From Flame to Canuck in one flight: inside Elias Lindholm’s wild 24 hours

TORONTO – There’s turbulence, and then there’s…what Elias Lindholm experienced in the middle of his flight from Mexico back to Calgary Wednesday night. The journey started out normally enough. Then, as he explained Thursday at 2024 NHL All-Star Media Day in Toronto, his phone suddenly got service partway through the trip. Ping, ring, bam, boom, the phone blew up with texts and calls. He was no longer a Calgary Flame. On the eve of the NHL’s mid-season classic, the Vancouver Canucks loaded up for a Stanley Cup run by acquiring Lindholm in a blockbuster trade.

That’s right. Canucks. Loading up. Cup run.

How’s that for a one-year turnaround?

Flash back to one year and one day earlier, Jan. 30, 2023. The Canucks, unable to break through as a Western Conference contender, having fired coach Bruce Boudreau weeks earlier, cut their losses on a miserable and dramatic season and traded captain and pending UFA Bo Horvat to the New York Islanders. In the process, they secured prospect Aatu Raty, a 2023 first-round pick and forward Anthony Beauvillier. At that point, the Canucks were a virtual lock to miss the playoffs for a seventh time in eight seasons. The move symbolized, in a sense, that GM Patrik Allvin and president of hockey ops Jim Rutherford were admitting defeat.

Well…sort of. The Canucks brass remained adamant about not wanting a strict rebuild. They backed that sentiment up by flipping the first-round pick acquired for Horvat to land defenseman Filip Hronek before the 2023 trade deadline.

It seemed to many like confusing, contradictory behavior by a team without an identity. But here we are, one year later, and it’s the Canucks, a powerhouse and Presidents’ Trophy favorite, paying up to land the best pending UFA center on the market, essentially reversing the Horvat deal. When they acquired Lindholm from the Calgary Flames Wednesday night for a Andrei Kuzmenko, a 2024 first and fourth-round pick, top prospect defenseman Hunter Brzustewicz and defenseman Joni Jurmo, they made a proud statement. The Canucks’ all-star count for Toronto ballooned to six players: Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, J.T. Miller, Brock Boeser, Thatcher Demko and Lindholm.

“To join Vancouver, one of the best teams in the league right now, so many good players, good goaltending, good defensemen, they’ve done a really good job this year so far,” Lindholm said. “So I’m super excited and can’t wait to get started.”

Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, also on hand in Toronto to work one of the benches in Sunday’s All-Star Game, didn’t hide his excitement about the move. He lauded Allvin and Rutherford, who have combined for a stunning six trades since September alone, for their “methodical” approach to building a roster that holds down the league’s top record at 33-11-5.

“Every team wants to go for it,” Tocchet said. “You get a piece like that, and it obviously gives you another shot to make a run.

Lindholm, 29, slots in as the team’s No. 2 center, but that’s just a generalized concept of where he’ll fit. He’s a strong faceoff man who has finished top 10 in the Selke Trophy vote three times, so he can drive his own line, but he can also play the wing and, in his best seasons in Calgary between Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk, showed an ability to make magic with elite players. So Lindholm will be deployed in many ways.

“You’ve got to be careful, because you don’t want to upset the apple cart too much, but a guy like him’s going to fit a huge need for us in the sense that he’s a jack of all trades,” Tocchet said. “He’s a great penalty killer, too, and he can play power play.”

With so many Canucks on hand in Toronto, Lindholm has a rare opportunity to get to know a significant chunk of his teammates in the middle of a season before even joining them to play games, though they’re already familiar with each other on the ice given they shared a division.

“My initial reaction was, we’re obviously losing a great player and a really nice guy in ‘Kuzy,’ but at the same time, Lindy’s a guy that works extremely hard, he’s a hard player to play against, he’s responsible in all areas of his game,” Boeser said.

When a trade happens in circumstances as rare as these, there’s certain surrealism. It may not have fully sunk in for Lindholm by Thursday. But at the same time, he understood what was coming. He and the Flames hadn’t agreed on a deal before season, speculation swirled over whether GM Craig Conroy wanted to blow things up, and Lindholm became more certain of his fate as the 2023-24 season progressed, with the middling Flames not looking like a serious contender.

“I loved my time there. We tried to work it out but, this is just business…” Lindholm said. “Calgary wanted to do something and, I don’t know, maybe just after New Year’s I kind of knew that it would happen. I just didn’t know when and what team. So I was prepared, but at the same time, every time you’re traded you’re kind of shocked anyways.”

He’s shocked. The Canucks are thrilled. They already had one of the league’s most loaded rosters, and, with Lindholm in tow, might have cemented themselves as the No. 1 Stanley Cup contender.

Not bad for a team that played seller just 366 days earlier.