The trade that sent JT Miller to Vancouver in 2019 has kept branching out for years, and the latest twists have only made the whole thing more tangled.
It started on the second day of the 2019 NHL draft, when the Canucks landed Miller from Tampa Bay in a deal that included goaltender Marek Mazanec, a 2019 third-round pick that became Hugo Alnefelt, and a 2020 first-round pick. That first-rounder turned into the real engine of the trade tree.
Tampa used that pick, along with Nolan Foote, to bring in Blake Coleman as it chased the Stanley Cup the next spring. New Jersey then took the selection and used it on Shakir Makhamadullin 20th overall. Makhamadullin never played a game for the Devils, but he became part of the package that sent Timo Meier from San Jose to New Jersey at the 2023 NHL trade deadline.
That Meier deal was a big one: Makhamadullin, Fabian Zetterlund, Nikita Okhotiuk, a 2023 first-round pick that became Quintin Musty, a 2024 second-rounder and a seventh-round pick in 2024 all went to the Sharks. In return, New Jersey got Meier with 50% of his salary retained by San Jose, plus Scott Harrington, Santeri Hatakka, Timur Ibragimov, Zach Emond and a fifth-round pick.
The Sharks kept moving pieces from there. Zetterlund later went to Ottawa in the deal that brought former Vancouver Giant Zack Ostapchuk to San Jose, and Okhotiuk was sent to Calgary for a draft pick.
Miller, meanwhile, became exactly the kind of scorer Vancouver hoped for. He posted a career-high 103 points in the 2023-24 season. But his Canucks run ended badly, with losing, bickering and one of the most talked-about locker room dramas in recent memory leading to his exit in a major January 2025 trade with the New York Rangers.
That deal sent Miller back to the team that drafted him in 2011, along with Erik Brännström and Jackson Dorrington, for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini and a 2025 first-round pick that soon started bouncing around the league.
The Rangers’ pick went to Pittsburgh with Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais and prospect Melvin Fernstrom in exchange for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor. Pittsburgh then shipped the pick to Philadelphia at the 2025 draft, and the Flyers used it to select Jack Nesbitt 12th overall. The Penguins, after sliding back, added another first-round pick and came away with Bill Zonnon and Will Horcoff two picks apart.
Brännström’s path kept going too. After playing 28 games for Vancouver in the 2024-25 season, he never appeared in the NHL again before being dealt to Buffalo for Nicolas Aube-Kubel at the 2025 trade deadline.
Pittsburgh also flipped Vincent Desharnais to San Jose for a fifth-round pick in the 2028 draft a month after acquiring him. And Danton Heinen, along with a second-round pick in 2026 and a third-rounder in 2027, went to Columbus for Egor Chinakov. The Blue Jackets later used that second-rounder as part of a package to land Valeri Nichushkin from Colorado in June.
The latest updates only added more layers. Vancouver sent Marcus Pettersson to the Rangers for a lottery-protected first-round pick in 2030, and Mukhamadullin was moved again, this time to Edmonton with Zachary Sharp in exchange for Darnell Nurse.
So when the 2026-27 NHL season arrives and Marcus Pettersson is in a Rangers jersey, Darnell Nurse is wearing Sharks colours and Val Nichushkin is skating as a Columbus Blue Jacket, they’ll all trace back to the original Miller deal from 2019.
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