We have our first piping hot Bruins rumor of the season

The Bruins are still feeling the effects of last season's deadline selloff.

But the Bruins may not be done dealing off 'core' pieces. That's if the Canucks have their say, at least, with Vancouver reportedly trying to entice the club into a potential Pavel Zacha trade, according to multiple reports.

Talk of Zacha to Vancouver picked up last week with Vancouver-based reporter Rick Dhaliwal reporting that he would not be surprised if the Canucks were upping their aggressiveness to acquire Zacha. And then Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman took it up a notch in last weekend's Saturday Headlines on Sportsnet, remarking that it's not only true, but that this is something that's been going on between the Bruins and Canucks for some time now.

"I think it's all the way going back to the summer, the Canucks and Bruins have been on-off about this," Friedman reported.

Now in his fourth season with the Bruins after spending seven seasons with the Devils, the 28-year-old Zacha is off to his best start yet, with two goals and nine points through 11 games played. That has Zacha paced for what would be a career-high 67-point campaign, which would be a sizable jump from his previous career-high of 59, set during his second season with the Bruins in 2023-24. 

Zacha also has this season and next still left on his current contract, which comes with an affordable $4.75 million cap hit. 

This is all a fancier way of saying that Bruins general manager Don Sweeney shouldn't be in any sort of rush to sell Zacha off to the first bidder. And it appears that they know as much, based on what Friedman had to add about Vancouver's pursuit of Zacha and how the Bruins and rest of the NHL views his situation.

“Teams are looking for centers, [but] Boston doesn't have to do anything here it doesn't want to do," Friedman noted. "But this has been kind of a dance with the Canucks and some other teams, seeing if they can pry Zacha out of [Boston]."

Now, if the Bruins had their say, their preference would almost certainly be to trade Zacha's linemates — Viktor Arvidsson and Casey Mittelstadt — before they made a move on him. Arvidsson is a pending unrestricted free agent whose acquisition from the Oilers this past July screamed "pump and dump." Mittelstadt, meanwhile, is a seemingly ill-fitting piece in the Black and Gold's middle six, especially with Matt Poitras in the pipeline (and the Bruins wanting to keep him at center) and James Hagens on the way in the not-too-distant future.

In essence, Zacha isn't at the top of the 'gotta go' list if the Bruins have to bite the bullet and sell for the second straight deadline later this season.

And trading someone like Zacha this early in the season would be an outright admission that the Bruins do not view themselves as playoff contenders. That may indeed be their reality this season, as the B's begin Tuesday last in the East and with losses in seven of their last eight. But a trade of that magnitude this early would be by the far the earliest the Bruins showed any sign of pulling the plug on their season under Sweeney. It also wouldn't jive with what the Bruins told the assembled media less than a month ago, with the club expecting to be a 'harder out' and a team that challenged for a playoff spot in the East.

Again, while it may be a reality, it's not something the Bruins would be interested in admitting before American Thanksgiving, you wouldn't think.

With all that said, however, the Bruins do have to decide if Zacha meets the timeline they currently find themselves on. When Zacha's current contract runs out, he'll be 30 years old and due for a significant pay raise. The question for the Bruins may very well come down to what's more valuable to their organizational's long-term plans: The return that Zacha will bring them (even with some pain to the NHL roster) in a trade or his impact on that next contract?

Secondly, and more specifically as it relates to this current rumor linking him to Van City, the Bruins may have to decide if it's best to take advantage of a desperate team like the Canucks to maximize the return on a potential trade. The Canucks are clearly in a win-now mindset given the long-term uncertainty surrounding Quinn Hughes, as well as the center drain they've gone through in the last calendar year-plus. That may inflate the potential return on Zacha, even if other teams are interested in his services, and especially if the Canucks are not on Zacha's no-trade list, as noted by Friedman.

Either way, it's not the kind of decision the Bruins envisioned themselves having to potentially make in the first month of a new season. But it's one of many that will only continue to hang over the club if the team cannot get its game in order.