A young player with untapped potential hits the trade market, and you just know the Vancouver Canucks are going to have some interest. At this stage in the rebuild, adding more young talent isn’t just the Canucks’ main priority; it might be their only priority.

And when it comes to the Washington Capitals’ Ivan Miroshnichenko, the idea of a trade might just have some extra merit to it.

Word broke via Elliotte Friedman this weekend that the Capitals gave Miroshnichenko and his agent permission to seek their own trade with another team. Since being drafted 20^th overall in 2022, Miroshnichenko has only managed 55 NHL games for the Capitals. That’s partly due to some stalled development on his part, but it’s also in large part due to the depth Washington always seems to have on their forward corps.

Miroshnichenko, at 22, came into the 2026-27 season slotted behind forwards like Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, Alex Tuch, Dylan Strome, Jordan Kyrou, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Aliaksei Protas, Ilya Protas, Ryan Leonard, Anthony Beauvillier, Boone Jenner, and Justin Sordif. That might be the deepest forward group in the entire NHL.

At the same time, Miroshnichenko had run out of waiver exemption time. As a result, he’s been caught in a sort of limbo, where he can’t get into the lineup – only three games played thus far – but where the Caps also do not want to send him through waivers, knowing they would lose them for nothing. It’s an awkward situation, and it makes sense that Miroshnichenko might want out, and that the Capitals are willing to facilitate that – for the right price, of course.

But before we get to the ask, let’s look at why the Canucks would even want Miroshnichenko, specifically. They’ve definitely got room in their own forward corps for him to join right away and start getting playing time. Either Arshdeep Bains or Brendan Gallagher could easily cycle out of the lineup to give him a chance, with Miroshnichenko said to have at least a higher offensive potential than both of them, and perhaps more ability to play within the top-six, where the Canucks have tried out a number of middling options thus far in 2026-27. The Canucks have already begun this cycle of rotating healthy scratches up front, and Miroshnichenko could easily work his way into that rotation.

More specifically, Miroshnichenko is said to play a power forward-style game that the Canucks currently lack. He’s described as fast enough to blow past defenders, strong enough to bull through them, and with a heavy enough shot to score goals once he’s in the clear. Some scouts still claim he has abundant potential as a middle-six contributor with a unique profile and impact on the game.

And for Canucks fans, hearing of a former Russian first-round pick with power forward potential who ran out of runway with their drafting team should evoke a very specific memory. Miroshnichenko sounds, in many ways, like another Vasily Podkolzin, and indeed, many have already made that comparison, stating that Miroshnichenko has a chance to be the “next Podkolzin.”

Podkolzin, for the record, is up to seven goals and 12 points in 11 games to start the 2026-27 season. Any team would love to get their hands on the next Podkolzin, but especially the team that gave the last Podkolzin up for a measly fourth-round pick.

So, what would it cost the Canucks to take a shot at redemption?

Probably more than a fourth-round pick, at the end of the day, but that’s to be expected. If the Canucks were dealing exclusively in their own draft picks, they wouldn’t want to give up more than a third. A Vancouver second-rounder should be valued as a late first these days, and that’s too rich a price to pay for a Miroshnichenko. Given the likelihood of multiple bidders, a third will likely not be good enough.

The Canucks shouldn’t trade their own second-rounders for a player like this, but they do already have their hands on three second-rounders originally belonging to other teams. In descending order of value, those probably go from the Columbus second in 2028 (Conor Garland trade) to the San Jose second in 2027 (Kiefer Sherwood trade) to the Dallas second in 2027 (Tyler Myers trade).

They could probably swallow trading away either that San Jose or Dallas second, but that’s not exactly ideal. For the rebuilding Canucks, ideal is holding on to those top-60 picks and using them to select new prospects, not trading them for older prospects. If there’s another way, the Canucks would probably look to take it.

And there may, indeed, be another way. The Capitals are said to be short on right-shot defenders for their blueline, as are many teams. Right now they’re lining up Matt Roy, Timothy Liljegren, and veteran minor league enforcer Dylan McIlrath on a nightly basis, with former Canuck Vincent Desharnais on the IR for a while after an emergency appendectomy. Washington just picked up Jack St. Ivany, an RD, on waivers, as a temporary fill-in.

One assumes that the Capitals would be happy with a potentially longer-term solution there, and the Canucks might have one. Victor Mancini is 24, so a couple of years older than Miroshnichenko, but was selected in the same 2022 Draft. Like Miroshnichenko, Mancini has struggled to get into the lineup this season, playing in only four games so far. As prospects, they’re almost in opposite situations. Mancini looked good early in his career, but is running out of chances to show he can play that way consistently. Miroshnichenko has always looked good in short stints, but has yet to really get a shot at showing that over any length of time.

Mancini still has 11 NHL games left to play before he loses his own waiver-exempt status, which may give him a smidgen of extra value.

So, a Mancini-for-Miroshnichenko swap is something that could, perhaps, work out for both sides. From the Canucks’ perspective, they wouldn’t really have to make many changes to the shape of their roster, aside from going with 14 forwards and seven D for a while instead of the 13/8 configuration they have right now. Perhaps they’d send Guillaume Brisebois down and call up Kirill Kudryavtsev, who can play both the left and right, as the new seventh defender.

And Miroshnichenko, for his part, could be inserted into the lineup and into the top-nine right away, getting more minutes than he ever got in Washington and, hopefully, rewarding the Canucks with his performance therein.

If it all works out as well as can be, this could be a relatively low-cost way for the Canucks to get back some of what they lost in selling Podkolzin too early. And that’s a possibility that is, at the very least, worth the time to explore.