For those who have fully embraced – or at least begrudgingly accepted – the tanking of the 2025-26 season, the good news is that the Vancouver Canucks have built up a considerable ‘lead’ on last place in the NHL. As of this writing, there is an eight-point gap between the Canucks and the team in second-last place. As of this writing, the Canucks have a .368 point-percentage, and the next-lowest team has a .443. When it comes to being the worst in the league this year, the Canucks don’t have much competition.

The bad news, however, is that the Canucks now have some competition as sellers in the NHL trade market.

For a while there, the Canucks enjoyed the distinction of being the only active sale in town. This NHL season featured particularly tight standings through the opening half, and as a result, a larger number of teams than usual stayed in the fight for a playoff position.

Part of the reason that Kiefer Sherwood received so much attention from the national media before his trade was that he was the top sellable asset on the only team in the league that had decided to sell off pieces by that point. From a fairly early point in the season and then for a while there, the Canucks were the only shop definitively open for business.

But that’s not longer the case as the Canucks approach the Olympic roster freeze, which runs from February 4 until February 22. Many are calling the start of this freeze the first of two Trade Deadlines on the 2025-26 schedule, and the thinking is that some teams will try to get deals done prior to the Olympics, rather than trying to cram it in to the two weeks between the freeze and the actual Trade Deadline on March 6.

The Canucks are one such team, but they’re no longer the only one. Today, we take a look at their competition when it comes to selling off pieces.

The New York Rangers have already begun this process. They put out a letter to fans informing them of a “retool,” and started the sell-off. Former Canuck defender Carson Soucy has already been flipped to the Islanders for a third round pick. Artemi Panarin is being healthy-scratched from now until the Olympics for the express purpose of keeping him uninjured for a trade, and there’s a good chance he’s already gone by the time you read these words.

The Rangers have not committed to a rebuild to the same extent as the Canucks have. But they have signalled their intention to give up on this particular season, and there will be more departures as a result. Pieces as talented as Vincent Trocheck, Alexis Lafrenière, or Braden Schneider could be on that list.

The Rangers sit at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings as of right now, and with a six-point gap on second-last. The rest of the East is a little tougher to figure out, but there are still some other sellers to be found.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have seemed to decide that this first post-Marner year is not their year. Though they are seven points up on the Rangers, they’re still eight points out of the playoffs, and word is that they’ve already started to shop some pieces around.

With an abundance of long-term contracts on the books, the Leafs have fewer easily-moved pieces than do the Canucks or Rangers, but there are names that could go all the same. Pending free agents like Matias Maccelli or Scott Laughton, middle-sixers like Nicolas Roy, or perhaps even some bigger fish like Morgan Rielly.

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that the Leafs’ sale items will get significantly more media coverage than anyone else’s.

Strangely enough, that’s about it for the East. There are a couple of other teams we’ll discuss in the “Maybe” section below, but most other franchises seem to still be in a spot to at least try for the playoffs as of now.

The Western Conference, however, is another story.

Along with the Canucks, the St. Louis Blues, the Calgary Flames, and the Winnipeg Jets have all sunk well out of playoff contention, and are all ready to sell.

The Blues and the Flames are the Canucks most direct competition here. Neither team has used the exact phrasing of “rebuild” like the Canucks have, but both appear to be moving in that general direction.

The Blues are making the strongest push to usurp last place. They’ve got a boatload of veterans that could be sold off, including big names like Colton Parayko, Brayden Schenn, and Justin Faulk. In terms of major pieces left on the board, the Blues stand out like the Rangers as having the most, and considerably more than do the Canucks.

The Flames also seem to be reluctantly accepting their own fate. Word is they’ll be moving Nazem Kadri, at least, and that could quickly spiral into the dealing of other veterans, like Mackenzie Weegar or the newly-acquired Zach Whitecloud.

Some would say that, whether they’ve admitted it or not, the Flames’ rebuild has already begun, and has already begun keeping pace with the Canucks’ own.

The Jets are a different situation. They’ve got themselves convinced that this is a one-year blip, and the general build of their roster suggests they might be right about that. The Jets won’t be buying, but they’re also fairly limited on obvious sale items. There are some true veterans, like Luke Schenn and Jonathan Toews, to consider, and maybe someone like Nino Niederreiter, but that’s about it.

Then there are the Chicago Blackhawks, probably the only team in this article that can say they planned to be here. In fact, the Blackhawks have done a fair bit better than anyone thought they would in 2025-26, and sit just six points back of a playoff spot as of this writing.

The Blackhawks, however, are smart enough to know that their best years are yet to come. As a result, they’ll still be selling off a few choice pieces in order to pick up assets and strengthen their future lineups.

Names like Nick Foligno and old familiars like Jason Dickinson, Sam Lafferty, and Ilya Mikheyev could be in that group. Defender Connor Murphy definitely is. The Blackhawks have staggered their contracts well, and have a lot of pending UFAs this year. Selling was always the plan, and Chicago has set themselves up nicely to do so.

There are a couple of other teams that don’t quite qualify as definitive sellers yet, but do bear some mention, as they’re close enough for the situation to change over the next week.

Technically speaking, the New Jersey Devils are in second-last place in the Eastern Conference. That said, this year has gone so off-kilter so far that it’s hard for them to give up on it yet.

This week, the Devils dealt a veteran in Ondrej Palat, but that could be seen as a move more aimed at opening up cap space than a true instance of selling. The Devils could be positioning themselves for one last push heading into the break, and if that doesn’t work out, then maybe they start selling ahead of the real deadline.

The same is probably true of most of the other non-playoff teams in the East. The Columbus Blue Jackets have had a tough year, but are experiencing a classic new-coach bounce, and so they’ll try to continue on the up-and-up. The Ottawa Senators aren’t giving up quite yet, despite a season of turmoil. The Washington Capitals simply will not sell in what could be Alex Ovechkin’s final season, no matter how low they sink in the standings.

The end result is that the Canucks have limited competition from sellers from the East, at least for now, but plenty from their own conference and own division. This will not, of course, prevent the Canucks from doing their own selling. But the competition definitely makes it harder than it might have been a few weeks ago when they were the only sale in town.