The newly minted front office of the Vancouver Canucks, led by GM Ryan Johnson and co-POHOs Henrik and Daniel Sedin, has its work cut out for it this offseason. The rebuild won’t be completed in one summer, but it will continue, and each move they make will, according to all involved, move the team further in that direction.

As a result, most of the additions that the team makes this offseason will come via the Entry Draft. The Canucks are looking to get younger, and they’ve got four picks in the top-50.

Most, if not all, of the trades that the Canucks make this summer will be in the form of subtractions. As in, trading away some veteran players from the roster, so as to create more space for the new generation to take over the team.

We’ve talked plenty about the possibilities of the Canucks trading veterans like Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson, and even Filip Hronek. But there’s someone else potentially on the departing block who often gets forgotten about in these conversations, and that’s Nils Höglander.

It still feels a bit odd to refer to Höglander as a “veteran,” because in many ways, he still feels like a younger NHLer just figuring it out. But Höglander is 25, and just completed his sixth NHL season. Anyone about to enter Year 7 of their career is a veteran.

Some Vancouver fans might be hesitant to see Höglander moved, because the last time the team traded someone from that same 2019 draft class, they immediately blossomed with their new team. That was Vasily Podkolzin, who was selected 30 spots ahead of Höglander.

But the Podkolzin trade happened two years ago, which is a long time in the sport of hockey. Both players have aged considerably in the interim and have developed in exactly opposite directions. Podkolzin notched a career-high 19 goals and 37 points this past season with the Edmonton Oilers. Höglander had two goals and eight points for the Canucks.

There is some temptation to hang on to Höglander with one last hope for that long-awaited breakout. Or, perhaps, “breakout” isn’t the right term here, as Höglander has broken out before, including into a 24-goal campaign in 2023-24. What the Canucks have been waiting for Höglander to do is develop any consistency or reliability in his game, and that’s something that they might have reasonably run out of patience on.

The fact of the matter is that the Canucks are probably already going to have to move some older bodies out if they want to have all the ice time and opportunities available to their newer, younger forwards that a rebuilding team should.

There is still a chance Höglander finds himself as an NHL player. But at this point, it’s a bet with fairly long odds. And the Canucks, quite simply, have better bets to make. A Liam Öhgren is ready to take those extra minutes on now. Someone like Jonathan Lekkerimäki, four years younger than Höglander, would seem to have a better chance of making something of NHL minutes given in this upcoming season. Even less-heralded youngsters, like Ty Mueller, probably have more upside worth checking out than does Höglander at this point.

After all, how many NHL coaches had tried to unlock Höglander’s potential already?

It doesn’t even all come down to age. The newly-signed Ilya Safonov is also 25, but he’s yet to play in North America, and is thus a more unknown quantity than Höglander – and someone with a higher chance of ‘clicking’ as a result.

We’ve talked so much in recent years about where the Canucks are going to spend their limited dollars under the NHL salary cap. But ice-time is also an investment that a team can only make so much of in any given season. If Höglander sticks around next year, the primary cost to the Canucks will be in ice-time, and at this point, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which they’re not better off cutting ties now and holding that time for others.

So, where does that leave Höglander?

Most would agree that if the Canucks received even a modest positive trade offer for Höglander this offseason, they should probably take it. He’s got a $3 million cap hit as of last year, and he’s scored a grand total of 10 goals and 30 points in the two seasons since that pay raise. The cap cost isn’t hurting the Canucks themselves much right now, but it does make it harder to move him.

Back when Podkolzin was traded to the Oilers for a fourth-round pick, there was plenty of consternation from the fanbase, and that turned out to be a fair reaction. But Podkolzin was younger then, and not making nearly as much money.

Most would have to consider an offer of a fourth-round pick for Höglander to be fair, and most would probably take it at this point. Anything like a third or higher, and the Canucks are probably running to the NHL Central Registry to make it official.

Even a truly late draft pick would probably suffice, just in the sense of an ‘addition by subtraction’ sort of thing.

The real question, when it comes to Höglander, is whether he’s all the way into “future considerations” territory by now. As in, are the Canucks so much better off without him – and with the ability to give his ice-time to others – that they’d be willing to give him away for absolutely nothing?

To that, we’re leaning toward a ‘yes.’ And that ‘yes’ gets stronger if the Canucks happen to add any forwards to the mix during this offseason, either via a high draft pick or perhaps the pickup of a different veteran like Brendan Gallagher. Again, there’s just only so much ice time to go around, and if Höglander is still here and still making $3 million, he’s going to get some of it.

Maybe he finds his game somewhere else with a fresh start, but at this point, that’s not much of a risk, and probably a risk the Canucks should be willing to take. Truly, the odds of Höglander developing into such a consistent NHL player at this point that he’s still contributing in, say, five years when the rebuild is more complete, and he’s 30 are so low, they barely merit mentioning. And that’s the only real risk the Canucks should be worried about here.

We could take this discussion a step further, but we think it ends here. As asset-poor and as cap-space-rich as the Canucks are right now, they’ve probably got no real reason to pay to get rid of Höglander. He might be playing like a cap dump, but the Canucks being better off without him doesn’t quite equate to them wanting or needing to give up an asset to do so. The team could always bury a good chunk of Höglander’s cap hit in the minors if it really came down to it.

But we think anything short of that is probably worth doing this offseason. Whether Höglander goes for a mid-draft pick, a late-draft pick, or nothing at all, it’s probably best for everyone involved, and Höglander included, that he moves on.