- Jake DeBrusk and Brock Boeser are both expected to open the season in Vancouver
- Lyle Richardson says Boeser holds the better trade market of the two
- Read below for the two teams named as realistic landing spots
Jake DeBrusk is going to spend another season in the rumor mill, and his goal splits explain why.
Nineteen of the 23 goals he scored last season came on the power play. He led the Canucks in goals and still finished minus-31 across 81 games. Thomas Drance of The Athletic put the drop in DeBrusk’s trade value down to the five-on-five scoring that never showed up.
Neither DeBrusk nor Brock Boeser is going anywhere before opening night. Lyle Richardson of The Hockey News wrote Tuesday that both wingers will start the year in Vancouver and both will stay in trade talk all season.
Of the two, Boeser has the better market. Seattle has already gone after Artemi Panarin and Jason Robertson, and Boeser would barely have to change time zones to get there. Richardson floated the Rangers as a deadline option once New York banks enough cap room.
TSN’s Travis Yost got there a week earlier, arguing the Canucks should cash Boeser in while the league still values him:
The argument is about timing. Boeser scored 40 goals in 2023-24 and 47 across the two seasons since, on teams that kept getting thinner around him. He turns 30 in February, carries a $7.25 million cap hit through 2031-32 and holds a full no-movement clause.
DeBrusk’s deal runs through 2030-31 at $5.5 million with a no-movement clause of his own. Nobody treats that as the obstacle. He has been open about how little appeal a teardown holds at 29.
Drance expects better even-strength numbers out of him this season, and a March deadline stocked with contenders hunting for a finisher would be the moment it matters.
Ryan Johnson’s front office has all season to work the phones on both wingers.
