Vancouver Canucks and bold GM Patrik Allvin have made their own luck

Let’s play a little game. Next time an NHL general manager holds a media availability, listen closely for a few key phrases that have become part of hockey’s vernacular in the flat cap world.

Universally, managers will acknowledge it’s “hard to make trades.” Then there is the classic “dollar in, dollar out.” Sometimes you’ll hear a version of “We’re not just going to give him away.” There’s the usual “We’re not shopping him” or, perhaps my personal favorite: “We’re not going to make a trade just for the sake of making a trade.”

Listen long enough and you’ll be able to fill out your BINGO card, hopefully with a cold beverage nearby.

You know who hasn’t bought into those cliches? Vancouver Canucks GM Patrik Allvin.

No matter how difficult it might be to make a move, he’s making stuff happen for the Canucks – which is why Allvin is already a strong contender for the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award. (Disclosure: I don’t vote on the GM of the Year Award.)

Since training camps opened, Allvin has made five trades of significance working hand-in-hand with president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and assistants Cammi Granato, Ryan Johnson and Emilie Castonguay. That’s five of the eight trades league-wide this season, at a time when most of the rest of front offices have sat on their hands.

Allvin’s aggressive posture is a big reason why the Canucks (16-9-1) have locked down the third spot in the Pacific Division. Consider: In 10 months, Vancouver has changed its entire coaching staff, completely reshaped its blueline, bought out its most expensive defenseman, restructured its bottom-six forward group and brought in a backup goaltender who has been simpatico with Thatcher Demko.

The biggest and most noticeable change is on the back end. How many teams have swapped out four out of their six defensemen in 2023? That’s what the Canucks have done by adding Filip Hronek, Ian Cole, Carson Soucy and now Nikita Zadorov.

They’ve all been acquired in different ways. To get Hronek, the Canucks flipped the first-round pick they just received four weeks earlier in the Bo Horvat trade. The Vancouver market was ablaze with the deal at the time, decrying that the Canucks’ front office didn’t appear to have a plan – not knowing then that Allvin had just acquired Quinn Hughes’ future long-term partner. Allvin and Rutherford seemed to seize on a downturn of fortunes in Detroit. The Red Wings were outscored 15-4 in Hronek’s three final games when Yzerman perhaps impetuously shipped out a 26-year-old defenseman, only to go out and spend on lesser quality veterans last summer.

Riding a nine-year playoff streak, Cole picked the Canucks in free agency based on his relationship with Rutherford and familiarity with Tocchet from Pittsburgh. They added size and experience with 6-foot-5 Soucy. And those three players – Hronek, Cole and Soucy – enabled the Canucks to properly stock their blueline with bonafide NHL defensemen so that they no longer needed to rely on replacement-level players Noah Juulsen, Cole McWard and Guillaume Brisebois. When that depth was tested again early this season with injuries, Allvin unloaded Anthony Beauvillier and his $4.1 million in a transaction of fortuitous timing, and pulled the trigger on Zadorov.

Along the way this season, Allvin found a taker for Tanner Pearson at $3.25 million and plucked penalty killer Sam Lafferty while Toronto was trying to wedge in Ryan Reaves. Lafferty has fit in quite nicely with a half point per game in his 26 contests as a Canuck.

Yes, there is no doubt the Canucks have enjoyed the spoils of an absolute heater to start the season. They have legitimate trophy threats at all three positions – with Elias Pettersson, Hughes and Demko. But the truth is they didn’t just sit back and wait for those three to put the Canucks on their back and carry them back into the playoffs. They made smart bets. They’ve stacked incremental victories on the margin, one-by-one, brick by brick. There is a direct correlation that can be made between team success with some of the most active teams, from Vegas and Florida, to improving teams like Arizona. If anything, the work from Allvin and Co. in Canuckland serves as a reminder that at a time when it might actually be difficult to make a trade, the applicable cliche here is that in the NHL, fortune favors the bold.

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Vancouver Canucks and bold GM Patrik Allvin have made their own luck

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