By: Ryan Bosworth | Follow me on Twitter / X @RyanJBosworth
We’re not even one month into the 2025-26 National Hockey League campaign, and trade rumors are already starting to get hot, especially for the Bruins. According to Elliotte Friedman, the Vancouver Canucks are heavily interested in Pavel Zacha, as he said Zacha “remains a Canucks target” right now.
Friedman, on Hockey Night in Canada, commented that there’s been some more chatter within the last week regarding the 28-year-old Bruin. Friedman also noted that it’s a conversation that dates back to the summer, and that the Canucks and Bruins have been “on and off about this.”
Along with that, Friedman “doesn’t believe” that Vancouver is on Zacha’s 8-team no-trade list, which he has for the 2025-26 season, as well as the 2026-27 season.
Zacha, who was acquired in the summer of 2022 from the New Jersey Devils, has re-established a career for himself with the Boston Bruins. Now in his fourth season in the Spoked B, he’s proven to be a valuable piece in the top-six, often shifting between center and left wing.
The two best seasons of his career came in 2022-23 and 2023-24, both of which were in Boston. Despite a down year in 2024-25, he’s off to a hot start in the 2025-26 campaign, and is proving himself to be more valuable as the season goes on.
Finding himself slotting in on the Bruins’ second line alongside Casey Mittelstadt and Viktor Arvidsson, Zacha is playing at just under a point-per-game, with 2-7-9 through ten games played, putting him at just about a 73-point pace, which would be a career high for him. Zacha is second on the team in scoring, only trailing David Pastrnak (5-8-13). Not only that, but he’s producing at that rate on a line that’s not having the hottest start to the 2025-26 season.
Some other noteworthy statistics for Zacha include second in assists, with seven, only trailing David Pastrnak (eight), a tie for second place with Sean Kuraly for plus/mins at plus-two, and seventh in time-on-ice per game with 18:07.
Now, the questions arises: what do the Bruins do with Zacha? Well, as Friedman put it, “Boston doesn’t have to do anything here it doesn’t want to do.” Zacha is the only consistent source of scoring outside of the first line, and with the way his season is trending, as well as what he’s shown he’s capable of, his value is going to continue to increase if he can continue scoring at the pace he’s at right now.
Boston, obviously, has two options with Zacha. On one hand, he’s a consistent scorer outside of the first-line. On the other, he could be a valuable trade piece if the Bruins are clearly out of playoff contention when the deadline arrives.
Unless the Bruins are trying to better their chances of a high first-round pick in the 2026 entry draft, selling Zacha doesn’t make much for a team trying to push for a playoff spot. If the Bruins are clearly out of playoff contention come the trade deadline, then trading Zacha may make the most sense, assuming the return would be adequate for a valuable piece to the Bruins’ offense.
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