Could the Canucks really get involved in the Simon Edvinsson sweepstakes?
In almost any other offseason, Edvinsson would be the headliner on the market. Instead, he’s just one more major piece in the middle of the 2026 chaos, where even an unsigned 25-and-under RFA left defenseman with top-pairing upside doesn’t stand alone for long. Alexander Nikishin is out there too, which tells you everything about how strange this summer has become.
Still, Edvinsson is worth the attention. The Detroit Red Wings are a week into the 2026-27 season and somehow still without a general manager or a new deal for the 23-year-old, 6-foot-6, 222-pound defender. After a summer that went off the rails, Edvinsson has gone back to Sweden and, according to Elliotte Friedman, has made it known that he’d rather be traded than sign an extension with Detroit right now.
The appeal is obvious. Detroit drafted him sixth overall in 2021, and he’s already handled the NHL load like a player who belongs in the top group.
In 2025-26, his second full season with the Red Wings, he put up 25 points in 72 games while logging 22:21 per night. He defends well, brings real offensive touch for a player with his profile, and has the size and tools to matter in a big way in his role.
The contract dispute is the engine behind all of this. Edvinsson remains an RFA, but the sense around the situation is that he wants a long-term extension, the kind teams usually fight to hand out to young defensemen.
Instead, the Red Wings, under interim GM Shawn Horcoff, are reportedly pushing for a short-term bridge deal. That’s where the holdout comes from, along with the trip home to Sweden and the tension that’s followed.
For Vancouver, though, the fit is not nearly as clean.
The biggest reason is Zeev Buium. The Canucks already have another young left-shot defender with star potential, and they locked him up for eight years at $9.38 million this past summer. Buium and Edvinsson are different players, but putting both on the same roster would create overlap at a spot where Vancouver has other needs to address.
There’s a world where the Canucks simply load up the left side and worry about the rest later. But doing that would come with a cost, because it would likely squeeze out the younger Elias Pettersson, who has been off to a strong start in 2026-27. At that point, Vancouver would either be pushing him into bottom-pairing minutes or setting up a future trade.
And the left side is already one of the organization’s stronger areas. Behind Buium and Pettersson, the Canucks have Jamie Oleksiak, who was recently signed, plus Kirill Kudryavtsev, one of their better prospects at 22. That’s why any major addition there would need to come at the right price.
That’s the problem: Edvinsson probably won’t come cheap.
He was taken sixth overall and has lived up to, or beyond, that billing so far in his NHL career. That kind of pedigree matters in trade talks. If you’re trying to figure out his value, you’re probably starting close to the value of a sixth overall pick, if not higher.
Vancouver can at least play in that neighborhood. The Canucks still control all of their own first-round picks going forward, and the next few are projected to land around the 6OA range or better. They also have a deep group of under-23 talent, including Buium, recently drafted Caleb Malhotra, and names like Tom Willander, Braeden Cootes, and Adam Novotny.
But those are exactly the pieces the Canucks should be most reluctant to move. In a rebuild, those are the kinds of assets you protect, not the ones you throw into a deal for a player who duplicates a strength. Unless Edvinsson were somehow available for what amounts to spare change, a direct trade between Vancouver and Detroit doesn’t make much sense.
The more interesting path is a three-team setup.
Detroit has a roster in an awkward middle ground. It has some established young talent at the NHL level, like Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond, but also plenty of holes to fill. The Red Wings may not be in full rebuild mode, but they’re not ready to climb back into contention either, especially with former captain and current top centre Dylan Larkin still out of the lineup and waiting on a requested trade.
That opens the door to a different kind of transaction. Vancouver could send Detroit something the Red Wings actually want at the NHL level, then route Edvinsson to a third team for the kind of future assets that fit the Canucks’ timeline better.
The centre options are the obvious place to start. Detroit is expected to have some level of interest in a Larkin replacement, and the elder Elias Pettersson has reportedly been on their radar before.
His hot start to the season could matter there. If not him, then maybe Marco Rossi, who could be part of a broader replacement plan even if he isn’t a one-for-one answer.
That’s the framework: a centre to Detroit, Edvinsson to Vancouver, and then Edvinsson on to another team for a high pick, a blue-chip prospect, or some combination of the two.
But even that idea has limits. Unless Detroit is especially high on Pettersson or Rossi right now, it’s hard to see those pieces matching the value of a 23-year-old defenseman with Edvinsson’s track record. And Vancouver doesn’t exactly have a lot of extra material to sweeten the pot.
So while the Canucks have the kind of asset base that lets them at least enter the conversation, the more likely outcome is that another team with a cleaner need for Edvinsson outbids them. That’s fine.
A player like this is absolutely worth talking about. It just doesn’t mean every team should chase him.
For Vancouver, patience still matters. This might be a major opportunity. It just doesn’t look like the right one.
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