever out there in 2026-27, he is still producing points at his usual rate. And though he’s only got two goals on the season thus far, Boeser can almost always be counted on to produce between 25 and 40 over the span of a full year.

The Senators are nowhere near as speedy a team as the Canucks are aiming to be. Maybe there’s still some sort of fit for Boeser there, too, depending on what their pro scouting department says.

If it’s just someone with the ability to pop in the odd goal, the Senators could always consider any of Drew O’Connor, Linus Karlsson, or Paul Cotter, too. But if it’s a true top-six goal-scorer they’re after, they’ll probably aim higher up the lineup, and that probably means DeBrusk or Boeser.

For the Senators’ part, they can offer up exactly what the Canucks would be looking for in return, which is future-based assets in the form of picks and/or prospects. The Senators have four first round picks over the next three drafts, including all of their own and Florida’s in 2029. Same goes for second round picks, where they’ve got all their own and Florida’s in 2027.

The Sens’ top-most prospect, Carter Yakemchuk, has broken through at the NHL level and is likely unobtainable. But then, they’ve got a number of other interesting names that likely could hit the block, including 19-year-old RD Logan Hensler, hard-shooting RW Kasper Halttunen, and intriguing recent first round RW Jaxon Cover, among others.

There’s more than enough in there to pay the asking price for DeBrusk, which shouldn’t get much higher than a first and a prospect at most, or for Boeser, which should be less than that.

To be clear, this is all more speculation than it is rumour. Any word of any potential trades between the Canucks and Senators dates back to last season or the summer, and we haven’t heard anything directly since.

But all the pieces are on the table here for a deal to happen. Whether it happens soon, or closer to the Trade Deadline, or not at all, remains to be seen. But the idea makes sense, which is more than can be said about a lot of the speculation that gets tossed around within an average NHL season.