Grading the Elias Lindholm trade: Canucks nab ideal 2C, Flames add significant assets

The first big domino has fallen in Calgary.

Elias Lindholm is officially a Vancouver Canuck. The 29-year-old center cost his new team five assets, including a 2024 first-round pick, in a trade with the Calgary Flames on Wednesday evening.

The Canucks were already the NHL’s top-ranked team. Now, they’ve added a former 40-goal scorer who should slot in pretty well as the No. 2 center being Elias Pettersson and/or J.T. Miller. One year after trading Bo Horvat on the eve of the All-Star Game, the Canucks have made a very similar move — only in reverse.

The Flames cemented themselves as sellers after capping off a brutal four-game losing streak with a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on home ice. Lindholm was a good soldier on a bargain contract in Calgary for years. But the Flames needed to cash in on their highest-profile pending UFA, and boy, did they ever.

You know what this means. It’s time for another edition of our Daily Faceoff Trade Grades!

VANCOUVER CANUCKS

Receive:

C Elias Lindholm, 29 – $4.85 million cap hit, pending UFA

This is the year for the Canucks to go all-in. This core group has struggled to get off the ground for a long, long time; now, they’re at the top of the NHL standings with five of their top players set to take part in this year’s All-Star Game. Lindholm makes it six.

The Canucks have been running with Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, and J.T. Miller on their top line in recent weeks. It’s proven to be a terrific trifecta that has helped bolster the team’s run up the NHL standings. But it also opened up a gaping hole at the No. 2 center position. Although some onlookers had linked Pittsburgh Penguins winger Jake Guentzel to a Canucks team helmed by multiple former Penguins executives, Lindholm always made sense as the de facto target for Patrik Allvin, Jim Rutherford, and company.

Lindholm arrives in Vancouver two seasons removed from his best year in the NHL. He scored 42 goals and 82 points with the 2021–22 Flames while playing on an outstanding line with Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau. But Lindholm’s wingers abandoned him after that terrific season and he’s struggled ever since to recapture his form next to the likes of Jonathan Huberdeau, Andrew Mangiapane, and Yegor Sharangovich. Those are all good players, but in Vancouver, Lindholm should receive a fair amount of PP time alongside Pettersson and Miller.

But if Lindholm isn’t playing with those guys at 5-on-5, will he still be successful? It’s become crystal clear over the last two seasons that Lindholm, a capable two-way center on his own, only becomes a top-end scorer when he skates with top-tier wingers. It’s far more likely he plays with guys like Ilya Mikheyev, Conor Garland, Nils Höglander, or Sam Lafferty in Vancouver. Are those guys really any better than Lindholm’s old Calgary linemates?

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for playing on a good team, regardless of one’s linemates. This year’s Flames are going nowhere fast; Vancouver looks like a powerhouse. If he’s properly slotted behind Pettersson on Vancouver’s second line (and all indications are he will be), Lindholm could be an ideal fit with the Canucks. Rick Tocchet will probably like Lindholm’s versatility and commitment to playing a 200-foot game.

In any case, Allvin and Rutherford are doing the right thing in betting on this year’s Canucks team. There’s no time like the present for these guys — especially with the lingering thread that is Elias Pettersson’s upcoming RFA contract negotiations. Lindholm is a rental (for now) but he was the top center on the market. Vancouver got him.

Grade: A

CALGARY FLAMES

Receive:

RW Andrei Kuzmenko, 27 – $5.5 million cap hit through 2025
D Hunter Brzustewicz, 19 – Unsigned draft pick
D Joni Jurmo, 21 – Unsigned draft pick
2024 first-round pick
2024 fourth-round pick (conditional)

Wow. There’s a lot to parse through here, so we’ll go piece-by-piece on this.

Kuzmenko: This is a pretty cut-and-dried cap dump. It’s quite remarkable how far Kuzmenko’s value has fallen over the last year. He actually outscored Lindholm last year, collecting 39 goals (while shooting 27.3% percent) and 74 points, but has since firmly entered distressed asset territory. The Flames don’t have serious winning aspirations this year and next, which is what Kuzmenko’s contract covers, but they do have an opportunity to potentially rehabilitate him as a player, boost his value, and flip him for more stuff at next year’s deadline. It’s a solid pump-and-dump addition for an asset-starved Flames team.

Brzustewicz: Whoa, baby. This is a bit of a surprise. Brzustewicz profiles extremely well for a right-handed defenseman in his draft-plus-one season. The 2023 third-round pick doesn’t just lead all OHL defenders in scoring this year; he’s third in the entire league, regardless of position, with 69 points in 47 games. At 6′ even, Brzustewicz (pronounced brew-STEV-itch) certainly isn’t the biggest guy out there, but he’s a mobile and creative defender with excellent production. He’s a big get for a Flames team that needs a lot of help on the blue line going forward.

Jurmo: Another third-round pick, but from three years earlier, Jurmo is a defender who is very much unlike Brzustewicz. He’s a giant (6’5″, 209) left-handed defender who scores very little and whose exclusive signing rights with the Canucks had been set to expire this coming June. Jurmo projects to be a third-pairing defender if he makes the show; for now, he’s organizational depth and a potential addition next year for the AHL’s Calgary Wranglers.

The picks: Calgary needs both quality and quantity in this category after making less than their initial allotment of seven picks in seven of the last 10 drafts. The Flames made just nine picks in the 2022 and 2023 draft year combined. They’re now up to eight in 2024 with two big pending UFAs still left on the market in Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin. Vancouver’s 2024 first is going to be a later one; the fourth-rounder is conditional upon the Canucks reaching the 2024 Western Conference Final, at which point it would become a third-round pick. If that happens, the Flames could enter this year’s draft with at least five picks in the first three rounds.

This is a pretty impressive haul, particularly given Lindholm’s struggles at points this season. Fourteen years to the day since the Dion Phaneuf blockbuster, the Flames added a highly impressive young defense prospect in Brzustewicz, three lottery tickets in Jurmo and the picks, and another piece in Kuzmenko that they can explore flipping for more assets at this time next year. It’s difficult to imagine Calgary getting more for Lindholm in any other deal.

Grade: A