It’s March, which means the Trade Deadline is just around the corner. Then, after that, come the Ides of March. Traditionally, the Ides are a time of great upheaval, but we think they’re also a perfect time for hindsight. Why? Well, because if Julius Caesar had simply looked behind himself, he probably would have seen all those dudes coming to stab him.

But we digress.

The reason we’re bringing up hindsight is that we’ve decided to ring in the new month with a topic that’s been on our, and a lot of other folks’, minds ever since the JT Miller trade went down. The thing is, a lot of people shared opinions on the Miller trade since the move, and that’s naturally led to some wondering of whether this was the right (or the best or the optimal) time to part with Miller – or if some other time might have been better.

With the full acknowledgement that it’s always easier to operate in hindsight and, on the other hand, that the full implications of this trade are still yet to be written, that’s the question we set out to ponder today.

First, some ground rules. This little thought experiment is going to assume that Miller had to be traded at some point between his initial acquisition by the Canucks and the present day. That’s not something we know for certain, but we need some boundaries here. So we’ll start with that assumption.

We’re going to focus on the ‘best’ time to trade Miller as equating to the point of maximum asset return, as opposed to pointlessly speculating about off-ice factors and changes to the team’s ultimate destiny.

We’ll also acknowledge that in-season trades and offseason trades are vastly different, but to simplify things, we’re going to break this down by NHL season and say that each includes both the season itself and the offseason that preceded it.

With each season, we’ll list the previous season’s stats to indicate the sort of numbers Miller would have been coming off of at the time of our hypothetical trades. However, the contract terms we list will be contemporary to each season itself.

And lastly, this is all theoretical in nature, so don’t take it too seriously.

We begin our traipse through the past with a trip back to the before-times of 2019/20.

We can probably dispense right away with the whole ‘should have never traded for Miller in the first place’ scenario.

The Canucks spent a 2020 first-round pick, a 2019 third-round pick, and Marek Mazanec to Tampa on June 22, 2019, in exchange for JT Miller. Mazanec did not play another game in North America after that. The Lightning used the 2019 third on Hugo Alnefelt, a goaltender who has yet to play an NHL game. Tampa flipped the 2020 first-rounder to New Jersey as part of their acquisition of Blake Coleman, which the Devils then used on Shakir Mukhamadullin, who they traded in a package for Timo Meier. Mukhamadullin is just now starting his NHL career with the San Jose Sharks.

Regardless of one’s overall opinion on this trade, most can probably agree that the eventual return the Canucks got for Miller – Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and a conditional first that was quickly exchanged for (basically) Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor – is a better return than what they gave up in the first place.

We suppose the Canucks could have traded for Miller and then attempted to flip him during his first season with them. His numbers improved pretty drastically from what he was putting up in Tampa, but not so drastically as to change his trade value all that much. Of note, Miller was coming off two disappointing playoffs in a row. The Canucks could have probably traded him within this season for a package approximating what they spent in the first place, but not much more.

By the start of his second season with the Canucks, the picture on Miller had changed significantly. Those 27 goals and 72 points were not just the most of Miller’s career; they were achieved in just 69 games. And then they were followed up by 18 points in 17 bubble playoff games.

As strange as it sounds, this might have been peak Miller value right here. The 2019/20 season was a breakout campaign across the board, and then he headed into 2020/21 with three years left on what had quickly become an absolute bargain contract – with zero trade protection. This was an opportunity to sell high that the Canucks couldn’t have possibly seen, because there was just no way they were going to sell after making it to a third round of the postseason.

That said, as much as we’re trying to ignore the off-ice stuff, we can’t ignore a global pandemic. Throughout the summer of 2020, little movement happened in the NHL as everyone waited to see what was going to happen. When play resumed the next season in early 2021, it came with some massive changes, one being Vancouver’s temporary placement in an all-Canadian division. Far fewer in-season trades happened as a result, especially cross-border trades. They did happen – including at least one blockbuster in the form of a P-L Dubois/Patrik Laine swap – but there was definitely some more difficulty to overcome in making them.

Still, with his reputation as a producer newly established, three years left before 30, and that contract only halfway done, we think Miller could have been traded here for an absolute haul. A haul bigger than that cumulative set of returns they eventually got this year? We think there is a strong chance the answer is ‘yes.’

The 2020/21 season didn’t really go the Canucks’ way at all, and that definitely included Miller. His PPG was still the second-highest of his career to that point but dropped from 1.04 to 0.87, and there were no playoff stats to celebrate this time around.

