Canucks in 2023: Who gets to stay and who’s sent away?

Halfway through the 2022-23 Vancouver Canucks season, club president Jim Rutherford put down a challenge to general manager Patrik Allvin and his staff: The team needed major surgery.

Allvin shipped out Bo Horvat to the New York Islanders at the end of January in exchange for winger Anthony Beauvillier and centre prospect Aatu Raty, as well as a first-round draft pick. A month later, that pick plus a second rounder was parcelled to Detroit for veteran Red Wings blueliner Filip Hronek.

Luke Schenn and Riley Stillman, regulars on defence, were dealt as well, to Toronto for a third-round draft pick and to Buffalo for a junior prospect forward in Josh Bloom, respectively. Allvin also rolled the dice on former 2018 Rangers first-rounder Vitali Kravtsov, who came west in a deal for fringe forward Will Lockwood and a late draft pick.

Allvin hopes the work isn’t over.

“We acknowledge there is some holes in our lineup that we need to fill this summer,” he said Monday at his end-of-season news conference. He’d said like to find a third-line centre, for starters.