Rough stretch for NHL team leads to trade rumors around two of their veteran players.

For a while it looked like the Vancouver Canucks were going to be surging to a post-season birth but with just three wins in their last 10 games their chances of making the playoffs now sit at an abysmal 7%.

With the playoffs appearing to be out of reach there are now rumors starting to float around some of Vancouver's veteran players, specifically forwards Jannik Hansen and Alex Burrows.

From NBC Sports:

 So that possibility remains. Burrows is a 35-year-old pending unrestricted free agent. He may relish a chance to win a Stanley Cup elsewhere.

Hansen, meanwhile, is signed through next season with an attractive cap hit of $2.5 million. The 30-year-old winger is an obvious trade candidate to many, given he’s on a team that can’t afford to lose assets for nothing in the expansion draft.

It's the threat of losing players for nothing in the expansion draft that has really helped the rumors pick up steam, and while general manager Jim Benning has been unusually tight-lipped regarding the direction of his club at the deadline, we expect that barring a drastic turn-around the Canucks will be sellers.