The Vancouver Canucks are going to trade Kiefer Sherwood, and it couldn’t be more obvious if Jim Rutherford had stood in front of the press and said, “We SURE WOULD like to trade a veteran player soon.”

The question has shifted from an ‘if’ to a ‘when,’ and also to a ‘where,’ and most importantly to a ‘what’ – as in, what are the Canucks going to get back in exchange for their fan favourite pending UFA?

The earliest reporting on the subject named the Canucks’ asking price for Sherwood a little low in many minds, with Thomas Drance of The Athletic writing, “Vancouver will want at least a second-round pick back if it’s going to consider trading Sherwood.”

For most, that would be a disappointing result. Sure, second-round picks have value, but so too does Sherwood, with all the makings of a truly premium rental. Sherwood’s 12 goals this year have him in a tie for 25^th overall in the NHL as of this writing, and his 19 goals last year prove it’s not exclusively a flash-in-the-pan situation. Speaking of last year, that’s when Sherwood set the single-season record for most hits, which stands as a strong testament to his pro-playoff style. And this year, he’s second in the league to Yakov Trenin of the Minnesota Wild, which is a strong testament to the consistency of Sherwood’s effort.

That’s not even including the penalty killing, or the agitating, or the brand of leadership that tends to drag teammates into the fight. Add it all together, and you’ve got the perfect middle-six acquisition for virtually any playoff-bound team. And we haven’t even mentioned the salary.

Sherwood is in the second year of a two-year deal that pays him an average of just $1.5 million per season. That’s the kind of cap hit that essentially every team in the league could find a way to afford, and with retention, it could theoretically become a sub-league-minimum contract.

To find a player this built for the playoffs and this built to fit within a team’s salary structure late in a season is rare. Sherwood stands out as almost the ultimate postseason supplement — the near-perfect rental asset.

So, to get a second rounder back for ‘near-perfect’? Yeah, that just doesn’t sit right.

Fortunately, more recent reporting has set the Canucks’ sights a little higher.

Elliotte Friedman said that teams were “lining up” for Sherwood.

Chris Johntson said the price was at “a first-round pick.”

Dave Pagnotta, meanwhile, upped that to “a first-round pick PLUS,” and specifically mentioned the addition of a quality prospect.

On the surface, there shouldn’t be that big of a gap in value between a first and a second. But in reality, there is. Both in terms of the actual likelihood of that pick turning into a player eventually, and especially in the perceived value of a given return.

And the gap between a second-round pick and a ‘first and a quality prospect’ return is wide enough to draw some suspicion. Have the Canucks gone from setting their sights too low to setting them too high?

We don’t think so. Because we think that, while Sherwood would make a near-perfect rental in any given NHL season, he’s especially valuable in this particular 2025-26 campaign. Valuable enough for at least one team to meet the Canucks’ asking price.

This is, after all, the first season with a playoff salary cap. In short, this will be a new nightly cap that only allows teams to dress a 20-player roster that would fit under the regular season cap. It’s a big adjustment for contending teams that had previously planned for the exact opposite scenario, with postseason rosters that often made a mockery of the cap.

And it was only decided and announced that the playoff cap would apply to the 2025-26 season fairly late in the offseason, which didn’t leave teams with all that much time to change their plans.

There is an awful lot of unspent cap space around the league. But cap space still comes at a premium to the best and brightest contending teams. The ability to add a player as impactful as Sherwood, without even having to worry about him making that same impact on your playoff cap? That’s platinum quality to a true contender.

Speaking of true contenders, we’ve also got an awful lot of those on hand in 2025-26. Contenders, and would-be contenders, that is. A sudden bout of parity has the NHL standings as jam-packed as they’ve ever been, and as of this Monday morning writing, 26 of the league’s 32 teams are within two points of a playoff spot. It’s that ridiculously close. And that bodes very well for the Canucks.

More contenders means more bidders for Sherwood’s services. It probably translates into an outright bidding war, which, in turn, should naturally lead to a higher return. The Canucks really hold the cards here, especially given the absolutely lacklustre list of other available pending UFAs.

So, we combine Sherwood’s highly unique player profile with his ridiculously low cap hit, along with the implementation of the playoff salary cap, the unusually high number of contending teams, and a relatively dry rental market. It all adds up to what feels like a truly rare opportunity to sell not just high on a player, but sky-high.

Suddenly, talk of a first-round pick and a quality prospect doesn’t sound so far-fetched. Maybe, instead, it’s fair to look at that sentence and wonder “How quality of a prospect?”

In other words, if teams are lining up for Sherwood already, they’d better have their wallets in hand. There is just no reason for the Canucks to accept anything less than an exceptional trade offer for someone with such niche value.