Photo Credit: Bruce Fedyck / USA TODAY Sports

33-year-old Vancouver Canucks defender Kevin Bieksa is entering the final year of the front loaded, five-year contract that he signed following the club’s run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2011. The lifetime Canuck has full no-trade protection written into his deal which is inconvenient for the Canucks at the moment, but over the life of his contract (to this point at least) the hard-nosed veteran defender has provided the club with significant value above and beyond his $4.6 million cap hit. 

Though Bieksa’s overall effectiveness, and his defensive game in particular, has declined somewhat, that’s the price of doing business when you’re locking up unrestricted players to deals you can life with. 

With the Canucks pressed up against the projected upper limit of the NHL salary cap, there’s been some clamouring in the Vancouver market for the club to sell on Bieksa this summer. At the moment though, the team has yet to approach him about consenting to a potential deal, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger.

“I’m told that the Canucks have not approached Kevin Bieksa yet to look at the restrictions that he has within his contract,” Dreger said during an episode of That’s Hockey broadcast on TSN yesterday. “The sense that I get is if Bieksa were to allow a trade, he’d have to get an extension as part of the package…”

That the Canucks have yet to approach Bieksa about the possibility of waiving his no-trade clause matches up with Jim Benning’s recent comments on TSN 1040. The Canucks’ general manager didn’t categorically deny that it was a possibility that the club might ask a player to consent to a trade, but said that the club hadn’t “gone down that road” yet.

As for the extension nugget, if what Dreger is saying is true, and he’s not the first hockey reporter to touch on this, then we have to applaud Bieksa for utilizing his leverage in a creative way. You probably won’t be surprised to hear in light of these reports that Bieksa is represented by Kurt Overhardt. Overhardt isn’t much liked in some circles, namely in Ohio, but he seems to be pretty good at his job.

One factor to consider here is that Bieksa’s actual salary in the final year of his contract is only set at $2.5 million (even as he carries a $4.6 million cap hit). That, along with his offensive abilities at 5-on-5 and his physical value, should make him an attractive commodity, even as the quality of his play begins to incur some diminishing returns as a result of advancing age.

The no-trade clause is obviously the big complication, as it turns any potential Bieksa trade into a three-dimensional deal, of a sort that the Canucks have lost repeatedly in recent seasons (see: Luongo, Roberto and Kesler, Ryan). 

Ultimately if a rival team is interested enough to commit term to Bieksa as part of a deal while also giving up a decent asset, and Bieksa returns that interest, the Canucks should explore that possibility. It seems a remote one though.

More likely it will prove tough, or at the very least complicated, to move Bieksa in a deal that nets Vancouver both cap space and decent assets. If the Canucks want salary cap space, obviously it would behoove them to make a move in short order, and it might be possible to make a deal at the draft (even that’s a sticky wicket though). If the Canucks want assets, they might be best served by holding onto Bieksa until closer to the trade deadline.

This is why unless the stars align for Vancouver – and when have they ever? – it’s likely in the Canucks’ best long-term interest to bring Bieksa back next season, and maybe give a potential trade another try ahead of the NHL trade deadline.