There once was a time when discussing the idea of Patrik Laine becoming a Vancouver Canuck would have been very exciting.

Those days have long since passed, however, as Laine is now a shadow of his former self. And, if we’re being honest, even the old Laine probably couldn’t make much of a difference in this doomed 2025-26 campaign.

But Laine’s contract? That’s a different story. That is something the Canucks could profit greatly from, by which we mean something they could be paid to take on.

Laine stands out as the biggest expiring cap dump in all the NHL this season. Of the pending UFAs, his cap hit of $8.7 million ranks second, trailing only Alexander Ovechkin’s $9.5 million. But Laine has just one assist in five games played this year, which ranks him in a tie for 139th in UFA scoring. Injuries or not, Laine isn’t pulling his weight, and hasn’t in a long time.

Laine signed that contract just four years ago, when he was coming off a season of 26 goals and 56 points in 56 games. His point totals since then have been 52, 9, 33, and now 1. The decline has been steep enough that cliff-based metaphors just don’t cut it.

We’ve talked a lot about flippable cap dumps in recent days, meaning those sorts of cap dumps that the Canucks could hope to rehabilitate the value of and then flip for a profit at a later date, possibly with retention. Laine is not that. He’d have to be acquired in that two week gap between the Olympic Break and the 2026 Trade Deadline, which is not anywhere near enough time to restore his reputation. After that, he’ll be under contract for a few more months, and then become a UFA. After which he’s almost certainly signing a dirt-cheap reclamation contract or heading back to Europe – probably the latter.

This would be a more classical, uncomplicated cap dump. This would just be the Canucks taking on a contract that another team needs to get rid of right here, right now, and presumably being paid with a draft pick or two for doing so.

The Montreal Canadiens are the right team to target for something like this. Not only do they have the singular largest cap dump on their roster in Laine – and really, one of the only notable cap dumps this year – they also happen to have the least available cap space in the league.

Our friends at PuckPedia have the Canadiens at a scant $920,000 in current cap space, which is projected to grow to up to around $1.5 million by the Trade Deadline. But that’s not a lot at all – in fact, it’s not even enough for them to activate Alex Newhook and his $2.9 million from IR without having to demote a forward. It’s definitely not enough for the Habs to add anything come Deadline Day. But with the Habs holding on to second place in the Atlantic Division despite some notable holes in their roster, adding at the deadline is probably exactly what they’d like to do.

The obvious solution is to trade Laine, who contributes nothing to their roster but remains their second-highest-paid player after Noah Dobson. It’s a cap inefficiency that a contending team can’t reasonably afford, unless they afford it by paying their way out of it.

Heck, if the Canucks wanted even more space – say to take on both Laine and some other, perhaps longer-term cap dumps – they could achieve that by placing injured players like Thatcher Demko or Filip Chytil on LTIR. The point being that cap space will be abundant for any number of purposes in Vancouver for the rest of the season, and one of those purposes definitely could be stashing Laine, so long as the price is right.

Laine carries a bit of an added ‘benefit’ as a cap dump in that he might not even take up a roster spot. He underwent surgery in late October to repair a core muscle, and was said at the time to be out for up to four months. Here we are, about four months later, and Laine is back on the ice, but still not particularly close to returning.

Who knows how consistently, or for how long, Laine will be able to return to NHL action after such a lengthy absence. It seems likely he’ll spend at least as much of the remainder of 2025-26 in the pressbox as he does on the ice, and that should alleviate any worries of his taking away ice-time or opportunities from younger forwards post-deadline.

Hey, maybe Laine stays healthy, and maybe he finds some chemistry with Elias Pettersson, and maybe we see sparks of the old Laine. Maybe it’s the Canucks who offer him a one-year, prove-it contract as a result. Probably not, almost certainly not, but stranger things have happened.

In all likelihood, however, the only tangible benefit of a Laine acquisition is what the Canadiens pay the Canucks as compensation for the cap dump. So what might that be? What’s it worth for Montreal to open up some additional shopping space on the season?

The Canadiens have their full array of draft picks available and untouched, including their own selections in the first three rounds of the next three drafts. Their years of rebuilding have also left them with a boatload of prospects at all positions, including some who have begun to fall through the cracks a bit. It’s hard to think of a reason why the Canadiens wouldn’t be comfortable at least offering up a third-round pick or equivalent prospect to take on Laine, and maybe the so-called ‘bidding’ could get as high as a second.

There are a lot of teams with a lot of cap space available this season. But not everyone is willing to spend the actual money attached to that cap space. How much the Canadiens are willing to pay the Canucks for a cap dump will be highly dependent on how many other teams are willing to take on that same dump. If the Canucks are the only ones shopping their space around, the price goes up.

But even if it doesn’t, there’s really no reason for the Canucks not to take something like a third in exchange for what amounts to money they’d otherwise not spend. If not used on someone like Laine, all that cap space is going to sit there unused, and it doesn’t roll over.

To summarize: the Canucks can afford Laine more than they can afford passing up opportunities to accumulate future assets.

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