No doubt about it, the Vancouver Canucks are in a tough spot right now. And while the on-ice difficulties are the more apparent and important issue, the long-whispered-about off-ice issues are undoubtedly a major factor in the general dissatisfaction with the team right now.

In times like this, it’s important to lean into gratitude. To take stock of and appreciation for the good things one still has in life. And the Canucks should feel grateful that, amidst all this, they’ve still got an individual in the fold who is not just one of their most consistent on-ice performers but one of the best all-around people in franchise history. The kind of person that no one could ever really be in a serious conflict with, at least not for very long.

We’re talking, of course, about Brock Boeser.

Despite everything else that has happened with the team, and despite a litany of health problems, Boeser remains an absolute bastion of stability for the Canucks. Last season was a banner year for Boeser, with him posting career highs of 40 goals and 73 points in 81 games, and then added another seven goals – including some absolutely massive ones – and 12 points in 12 playoff games. And he hasn’t slowed down much in the transition to 2024/25, even though most of the rest of the Canucks seem to have.

Boeser, as of this writing, has 14 goals and 11 assists for 25 points across 30 games. He’s scoring goals at the same rate as last year, both in terms of a per-game and per-minute basis, and his points-per-game is down just slightly. Over a full 82-game schedule, Boeser would be pacing for about 39 goals and 68 points.

Of course, Boeser won’t play a full schedule, but that makes his performance this year all the more impressive. In a season where many Canucks have been searching for excuses for their own poor performances, Boeser has excuses readymade – he’s just not using them.

Boeser exited last year’s playoffs on the cusp of Game 7 with blood clotting issues that took away the bulk of his offseason and hampered his usual training and preparation regimen. But he still got off to a hot start with five goals and nine points through nine October games.

Then, in early November, Boeser took a cheapshot from Tanner Jeannot that left him with a concussion and out of the lineup for three weeks. He went scoreless in his first two games back and then picked his usual pace right back up again and hasn’t dropped it since.

How vital has Boeser become to the Canucks in these times of turmoil? Look at it this way. Over their past five games as of this writing (December 21 against Ottawa to January 2 against Seattle), the Canucks have scored 17 total goals. Boeser has six of them. That means he’s scoring more than a third of the team’s goals right now, and that’s a gigantic proportion for any NHL player, much less one who’s not typically counted as a ‘franchise player.’ (Update: We wrote this before the Nashville game, but the Canucks failed to score a single goal in that one, so it’s the same stats but now across six games.)

All of which goes to say: Boeser rules. He’s just terrific, he just keeps getting better, and in a truly just world, he’d be a Vancouver Canuck for the remainder of his career.

But this is not a truly just world, and Boeser remains an unrestricted free agent as of July 1, 2025.

Now, a recent report on Boeser, published on this site and others, certainly raised some eyebrows. It came out in mid-December and suggested that the initial ask from Boeser’s camp in contract negotiations was for eight years at a rate of $8 million per.

That totals up to $64 million, and that’s a very big number – the kind that causes immediate sticker shock. That amount, for example, is significantly more than Quinn Hughes will make over the course of his current contract. It’s more than JT Miller’s current contract, too, which also carries an $8 million average, but only over the course of seven years.

And let’s just say it: As loudly as we’ve sung Boeser’s praises here, he is not as good a player as either Hughes or Miller. That, more than anything, is what has some folks chafing at the idea of paying Boeser $8 million a season.

However, Hughes and Miller cannot be held up as comparables to Boeser’s contract. The league and its financial picture are changing far too rapidly for that. Hughes signed back in 2021. Miller signed in 2022. Since then, the escrow has been paid off, the flat-cap era has officially ended, and the revenue has once again started to pour in. As such, the NHL’s salary cap ceiling has been vaulted to new heights.

When Hughes signed, the cap was $81.5 million. A year later, when Miller signed, it was still at $81.5 million.

Right now, it’s at $88 million. And before Boeser signs his new deal, the cap will rise again, reportedly to as high as $95 million, or maybe even more. There is now more money to go around, and the players who are due to sign contracts will be the beneficiaries of that. Boeser deserves his slice as much as anyone.

One must look at the percentages, as in the percentage of the total cap that a contract takes up.

When Boeser signed his current three-year, $6.65 million AAV contract, it was also 2022, and at the time his cap hit represented some 8.06% of the total cap available. The contract covered ages 25 to 27 of his career. Since then, he’s had a so-so 2022/23 season, a career 2023/24, and is off to that same career pace for 2024/25.

If we take the current cap of $88 million and cut 8.06% out of it, we end up with $7.1 million. In other words, were Boeser to sign at the same cap percentage today as he did in 2022, he’d get that as his AAV.

But Boeser won’t be signing under an $88 million cap, but one significantly higher. If we take that $95 million number that has been floated around and cut 8.06% out of it, we wind up with $7.657 million.

So, with that in mind, we have to understand that if Boeser and his camp are asking for an $8 million AAV in the year 2025, what they’re actually asking for is about 8.4% of the cap (or less if the cap rises higher). By those terms, what Boeser is asking for in asking for $8 million is…barely a raise.

And we can probably all agree that this is a player who deserves a raise.

The complication comes, as it often does, with term. Boeser’s last contract covered ages 25 to 27, otherwise known as a scoring forward’s typical prime. This new one, if signed for a full eight years, would cover 28 to 35. It’s not exactly a retirement deal, and there would still be some prime-ish years in there, but there’s also an element of eventual diminished returns somewhere along the line.

Then again, the salary cap is projected to keep rising year-by-year, and it should be well over $100 million by the time Boeser enters year two or three of whatever new contract he ends up signing. Each time the cap rises, the percentage taken up by all current contracts goes down.

Is Boeser worth $8 million a season on his next contract in the present day? All signs point to ‘yes.’ It’s a 0.4% raise on the cap percentage he’s earning now, and he deserves that raise and then some.

But is he worth $8 million a season for the next eight years running? That requires some further calculation. How much will the cap go up in each of those years? How soon will Boeser’s scoring begin to decline? How competitive will the Canucks be through those years? All are important factors that will need to be considered.

To answer the question on everyone’s mind, we’ll say this: $8 million is not a big ask from Boeser and his camp. It is, more or less, what he deserves on his next contract. The ask of eight years is a little more contentious, but one can be pretty certain that if Boeser hit the actual UFA open market, he’d receive at least a couple of offers of seven years at $8 million or higher.

The question of whether Boeser deserves or has earned such a contract is pretty well answered. He does, and he has. The question of whether the Canucks, specifically, can afford to give him that contract is less certain.

But we’re still leaning toward ‘yes.’ Boeser has really turned into a rock for this franchise in recent years. And rocks should be held onto.