Chicago’s been mostly quiet on the offseason acquisition front so far, but that appears to be changing as of Wednesday night.
According to a report from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Blackhawks are in talks with the Vancouver Canucks on a trade that would offer some cap relief for the Canucks, add another draft pick for the Blackhawks and bring a familiar face back to the Windy City.
Friedman was first to report the deal, but Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli followed up with more details, including a potential hold-up involving Mikheyev’s no-movement clause:
Seravalli later added that the second-round pick is for 2025 and the fourth-round pick is for 2027.
[UPDATE, 9 p.m. CT] It appears that this deal is going to happen:
(Friedman initially had “Zaitsev” in the tweet there, hence the edit and apology)
[UPDATE, 9:15 p.m. CT] And now Mikheyev’s agent, Dan Milestein, is confirming that the trade is going to happen. Only thing left now, it seems, is the official confirmation from the teams.
Apparently Milstein isn’t aware of the Chicago weather patterns from the last few weeks.
Lafferty, who turned 29 in March, is currently an unrestricted free agent after tallying 24 points (13 G, 11 A) in 79 regular-season games with the Canucks last season. The veteran of 289 NHL games across five seasons played 97 with Chicago earlier this decade, joining the Blackhawks in a January 2022 and heading to the Toronto Maple Leafs in February 2023 as part of the trade that brought a conditional 2025 first-round pick and 2026 second-round pick to the Blackhawks. This trade would give the Blackhawks exclusive negotiating rights with Lafferty prior to the opening of free agency on Monday.
Unloading Mikheyev’s contract seems like the biggest motivation for Vancouver, as the 29-year-old forward is under contract for two more seasons with a $4.75 million cap hit. He played in 78 regular-season games last season with 31 points and then went without a point in 11 postseason games.
Worth noting that he was coming off an injury last season, though:
Mikheyev’s had some higher rates of production earlier in his career. He had 32 points (21 G, 11 A) in 53 games with Toronto back in 2021-22 and then had 28 points (13 G, 15 A) in 46 games in 2022-23, his debut season with Vancouver. But the decline in production last season apparently has the Canucks thinking his AAV of nearly $5 million is no longer worth it.
We’ll update this post as the story unfolds.