There are certain names in the sport of hockey that are so big that even the slightest rumours surrounding them become instantly interesting to just about everyone. Not many names, mind you. Really, only a small handful. But few of those names are bigger than that of Sidney Crosby.

To say that there are concrete rumours that Crosby will be traded at some point this season would be taking things a step too far. But there is a lot of conversation going on right now about that being a possibility – enough so that we feel the need to talk about it, and how it might possibly connect to the Vancouver Canucks.

Speculation about Crosby’s future has been going on ever since the Pittsburgh Penguins dropped out of playoff contention three seasons ago. Many thought that Crosby would be a Penguin for life, but three years without a postseason is a long time, especially with Crosby having two more years remaining on his $8.7 million extension.

The conversation moved a bit beyond speculation this week as Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic sat down with Crosby to discuss his future, resulting in some quotes in which Crosby directly addressed the possibility of a trade, including: “I mean, I understand it. It’s not something you want to discuss. You’d rather be talking about who we’re getting at the (trade) deadline or, you know, where we’re at as far as, are we one or two or three in the division? But you know, it’s one of those things. That’s the hard part about losing. I think everybody thinks that the buzzer goes and you lose a game and that sucks, but there’s so much more than that. It’s the (roster) turnover. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty, the question marks — that’s the stuff that’s tough.”

That’s a long, indirect way of keeping a trade on the table. And that approach became even more clear when Crosby’s agent, Pat Brisson, added “It’s been three years they haven’t made the playoffs. It all depends on how Sid is going to be and how the team is going to do. I maintain the same position that I do believe that he should be playing playoff hockey every year. In my opinion.”

That all sounds a lot less like idle hypothesizing, and a lot more like a player and his agent starting to lay down the justification for a trade request should the Penguins fail to return to contention this season – an outcome that seems quite likely at this point.

In the wake of that article, several other pundits have begun to openly ponder both the possibility and even the timeline of a potential Crosby trade, with Elliotte Friedman and Nick Kypreos recently agreeing that any trade would go down after the 2026 Olympic Games.

So, no fire yet, but plenty of smoke. Could any of it be blowing in the direction of Vancouver?

For that to even be a possibility, first the Canucks would have to return to contention themselves. That’s at least a little more likely than that coming to pass for Crosby’s Penguins, but it’s far from a guarantee.

Brisson made it clear enough that if Crosby were to leave Pittsburgh, it would be for the chance to end his career on a contender. He’s not leaving the only NHL home he ever knew to miss the playoffs anyway, or even to battle it out for a wild card spot. He’s going to go somewhere where he can compete, earn new accomplishments, and enjoy himself.

Therefore, the Canucks would need to be having a very good start to 2025-26 for this to even start being possible. Think the kind of start they had in 2023-24, where they soared to the top of the division and regularly beat the league’s best and brightest. That, bare minimum, is what it would take for a Crosby trade to even enter the realm of doable.

That probably goes hand-in-hand with the Canucks’ top players, especially Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson, and Thatcher Demko, all having stellar individual seasons.

But if the Canucks do manage to rebound to that much of an extent, there are other reasons to believe a Crosby connection is possible.

There’s the established relationship with Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin. Rutherford was Crosby’s GM from 2015 through 2021, including back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships in 2015-16 and 2016-17. That’s the kind of history you just can’t find in abundance around the league. One has to imagine there’s some mutual trust there, and that if Rutherford tells Crosby he can compete in Vancouver, Crosby might believe him.

Beyond that, there’s also the draw of playing – and winning – in Canada. During that LeBrun interview, Crosby spoke surprisingly openly about how special it might be for him to play for Montreal, the team he grew up cheering for. And while we have to imagine that the Canadiens would be the biggest pull for Crosby, the general aura of bringing a championship back to any Canadian market cannot be underestimated. After all, Crosby does have a history of winning big games in Vancouver, and the site of his Golden Goal has to still have at least some personal significance to him.

The Canucks also have one of Crosby’s favourite former teammates in Marcus Pettersson, who Crosby phoned Rick Tocchett to praise last season, along with Drew O’Connor.

We emphasize these personal factors because, in the end, Crosby’s destination will be his personal choice. That’s not only because he has a full no-movement clause, but also because no player in the league right now has more earned the right. If a trade request occurs, the Penguins will be letting Crosby pick his landing spot. The only thing the Canucks can really do is get themselves to the point that they look like a contender, and hope that the other intangible factors are enough to attract Crosby’s attention.

Should Crosby ever indicate he’s open to a move to Vancouver, the feasibility side of the trade is actually pretty easy. Thanks to Crosby’s dedication to numerology, he’s still on the books for that bargain cap hit of $8.7 million. That’s borderline 2C money in the modern NHL already, and it can become all the more manageable with some retention. We’d like to believe that the Penguins would be open to retaining, both because a Crosby trade would mark the true start of a tear-down rebuild, and because it would help his odds of winning with his new team. Get Crosby down to that half-cap hit of $4.35 million, and the Canucks are already very close to being able to afford it without removing anyone of note from their roster. Give it a few months, and they’ll have accrued more than enough cap to get it down. Or, worst case, it’s an easy swap for Filip Chytil’s contract.

The return assets required would be considerable. But perhaps not as considerable as they should be for a player of Crosby’s quality. Again, this would not be a typical trade, with the Penguins looking to honour Crosby’s tenure as much as possible by giving him his choice of destination. That undercuts the value automatically.

We’re still talking multiple first round picks, probably a blue-chip prospect or two, and maybe some young NHLers on top. But when one is trading for one of the greatest players of all-time, it’s hard to find any price-tag not worth it. Would anyone be truly all that upset if the Canucks gave up two firsts, Braeden Cootes, and Victor Mancini for a half-price Crosby? No, probably not. And you can probably add a few more assets on top of that package before it starts to become much of a moral quandary.

What would the Canucks get out of it? Well, they’d go over and above solving their 2C problem by acquiring someone who will probably still be of 1C quality right until he retires. Assuming some sort of bounceback from Pettersson, a one-two punch of Crosby and Pettersson blows the former combo of Pettersson-Miller out of the water, even at Crosby’s advanced age. Should the Canucks have already returned to something resembling contention, trading for Crosby pushes them a tier higher, toward the handful of ‘true contenders.’

And that’s just based on his on-ice contributions. One cannot discount the off-ice impact of one of the sport’s greatest all-time leaders.

You want to show a real commitment to building a contender to entice Quinn Hughes to stay? This is it. Trade for Crosby, and even if Crosby retires before Hughes’s next contract extension is set to kick in, the odds of him having signed that extension with Vancouver will no doubt be significantly higher.

Even if Hughes were still to leave, by having Crosby around for the next year-and-a-half, the Canucks could at least say they took their best shot with the years they had with Hughes. If the Canucks can’t win it all with two shots at the postseason with Hughes and Crosby on the roster, maybe it’d be time for a rebuild of their own anyway.
Then again, maybe they could win it all – at which point, anything that happened prior would have to be deemed worth it.

We realize that, until the Canucks actually come out gangbusters in 2025-26 and get back to the top of the Pacific Division, this is all speculative fantasy. But, c’mon, when we’re talking a name as legendary as Crosby’s, isn’t the fact that we’re even able to discuss the feasibility cause for some excitement in and of itself?

It’s not every day you get to dream a dream this big.