The Canucks would have a really tough time winning an Elias Pettersson trade

Which is why every team in the league should be calling them if he is really available.

If there is one thing we should know by now regarding NHL trades — and especially the extremely rare blockbuster trades involving in-their-prime stars — it is that they almost never look the way anybody expects them to look when they actually happen.

Anytime a good player is mentioned in trade rumors or is put on the trade market, fans and media build up a huge expectation for what the return might actually look like.

The team looking to buy will make every first-round pick, top prospect and young player untouchable. Yeah, you WANT Jack Eichel, but you don’t want to give up anybody to get him. The bad players for the good players.

The team looking to sell will want every first-round pick, top prospect and young player the other organization has. There will be massive expectations about how trading your star can bring you a huge return that will successfully rebuild your franchise in no time.

It is all mostly a fantasy land. The actual trade almost never matches that expectation, and when the trades actually do happen they usually leave the fans of the selling team underwhelmed, the fans of the buying team ecstatic, and it usually tends to work out far better for the team that landed the best player.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. Sometimes the selling team really does hit a home run and change the course of its franchise. But it is not the most common outcome. They are exceptions. Most of these trades usually end up with a very similar boilerplate return: a first-round pick (that might be lottery protected), a good prospect and a decent NHL player. There might be a few other pieces thrown in to balance out money, or some random throw-in picks or lower-level prospects, but the meat of the trade is usually the same.

Maybe the pick results in a good player. Maybe the prospect pans out. But the buying team usually ends up winning the trade decisively, both in terms of individual play and team success.

All of this brings us to the Vancouver Canucks, one of the more highly disappointing teams in the NHL this season. Their current situation that has put two of their best players — Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller — at the top of the NHL rumor mill as the trade deadline fast approaches.

On the ice the team has significantly regressed from last year’s performance that saw them finish with one of the NHL’s best records and advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. As of Monday they are on the playoff bubble in the Western Conference and trying to hold on to the second Wild Card spot with teams like Calgary, St. Louis and even Utah trying to keep pace.

By points percentage they are technically on the outside of the playoff picture, just narrowly behind the Flames (.573 to .571).

They have not been particularly good.

Off the ice there is also reportedly an issue between Pettersson and Miller that has reportedly driven the organization to listening to trade offers for both players.

One of them could go.

Both of them could go.

I suppose there is a very strong possibility that neither of them go and this is all just wild speculation and pushing drama and a narrative to keep interest in the trade deadline.

That is how the rumor mill usually works this time of year.

But let’s just hypothetically say they actually ARE on the trade block, and let’s just for laughs say the Canucks are actually willing to trade one or both of them.

This is not really uncharted territory for the Canucks and Miller.

He has been part of the rumor mill in the past, and while he is still a really productive player I could see a pretty compelling argument being made for why it would make some sense to want to dump his contract. He is 31 years old. He might have already played his best hockey. His contract is expensive. There is some risk there in how he will age and what his production looks like in future seasons. It might not be a great value in the future. If they were going to trade one of them, that’s the guy I’d be looking to move if you could find a deal with a team that he would be willing to waive his no-movement clause for.

You might not get a fair or equal return in terms of assets, players or draft picks, but clearing a contract that might not age gracefully would be (potentially) worthwhile in the long run.

Pettersson is an entirely different beast as a player and a trade chip.

He just turned 26 years old and is still in the prime of his career. He has a track record of being an extremely productive player and is just one year removed from a 100-point season (and had 89 points a season ago). He is a top-line center/scorer and should still have several years of high-end play ahead of him. His salary cap hit ($11 million) is pricey, but with an increasing salary cap and his production it is a number teams should be able and willing to try and manage.

He is also the type of player, based on what he has done and produced in his career, that does not typically get traded.

Especially at this point of their careers.

In the rare occasion that they do get traded, it typically ends very, very poorly for the team trading away the player. CanucksArmy recently looked into this and tried to find some comparisons for both Pettersson and Miller and what similar trades in the past have looked like, and I wanted to expand on that a little bit from the Pettersson perspective. Mostly because I think it is even rarer than they suggest for players like him to be traded I think the comparables should be set a little higher in some cases. (that is not a criticism on the article, by the way).

The end result, however, is probably the same — it probably does not go well for the Canucks.

To get a baseline idea of what we’re talking about here, I plugged some numbers into the Hockey-Reference stathead database to get some additional comparable players to Pettersson at this stage of his career

The numbers:

• A minimum of 250 games played in the NHL between the ages of 18-27 to get players that have firmly established themselves in the NHL.

• Averaged at least .900 points per game to get players that are truly top-line scorers.

• Had a shot-attempt share of at least 51 percent to indicate they are able to at least push play in a positive direction and tilt the ice.

• All since the start of the 2007-08 season.

Those are all numbers that Pettersson has achieved so far in his career.

Including Pettersson, there are 32 players on that list.

Of those 32 players, only nine of them have been traded at any point in their careers.

In the majority of those cases, the trades happened later in their careers when they were either well into their 30s and were beyond their prime years, or as pending unrestricted free agents when they were set to leave their current teams.

When it comes to players under the age of 27, and players that were still under team control, only two of the players on that list were traded at a similar point in their career as to where Pettersson is now.

It went extremely poorly for both teams that tried it.

Let’s talk about it.