Like many people, GM Patrik Allvin likes to do his holiday shopping early, as in October and November. Unlike many people, however, the ‘holiday’ that Allvin is shopping early for is the Trade Deadline, which this year is scheduled for March 7, 2025.

Allvin’s reputation for supplementing his roster a little earlier in the season than most GMs is well-established by now.

His first full season with the Vancouver Canucks saw him acquire Riley Stillman on October 7, 2022. The less said about that the better, but Allvin followed it up with the acquisition of Ethan Bear on October 28, and that turned out much more positively.

The next year, Allvin continued the trend of building up the backend sooner, rather than later. He traded for backup Casey DeSmith in late September 2023, then Mark Friedman in mid-October, and then Nikita Zadorov at the end of November. Less than 60 days into the 2023/24 campaign, and Allvin had already finished all of his crease- and blueline-related moves.

The trend is obvious. When Allvin goes shopping for defence, he does so earlier than most. That trend continued into this current 2024/25 season, in which Allvin traded for Erik Brännström on the eve of the opening of the regular season.

But few believe Allvin and Co. are done there. The Canucks’ greatest weakness still seems to be in their collection of defenders, and so there are many who still expect him to add at least one notable D at some point this season.

And if his past history is anything to go by, we can expect such a trade to happen sometime in the next month or so.

The rumours agree. Frank Seravalli mentioned earlier in the week that Allvin was “already making calls and trying to understand what the market looks like to improve this team’s defence.”

Which is, ultimately, a very good thing for the fortunes of the Canucks. And not just because trading for new players earlier, rather than later, allows for more time to get them integrated into the roster and up-to-date on Rick Tocchet’s system. But also because this year, as much as any year, promises to be a real seller’s market, and seller’s markets tend to favour those who do their shopping before the demand starts to outpace the supply.

Seravalli specifically mentioned the names Rasmus Andersson and Marcus Pettersson, and while that might have been idle speculation, it wasn’t exactly baseless. Not because there’s any concrete speculation out there linking the Canucks and either Andersson or Pettersson, but because those two players represent a large portion of the miniscule amount of blueline talent that projects to be available this season.

To prove it, let’s focus on the blueline specifically. While we don’t have time to look at every NHL D who might be available – at least not in this singular article – we can at least look at the market for defenders who have either one or two years remaining in their contract, which seems to be Allvin’s typical target range.

PuckPedia lists the top-ten 2025 UFA defence as…

Now, keeping in mind that the Canucks’ true goal here will be to acquire a defender who is better than at least one of their currently-established second pair of Tyler Myers and Carson Soucy, one can already see that these are pretty slim pickings. The amount of defenders on this list that could even be considered a potential upgrade on Myers and Soucy includes the aforementioned Pettersson, sure, and then probably add Neal Pionk, Ivan Provorov, Brayden McNabb, and Dmitry Orlov to the group. But only one of those additional players (Provorov) is on a team that is currently expected to miss the playoffs. The rest probably won’t be available.

If we travel a little further down the 2025 UFA list, we can find a couple more interesting names like Vladislav Gavrikov, and a couple more unlikely to be available like Ryan Lindgren or Aaron Ekblad.

But that’s it, really.

If we flip things over to the 2026 UFAs, we find similar results…

There’s that aforementioned Andersson, then a collection of players who almost certainly won’t make it to free agency in John Carlson and Mattias Ekholm and the like. Cam Fowler might be intriguing, and there’s an aging Ryan McDonagh in there, but neither are particularly appealing.

Traveling further down the list, we find the odd interesting name like Jamie Oleksiak, but few real upgrades worth pursuing.

So, when the pundits suggest Allvin might be targeting Andersson and Pettersson as blueline upgrades, it’s almost akin to stating that it’s going to get colder in the coming months. It’s almost a statement of fact. There aren’t really a lot of other options, and the Canucks will need someone.

And that’s why it’s a good thing that Allvin is the type of GM to do his shopping early. Doing so avoids getting caught up too much in what will be inevitable bidding ways as the dwindling supply of quality D dwindles even further.

It also avoids the unseemly possibility of ‘running out of time,’ and ending up empty-handed after all other options have already been pursued by other teams.

The way Allvin runs things might make for more boring trade deadlines. But, overall, his strategy of reading the market ahead of time and acting accordingly is not just smart, it should prove crucial to the Canucks navigating this current trade market and coming out the other side of it a better team – a vital necessity as the Canucks try to make the most of their competitive window.

So be prepared. The next time you hear about the Canucks trading for more D, it may have already happened.