Ilya Mikheyev's agent granted permission to seek trade out of Vancouver

After spending the first three seasons of his NHL career with the Toronto Maple Leafs between 2019-20 and 2021-22, Mikheyev tested the free agent market and ended up signing a 4-year deal with the Canucks worth 19 million dollars.

He was coming off a career-year where he deposited 21 goals and accumulated 32 points in 53 games played during the 2021-22 season, while also adding 2 goals and 4 points in 7 playoff games. It was a steep price to pay for Vancouver but they were confident in his ability to provide secondary scoring, solidifying their forward group, and providing intangibles like penalty killing and good defensive metrics.

Unfortunately in his first pre-season game with the Canucks in 2022, Mikheyev tore his anterior cruciate ligament and wound up missing the rest of the pre-season and the first few weeks of the regular season. He appeared in 43 games that season and scored 13 goals and 28 points but missed the rest of the season after undergoing knee surgery.

He returned for the 2023-24 campaign, played in 78 games, but only tallied 11 goals and 31 points in 14:16 ATOI. In 11 post-season tilts, Mikheyev went without a point, was a minus-4, and averaged just 12:06 ATOI. With their second round series on the line, he was given a chance to play on the top line with J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson but failed to impress and even missed out on a golden opportunity to sneak one past the goaltender for his first of the post-season.

According to CapFriendly, the Canucks have a little over 16 million dollars in projected cap space but have key players needing new contracts like Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm, Dakota Joshua, and Arturs Silovs among others. They also just recently extended Filip Hronek to an 8-year deal worth 7.25 million per season.

While they could most definitely keep some of the aforementioned players within that 16 million dollar threshold, Mikheyev's 4.75 million AAV is going to hold them back from making key additions to a team that has seemingly entered their Stanley Cup window. The 29-year-old does carry a M-NTC - 12-team no-trade list - but it seems like both sides are willing to seek out greener pastures as his agent, Dan Millstein was given permission to do so, according to Rick Dhaliwal.

The Mikheyev experiment did not pan out for the Canucks but he still carries a decent amount of interest on the open market based on his earlier play with the Leafs and within the KHL. He won't cost a team an arm and a leg to acquire his services and the Canucks might be forced into retaining some of his salary to facilitate a trade.

So, if anyone needs a top-9 forward who can score 15-20 goals and kill penalties, Mikheyev is your man.

Source for Ilya Mikheyev's statistics:
Ilya Mikheyev

Source for the Vancouver Canucks salary situation:
VANCOUVER CANUCKS