The Vancouver Canucks traded Tucker Poolman and a 2025 fourth-round pick to the Colorado Avalanche for Erik Brannstrom on Sunday. Brannstrom was subsequently placed on waivers by Vancouver with the goal of being transferred to Abbotsford, the club’s AHL affiliate.

Poolman, 31, signed a four-year contract with the Canucks in 2021 but has not played for the team since October 2022. Vancouver will retain 20 percent of Poolman’s $2.5 million cap hit for the final season of the contract.

Brannstrom was the key player for the Ottawa Senators when they traded Mark Stone to the Vegas Golden Knights in February 2019. He spent parts of six seasons with the Senators, scoring seven goals and 62 assists in 266 NHL games. The 25-year-old defenseman did not receive a qualifying offer from Ottawa this offseason and signed a one-year, $900,000 contract with Colorado as a free agent.

Why the Canucks made this trade

This is a smart, creative trade by the Canucks to create cap flexibility during the season.

Poolman has not played a game since the 2022–23 season and would miss the entire 2024–25 season. By eliminating his contract, Vancouver is under the salary cap and no longer has to use LTIR. That means the Canucks can start clearing out space that they can use at the trade deadline to make roster upgrades.

Last year the Canucks were in LTIR. The only reason they were able to acquire Nikita Zadorov is because they cleared Anthony Beauvillier’s $4.1 million cap hit in a previous midseason trade with Chicago and the acquisition of Elias Lindholm forced the Canucks Sending back Andrei Kuzmenko’s $5.5 million cap hit. There are no expendable players with excessive salaries in Vancouver this year. Therefore, it would have been very difficult for the club to make dollar-in-dollar-out transactions on the deadline if it had still been in the LTIR.

The cap benefit is by far the most important win for the Canucks in this trade. But if Brannstrom clears waivers, he will be a good piece to add depth to the club’s left blue line. The Canucks’ second and third defense pair have tremendous size and defensive ability (all four of Carson Soucy, Tyler Myers, Derek Forbort and Vincent Desharnais are between 6’3″ and 6’2″), but it’s entirely fair to wonder whether they have enough mobility and puck movement. Brannstrom would be a good option to provide relief if it becomes a problem. He’s undersized and not particularly reliable defensively, but he posted strong results on the third pair for the Senators in 76 games last season. The Canucks’ strength on the left side appeared to be somewhat precarious – Soucy and Forbort played fewer than 41 games last year due to injuries and the next left guard, Christian Wolanin, played zero NHL games for the Canucks last year.

Required reading

• Canucks Notebook: Cuts, roster struggles, new lineups and salary cap options
• Canucks 23-man roster prediction 2.0: Who is a lock? Who’s on the bubble?

(Photo by Tucker Poolman: Gregory Fisher / USA Today)