At this point, some folks were advocating for trading Miller on the notion of another team wanting to pick him up for ‘two runs.’ Miller’s old team, the Lightning, had acquired Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow the previous year specifically because they had two years remaining on their contracts, and then they went out and won the Stanley Cup (on the way to a repeat). ‘Two-year’ acquisitions were trending, and Miller had two years left on his deal.

But then the drop in production brought with it some whispers of Miller’s old habit of inconsistency, and this was also a season in which some of his occasional defensive lapses came to the forefront. It was, for example, his only negative-Corsi season as a Canuck.

For these reasons, the summer of 2021 and the subsequent regular season were probably not the best time to trade Miller. His value would have certainly dropped from where it had been a year before, and he was on the cusp of reinvigorating it in a big way. 

In terms of production, a lot of folks – this author certainly included – thought this was peak Miller. Surely, he could never replicate a 99-point season after the age of 30, right?

Anyway, there’s no way to look at this without splitting the scenario up some. Throughout the summer of 2022, Miller might have had to be marketed as essentially a year-long rental, heading into the last year of a contract before UFA status. There was surely plenty of interest in him as that sort of asset, but rentals rarely go for anything over and above a first-round pick and maybe a good prospect on top.

The Canucks could have also allowed the acquiring team to talk contract extension with Miller prior to the trade, and that certainly changes up the value a lot. There was some hesitancy in Vancouver to commit long-term to a player on the cusp of 30, and no doubt other teams would have had the same hesitations. But someone would have jumped at this opportunity nonetheless and presumably paid big for the chance to trade for and then sign someone coming off a 99-point campaign.

How much? At this point, we think we’re again in the territory where the return might have been more valuable than what the Canucks eventually got for Miller. Would it have been more than they might have gotten in 2020/21, our other potential peak-value moment? That’s a little more up for debate, but we will say that Miller’s reputation was definitely more firmly established here. It’s an argument of age versus track record, and it’s a dead heat. The 2020/21 and 2022/23 seasons can perhaps share the distinction of ‘the best time to have traded Miller, in hindsight.’

There is also yet another scenario in which the Canucks trade Miller after he signs his seven-year extension in September, but the optics on that are so bad that we won’t waste any ink on it. At that point, he’d probably become at least slightly less valuable, anyway, and he had picked up a no-movement clause that may have been retroactively applied.

We also have to add that 2022/23 is the last point at which the Canucks could have traded Miller while still having Bo Horvat in the fold, which is a factor worth considering.

The 2022/23 season, Miller’s last year of his previous contract, played after the pending seven-year extension was already signed, was fine. A rate of 82 points in 81 games is still excellent, even if it is a significant drop from the 99 points of 2021/22.

But it was also Miller’s worst defensive season as a Canuck, with a five-on-five goal differential of -14. And, past July 1, 2023, Miller’s new contract officially began and so, too, did a full no-movement clause.

At this point, there were the most questions about the wisdom of having extended Miller. For these reasons, we can pretty quickly move on from the notion of it being the best time to trade him.

If we can allow ourselves a caveat, there is an argument to be made that at some point during the 2023/24 campaign, with Miller on his way to 103 points and the Canucks soaring to the top of the Pacific standings, Miller regained a ton of market interest and would have once again been a top commodity. If we can ignore the unlikeliness of the Canucks actually trading him under those circumstances, we can definitely allow that this was a moment of high trade value.

There is a strong case to be made that mid-season 2023/24 would have been a better time to move Miller than mid-season 2024/25 ultimately proved to be. In fact, that seems almost certain.

But we still don’t think it approaches our previous high-water marks of 2020/21 and 2022/23, when Miller was both younger and cheaper.

Well, heck, we won’t hypothesize about trading Miller partway through the 2024/25 campaign because that actually happened.

But we can speculate about whether or not it would have been better to trade Miller this past summer than it was in January of 2025, and the answer is ‘of course it would have been.’ At that point, Miller was coming off a monster 103-point campaign, had cleanly surpassed Elias Pettersson as the Canucks’ number one centre, and once again had a terrific playoff run to solidify that value further.

As such, this moment probably takes the ‘bronze’ in our imaginary little competition here. Would the Rangers, for example, have been willing to give up more than Chytil, Mancini, and a first for this version of Miller? It’s hard to think that they wouldn’t. So, too, we believe, would a bunch of other teams.

Again, the package returned probably doesn’t quite reach the heights of 2020/21 or 2022/23, but it’s hard to compete with a younger version of oneself.

And isn’t that something we can all relate to?