It’s somewhat difficult to build a list of trade targets for a team at the very outset of a rebuilding effort.In the case of the Vancouver Canucks, their needs are total. And what the Canucks need most — elite, face-of-the-franchise level players — isn’t generally available on the trade market, especially not for teams widely projected to remain near the bottom of the NHL standings in the short-term.In assessing a rebuilding team, however, it’s vital to distinguish between the critical role that losing games plays in an organization’s strategic positioning when it comes to the NHL Draft, without getting confused about the fact that simply losing, in and of itself, isn’t a strategy.Tanking might be a necessity, a regrettable one, when rebuilding in a contemporary North American professional sports environment. It’s not enough to just go about losing games, the way the Chicago Blackhawks have done, however.No, the trick is to lose games while also building out a structural identity on the ice, all while gradually adding real hockey value to your organizational portfolio off it. The point is to lose enough to have access to the elite players at the top of the draft, while also making sure you emerge with the sort of critical mass of valuable assets required to pounce on the opportunity to level up significantly on the trade market (or in free agency) when the moment arrives.At the start of Vancouver’s rebuilding process, there are a couple of clear buckets that the Canucks should strongly consider shopping in on the trade market this offseason. The first bucket contains valuable future assets, of the variety that can add rocket fuel to the Canucks’ efforts to build up a core of elite, young players: premium draft picks and young players with distressed value, essentially.The second bucket includes veteran players who are either — and ideally both — capable of helping you maintain a culture built around high professional standards in the midst of losing seasons, or have a significant opportunity to gain value versus the price you pay to acquire them.We’ve pored over NHL rosters, used some common sense and made a few calls in seeking to put together a list of players the Canucks could consider targeting in trade talks this summer, and who would fit into what the club’s goals should be during the early phase of this Sedin, Ryan Johnson era rebuild.The turbo boost the rebuild tier1. San Jose Sharks’ No. 2 pick2. Chicago Blackhawks’ No. 4 pickThe Sharks and the Blackhawks are on the clock. They’ve already been rebuilding for a while, and both organizations have already identified a franchise-calibre player — Macklin Celebrini and Conor Bedard, respectively — and need to begin to make rapid progress if they’re going to open up a championship window during their superstar forward’s prime seasons.We very rarely see top-five picks move at the NHL Draft, and that’s for good reason. These assets will generally be used to select players with the sorts of profiles that you can’t generally buy on the trade market.San Jose, however, is absolutely desperate for help on the blue line, and the Canucks have a top-pair right-handed blueliner signed to a very efficient ticket that carries minimal downside risk given the age of the player and the length of the contract. Filip Hronek could be the face of San Jose’s upgraded blue line if the Sharks were interested and if the Canucks were open to considering it.Hronek, on his own, probably wouldn’t carry enough value to acquire the No. 2 pick in this draft class outright, but you’d have to think he could be an attractive conversation starter, especially if the Sharks — a famously tight-lipped organization — aren’t over the moon in their evaluation of the top of this draft class.Chicago, meanwhile, has the No. 4 pick. Due to their constant bungling at the draft table, most notably picking Artyom Levshunov ahead of Ivan Demidov in 2024, the Blackhawks have very little need for additional blue-line help if the top-three picks in this draft class are all forwards.Could that open up an opportunity for Vancouver to send quality NHL-level players (Hronek? Elias Pettersson? Jake DeBrusk? Two of the three? Add in Linus Karlsson or Liam Öhgren?) and gauge Chicago’s interest in utilizing its top-five pick to take a short-term step forward for the purpose of appealing to Bedard, who, it should be noted, needs a new contract this summer?In all likelihood, the prospect of landing a second 2026 top-five pick will prove to be a pipe dream, but there’s very little else that Vancouver could trade for this summer that would be as impactful to its rebuilding outlook.