Canucks: Rangers-Sherwood trade chatter? Let's get on with this rebuild

Stop dithering about, bosses of the Vancouver Canucks.

Get serious about what you have said you want to do — you want to build a young team, a team aimed at the future.

A team, presumably, you want your fans to be able to truly rally around.

The Quinn Hughes trade, as painful as it was to move on from such a talent, was a good start. But for this team to truly end up in a better spot, do not be precious about who is still here.

This is not a good team. Don’t be fooled by the four-game win streak after the Hughes trade. Don’t let yourself imagine you’re the Buffalo Sabres either, a team that is a 10-game win streak away from being back in the playoff hunt.

Don’t do that. Focus on the big picture, that’s what matters.

Every once in a while, we must look across the aisle and nod our heads in agreement: Thomas Drance is right here.

Understand what the Buffalo Sabres are. They are a team that rebuilt. They took a ridiculous, meddled route to get here, but after so many missteps, they have all the look, finally, of a team that could be a contender. They’ve got true depth in talent on defence. They’ve got a gaggle of young forwards who can command a game. They’ve got a quality goalie.

To be a true contender, you need skaters that are out-and-out stars. You need a collection of good players around them.

The Sabres have Rasmus Dahlin on the blue line. They have Tage Thompson up front.

The Canucks don’t have a true stud on the blueline. Zeev Buium has lots of promise, but he’s not a defence-carrying dynamo. He is a fine skater and passer, and there’s lots to like about his potential. Neither is Tom Willander, who skates well and can defend the rush well and passes the puck well at times, but he still lacks size and strength and struggles at times with in-zone defending as a result.

Both Buium and Willander could be good defenders on a strong team, but neither is going to carry your defence corps.

And Elias Pettersson (the forward)? Lots of talent, a great two-way presence, but when did he last do a true star thing? He’s better than he was last year, but it’s looking more and more like he is a very good NHL centre, as opposed to a great NHL centre. And certainly not like the kind of superstar centre who can will wins out of nowhere.

These guys can all be good players on a great team, but the Canucks just need so much more to become a contender. They need a big-time win in the first round this summer. They will need another one the year after that.

And they’ll need to keep finding prospects like Linus Karlsson and Elias Pettersson (the defenceman) to round out the lineup efficiently.

To get to this, they need to stop fiddling around and start trading players like Kiefer Sherwood. There’s just too much long-term value in what you can get for him in a trade.

The New York Rangers, Postmedia can confirm, is the latest team to have interest in the hustling winger. Interest has surged again in the winger, a source said. And yes, the Canuck did exchange contract ideas with the Rangers recently, but nothing close to actually signing a deal.

They need to trade everything they can to build that bag of options, to fill out that army of guys.

Let’s go. Fans are ready to embrace an exciting era of youth, one pointed at the future. They will accept tough games in the next year or two if they truly believe it’s in service to a bigger cause.

This team has avoided properly setting the stage for the future for too long. A rebuild needn’t take long if it is focused, if it’s aggressive.

Get on with it.

pjohnston@postmedia.com