If there is one Canucks player around whom there has been the most contradictory reporting this season, it’s probably Conor Garland. As Vancouver enters their long-awaited rebuild, no one seems all that sure how Garland fits into the picture, or even if he does, moving forward.

Why so back-and-forth on Garland? It may be because a Garland trade is one of the trickiest for Vancouver management to pull off within this 2025-26 season – particularly when it comes to the timing.

The arguments for and against trading Garland are fairly easy to understand. Those in favour of keeping him will note Garland’s leadership, the positive example he sets for younger players with his effort, and (up until this year) his ultra-reliable production. Those in favour of trading him, however, will point to that same competitive spirit as perhaps a reason why Garland isn’t built to play through a rebuild. They might also point to the large potential return for Garland as reason enough to trade him – he’d bring back more quality pieces than most of what else the Canucks have to sell.

But if the Canucks do decide to go down the latter path, and explore trading Garland, they haven’t exactly left themselves a large window within which to do that.

The Olympic Roster Freeze has begun, and will prevent any trades from taking place between now and February 22. After it lifts, there are just two weeks between then and the March 9 Trade Deadline in which to do business.

That’s a pretty narrow timeframe in which to convince another team to make what equates to a six-and-a-half-year commitment to Garland – this final year of his current contract, plus the full six-year extension he signed this past summer.

Thankfully, although rosters are frozen during the Olympics, negotiations are not, and the Canucks are allowed to talk to other teams. There’s nothing stopping them from continuing to set up a Garland trade throughout February so as to pull it off more quickly in March.

But why this impetus to trade Garland now, as opposed to in the future? If he’s under contract until 2032, why not simply wait to trade him, either in this offseason, or even during a season to come?

The answer is that while Garland currently does not hold any trade protection whatsoever, as soon as that extension takes effect on July 1, 2026, he will receive a full no-movement clause that lasts for the first three years of the contract.

The Canucks could shop Garland around now, and they’d be able to shop him to all 31 other teams in the league. Or they could try to make a trade during the playoffs, or even in that narrow gap between the Stanley Cup Finals and the first day of free agency. But as soon as July 1 hits, Garland gains full control over his destination for the foreseeable future, and that makes him significantly tougher to trade – especially if getting a good return is part of the goal.

We saw this sort of thing play out a little bit this week with Artemi Panarin. He’s still one of the most productive players in the world, but he has a NMC, and he only wanted to go to a limited handful of destinations. In the end, all the New York Rangers got back for him was a prospect and a couple conditional mid-round picks. A player who can limit their own trade market often limits their own return as a result, and that’s something the Canucks would want to avoid if trading a piece as crucial as Garland. Remember, part of the reason folks want to trade Garland in the first place is that potentially high return.This is all further complicated by the rules around retention. One might think that it should be possible to retain on an expiring contract – like the contract that covers Garland from 2021-22 through to 2025-26 – without retaining on a subsequent extension, but that’s explicitly not the case. One must retain on all current and future contracts signed by a player if one wants to retain anything at all.

The Canucks are not going to retain salary on Garland until 2032. So, they can’t retain salary on Garland at all. That already limits their pool of potential suitors, especially if the goal is to get a trade done within this 2025-26 season.

The Canucks are already going to have to find someone who can accommodate Garland’s salary, both now and in the future, in order to make a trade. Garland is not overpaid – unless one is basing that entirely on his current production – but he does carry a significant cap hit all the same, and is signed until he is 36.

That’s a major commitment to find someone else to not just make, but to pay for the privilege to make. To limit that market further to just those destinations that Garland himself would prefer seems like an extra layer of added difficulty best avoided. But in order to avoid it, the Canucks need to get a trade done before July 1, which will be made more difficult by the short time frame and the inability to retain salary. This is all feeling a little circular.

There’s also a question as to the timing as it pertains to Garland’s production. It’s no secret that Garland is currently mired in the slump to end all slumps. He just went 13 games without a point from December 29 until February 2. But his season total of 25 points in 46 games isn’t too far off the pace of his typical output of about 30 points. And Garland did manage to sneak in three points in two games heading into the Olympic freeze.

The team could aim to wait until that window between the Olympics and the Trade Deadline – a period of six games for the Canucks – to see if Garland can come out hot from the break and put up some numbers, alleviating worries about his production. But then they run the risk that he does not come out hot, and continues to slump, which might hurt his present-day value, which then goes against the idea of getting a trade done sooner than later.

Or, they could aim to just rely on his previous reputation to carry that value, and try to get a deal done as soon as possible after the freeze lifts.

We tend to think the latter approach is the right one. The timing is so tricky on a Garland trade, and, more specifically, a Garland trade should get much harder to make as of this offseason, and so ‘as soon as possible’ seems to be the way to go if the decision has already been made to move him.

The longer the Canucks wait to pull the trigger, the harder it will be to do so.

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