The 31-year-old Wennberg is in his second year with the San Jose Sharks and his 12th NHL season. He’s scored as many as 59 points in a season – back in 2016/17, his third year in the league – but typically ranges in between 30 and 40 points.
Wennberg has long been thought to have higher offensive potential, but has instead settled into a career as a middle-six playmaker with better-than-average two way chops. Then again, ‘veteran stability’ might be exactly what the Canucks are shopping for at the position.
Most importantly, Wennberg is in the last year of a two-year, $5 million AAV contract he signed with the Sharks as a UFA. The Sharks are still in the midst of a youth movement, and almost certainly signed Wennberg to that contract with the idea of eventually flipping him. If not soon, that probably comes at the 2026 Trade Deadline.
For Drance, it comes down to the changing rules regarding retained salary trades as of the new CBA, and the unique opportunity it creates for the Canucks to hedge a bet.
Double-retention trades – as in, the sort of trades where a player has their salary retained twice, first by the trading team and then second by a third party, before ending up at their final destination – have been quite common in recent years. But perhaps no longer. Now, a player who has had their salary retained in a trade must be on their new roster for 75 days before they can be involved in another retained salary trade.
That means that if a team is going to attempt any double-retention, they’re going to have to start that process before December 1, which is about 75 working days ahead of the 2026 Trade Deadline.
As Drance tells it, what this would allow the Canucks to do is acquire someone like Wennberg now at the 50% retention it would probably require to accommodate his salary, but to also then keep their options open to flip Wennberg with a further 50% retention later in the season if their bid to return to the playoffs is unsuccessful.
It’s an acquisition with a bit of a return policy, in other words. And it looks to us like sharp asset management.
Drance acknowledges that the cost to acquire Wennberg from the Sharks at 50% retention would be large, especially at this juncture before he’s officially been put on the market. Drance speculated trade details that had the Sharks “add[ing] a sixth-round pick to [Wennberg] and a Lucas Carlsson-type depth defender for [Victor] Mancini and a third-round pick.”
Parting with a prospect as exciting as Mancini would sting, but perhaps that should be expected for one of the few available centres of quality. And again, the real key here would be the opportunity to sell Wennberg with subsequent retention to recoup some of that cost if that’s the way the rest of the season progresses.
Wennberg at 50% already comes in at a $2.5 million cap hit, and the Canucks could theoretically retain a further 50% — so long as they had previously acquired Wennberg ahead of December 1 – to bring that cap hit down to $1.25 million. That’s already mighty accommodating, and especially so for any team that’s accrued any sort of cap space by then.
Could the Canucks bring back in a return at least equivalent to Mancini and a third round pick? Probably, especially given the dearth of centres projected to hit the block for this upcoming deadline.
That all sounds like it makes sense, at least on a contractual basis. But it carries at least a little risk – Wennberg could always get injured, for example, which would scuttle any hopes of a resale – and a potentially high up-front cost. The question then becomes whether Wennberg, specifically, is worth that trouble.
With 796 NHL games under his belt as of this writing, Wennberg does have literally more experience than the Canucks’ current four centres combined. That’s got to count for something. And his consistency through those 796 games bodes well for a team that is, in many ways, just looking for some consistent offensive contributions.
That Wennberg can be counted on to chip in at least 30 points on teams as bad as the Sharks would mean production that the Canucks could count on, which has been hard to come by in Vancouver of late.
Wennberg’s production in the playoffs – 19 points in 58 career games – is questionable, but that’s very much a ‘cross that bridge when we come to it’ situation for the Canucks.
It’s Wennberg’s two-way play that may make him a particularly apt fit. He’s generally maintained positive possession and control stats throughout his career, even when playing on some lowly teams. Even for this year’s Sharks, who are off to another really rough start, Wennberg is sporting a 50.85% Corsi, a 58.33% shot control, and a 50.0% control of scoring chances. And that’s while starting the majority of his shifts in the defensive zone, and playing the bulk of his minutes against top-six opposition.
This ability to take on a difficult deployment could work for the Canucks in multiple ways, especially as it pertains to their top centre, the senior Elias Pettersson. Wennberg’s consistent offence takes some pressure off Pettersson’s own scoring, to be sure. But Wennberg’s ability to eat minutes against the opponent’s best could also free up Pettersson from some of his current defensive responsibilities.
As it stands, head coach Adam Foote has been forced to deploy Pettersson as both his top offensive and top defensive centre. Having Wennberg on hand to share both of those loads should free Pettersson up to focus more on the offensive end of things, and maybe that creates more scoring than might show up on Wennberg’s own statline.
It is, at the very least, an intriguing idea, and one well-worth kicking the tires on – as the Canucks would already seem to be doing. Whether that translates into a move made now, or in the immediate future, or not at all, remains to be seen. But it must be said that the Canucks are faced with limited options when it comes to their search for help at centre – and, thus, every single idea is worth ample consideration.
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