Bowen Byram is on the market.
The 24-year-old defenceman from Cranbrook, B.C., is coming off a career year for the Buffalo Sabres, putting up seven goals and 38 points in 82 games. And yet, per multiple reports, the Buffalo Sabres are exploring trading Byram before they have to re-sign the pending restricted free agent, with one report that Byram.
The Canucks have been linked to Byram in the past, with Rick Dhaliwal reporting that when he was with the Colorado Avalanche in a trade that would have involved J.T. Miller.
According to Avalanche beat reporter Adrian Dater, the interest is mutual.
I believe Byram wants to be a Canuck
— Adrian Dater (@adater)
None of this means the Canucks are currently attempting to acquire Byram, but there's more smoke surrounding Byram than a Vancouver man exiting a hotboxed car, so one has to wonder if there's some fire causing it.
The bigger question is whether the Canucks should attempt to acquire Byram, and the answer to that is pretty clearly and definitively, no.
Byram would cost the Canucks too much
The first issue in trading for Byram is cost. The Sabres control Byram's rights for two more years before he can become an unrestricted free agent, so they'll be in no rush to trade him for below market value.
Given Byram's pedigree as a former fourth-overall pick and the fact that he averaged 22:42 per game last season, that market value could be considerable. That's a problem for the Canucks, who have limited assets available to them to incorporate into a trade, particularly since they'll likely need to trade for .
Since a left-handed defenceman is low of the Canucks' list of needs, it's hard to imagine that they would bend over backwards to pay the necessary price to acquire Byram.
Beyond the trade cost, Byram's next contract won't be cheap. Evolving-Hockey with a cap hit of $7.986 million, which would make Byram the most expensive defenceman on the Canucks, at least until Quinn Hughes gets a new contract in 2026.
For that kind of money, you would need to be absolutely certain that Byram is a play-driving, top-pairing defenceman, who can carry a defence pairing and be a major difference-maker at both ends of the ice.
The trouble for Byram is that it's entirely unclear if he can be that player. As much as Byram dazzles with his skating and skill, there are some major red flags under the hood.
Byram's underlying numbers away from Dahlin aren't pretty
Byram's career year coincided with his time playing alongside Rasmus Dahlin, a top-ten defenceman in the NHL. His numbers with Dahlin are sparkling; without Dahlin, they're ugly.
Consider the expected goals percentage (xGF%) of the two players, a statistic that combines shot quantity and shot quality when a players is on the ice at 5-on-5. Dahlin had a 54.6 xGF% in the 626 minutes he spent on the ice with Byram. He also had a 54.6 xGF% in the 705 minutes he spent on the ice without Byram. It seemingly made no difference who he played with.
Byram, on the other hand, saw his xGF% plunge from 54.6% to 45.3% when he wasn't with Dahlin.
The general consensus from the hockey analytics community is that Dahlin carried Byram this past season.
The undeniably-skilled but very-much-not-an-analytical-darling Bowen Byram is on the trade market.
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey)
The gap between the eye test and Byram's actual results on the ice is stark. Micah Blake McCurdy at HockeyViz shows that Byram's game has gone on such a severe decline that he's below third-pairing quality, despite putting up 38 points in a top-pairing role.
Any team that acquires Byram at this point is either dazzled by his point totals or is gambling that his obvious skill and young age mean that he will improve by leaps and bounds in the coming years and be a legitimate top-pairing play-driver.
But that's not a gamble that the Canucks should be making, especially since they don't really need Byram.
Byram's fit and injury history
The Canucks are set on the left side of their defence with Quinn Hughes and Marcus Pettersson, along with prospects Elias Pettersson, Kirill Kudryavtsev, and Sawyer Mynio coming up from below.
While Byram showed that he can play on the right side with Dahlin this past season, it's entirely unclear if he can do the same apart from Dahlin, and the Canucks already have a right-side defenceman stapled to the side of their Norris candidate in Filip Hronek.
Then there's one last major red flag: Byram's concussion history.
Byram suffered three major concussions in the space of two years at the start of his NHL career that limited him to just 19 and 30 games in his first two seasons. He has since fully recovered and played 82 games for the Sabres this past season, but that history still has to be a concern.
The Canucks have acquired players with a concussion history before, such as Micheal Ferland, whose career, and Filip Chytil, who late in the season. Byram's concussion history has to be a concern, even if he hasn't suffered a concussion in a few years.
From the cost to the red flags in his underlying numbers to the risks of acquiring a player with concussion issues, the Canucks should steer clear of Byram.
