After two weeks off, the Vancouver Canucks will return to find themselves just another two weeks away from the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline on March 7. The Canucks have certainly faced down more consequential Trade Deadlines over the course of their franchise history, but this year’s promises to be an impactful one all the same.

Much of that impact will come through the team’s decision regarding the future of Brock Boeser.

We recently wrote about GM Patrik Allvin and Co.’s four main options for Boeser, and two of those options involved trading him between now and the deadline.

In that piece, we delineated a difference between the Canucks trading Boeser for a futures-based return that they could use in the years to come and in their trading Boeser for assets that they could turn around and flip into something more immediately useful.

And under either scenario, there’s an obvious question to be raised about Boeser’s general value in this current and ongoing trade market.

Opinions range widely on this front, as Boeser has his fair share of both fans and detractors. So, we thought we’d dig into all the factors at play to see if we can’t at least narrow down the range of a likely return.

Most economic systems run on the basic concept of supply and demand, and NHL trades are no different. The more of a certain kind of asset is available, the lower the acquisition cost, and the less of an asset available, the higher the price to obtain. This is seen most clearly and frequently in the obscene prices often paid to trade for and/or sign right-handed D, the rarest commodity in the game.

So, how rare of an asset is Boeser?

The reality is that he’s one of many forwards in the NHL of a roughly similar calibre. He’s of top-six but not-quite-superstar quality. If we’re talking about him as an overall NHL asset, Boeser holds considerable value but little uniqueness.

However, Boeser does stand out from the crowd in terms of his value on this specific market of the 2025 Trade Deadline.

When we look at all pending UFA forwards heading into the deadline, we find Boeser and his 18 goals ranked seventh overall. But that doesn’t mean he will be the seventh-best rental scorer available. The names ranked ahead of him on the list are Mikko Rantanen (who was already traded), Matt Duchene, John Tavares, Brad Marchand, Ryan Donato, and Jack Roslovic. The first four are well-ensconced veterans who are unlikely to move. The latter two are players having great, but atypical seasons.

Boeser’s got the best track record of those likely to be available. That gives him value in terms of supply and should mean that the Canucks can demand more value back in return for him.

Supply and demand only works if there is actually a demand to be had. So, one has to wonder which teams might be interested in making a bid for Boeser, and the simple answer is “most of them.”

Or, at least, most teams with some designs for the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The truth is that it’s tough to ever find a team that feels like it has enough scoring. Even the Winnipeg Jets, who lead the league with 202 goals, probably feel like they could add more, and then the same must be true for everyone else.

Not every team would be willing to break the bank to add scoring. But then Boeser has the look of an asset that can be fit into any given lineup with an abundance of ease.

He’s in the last year of a contract with an AAV of $6.65 million. That’s a relatively cheap rate already for what should be the best forward available at the Trade Deadline. Usually, it’s someone with a higher salary than that.

In any case, it’s also a salary that can be retained in half, down to $3.325 million. And that’s where we get to the ‘everyone’ side of the demand. Name a team that is headed to the playoffs this year who wouldn’t want to add a 30-goal scorer at that rate. You can’t. Each and every one of them would be interested, at least to a point.

And if everyone’s interested, that just has to drive up the cost. If it’s not an outright bidding war, it still has to be a bidding process, and that should allow the Canucks to at least name a minimum price. Especially considering…

…the Canucks do not have to trade Boeser. They are one of those aforementioned playoff-bound teams, at least as of this writing. They’re certainly not a team suffering from an overabundance of offence. They, too, could use Boeser’s contributions down the stretch run and into the postseason, and that gives them a nice, convenient, minimum threshold of value to stick to if and when they put Boeser to market.

If the returns offered up are less valuable than the value the Canucks perceive Boeser as holding as a ‘self-rental,’ then they can simply choose not to trade him.

This sort of gamesmanship should, in turn, drive said price up. Sure, some teams will look at that and say, ‘okay, no thanks, keep him.’ But the odds of every NHL team engaging in that way seem slim.

So, the Canucks can set their threshold, wait until the bidding reaches it, and then see what sort of bidders they still have left on hand with which to drum up the competition. As far as selling goes, it’s not a bad position to find oneself in.

The lingering question is that of what to set the minimum price at.

Past Trade Deadlines are always the best place to start when looking for precedents. The issue is that returns at the Trade Deadline are often highly circumstantial. The aforementioned factor of supply and demand, as well as the potential impacts of things like salary retention, trade protection, and other contractual factors, ensure that each and every trade is its own unique specimen. That one-to-one comparisons are often impossible.

That said, some clear precedents exist, and one of those precedents is definitely that a first-round pick moves for a rental forward at or around nearly every Trade Deadline.

At the most recent 2024 deadline, it was, of course, the basic price that the Canucks themselves paid for Elias Lindholm. But first-rounders also moved as part of the return for Jake Guentzel and Adam Henrique.

One could argue where Boeser falls in that value sequence, but we’ll say he wouldn’t be the best or worst player in the collection. Somewhere in between

In 2023, it was Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly, Patrick Kane, and somehow both Garnet Hathaway and Tanner Jeannot returning firsts (or conditional firsts) as part of their trades.

Go back to any of the past deadlines, and you’ll find similar stories.

And yet, as we look at the forwards projected to be available as rentals (or even non-rentals) at the 2025 Trade Deadline, we just don’t see that many worthy of returning firsts. Maybe the bidding gets there on a Ryan Donato type. Maybe not. The only player we see with clear-cut value in that range that also seems likely to be put on the trade block is Boeser.

Combine that with the Canucks’ ability to set their own threshold here, and we feel quite confident in stating that the bidding for Boeser begins at a first-round pick and only goes up from there.

If the bidding starts at a first-rounder, we suspect it doesn’t end there. One reason for that belief is the Canucks’ ability to retain salary. Another is it being a particularly dry market for rental forwards. Another, that we’ve yet to discuss, is the sheer litany of teams making a push for the playoffs right now, especially in the Eastern Conference. By our count, there are at least 13 of 16 Eastern teams with genuine shots at the postseason, and only a couple of them will fall out of contention over the next two weeks.

Put it all together, and the bidding for Boeser should reach at least a mild state of frenzy. That’s why, in addition to predicting a first-round pick as the bare minimal cost to acquire him, we’d predict at least one additional asset of what we’ll call intriguing value on top of that being likely. We’re talking a second round pick, or a B-level prospect, or something of that ilk.

The secondary conclusion reached here is that, despite the understandable emotional attachment many have to this player, all these same factors pointing toward a perhaps larger-than-expected return should also be factors in the Canucks’ ultimate decision on what to do with Boeser.

Sometimes, the market is simply too good not to explore.

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