The Canucks’ interest in taking a shot at the impossible is hardly a secret.

In this case, the impossible is trading up to be in a position in June to say the name Jack Hughes, the franchise-changing prospect who will be selected at the top of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft hosted by Vancouver.

The idea of uniting Jack Hughes with his brother Quinn on the same Canucks team is a mesmerizing one not only because of what it could mean on the ice, but also off it. Marketing the Hughes Brothers is the stuff of dreams for any sales team.

The Canucks have checked in with the New Jersey Devils to see what it would cost to move up from 10th overall to the No. 1 pick and to find out if that’s even possible.

But they’ve also reached out to the New York Rangers to get a feel for what it would take if Kaapo Kakko is New Jersey’s choice and Hughes falls to the second slot in the draft. The Devils haven’t given any indication they would go that way, but there are definitely NHL teams that right now have Kakko ranked ahead of Hughes.

Asking league sources to get an idea of the package required to make a team think about trading down from the top two picks, it’s clear people in the NHL have a different perspective of Hughes’ worth than many fans, especially in Vancouver.

“It would take a Lindros package,” one said

The Quebec Nordiques, of course, traded Eric Lindros — considered a generational talent — to the Philadelphia Flyers in one of the league’s biggest deals, one that laid the groundwork for a Colorado Avalanche dynasty team.

Quebec got Steve Duchesne, a big-time point-producer on the blueline, Kerry Huffman, another defenceman, Ron Hextall, Mike Ricci, the 25th-overall selection in the 1990 draft (Chris Simon), two first-round picks, $15 million and Peter Forsberg, a future superstar.

If it really would take a Lindros-like deal from the Canucks, and it does make sense because the New York Rangers have little motivation to trade out of a spot where they can add a franchise player, how the heck could the Canucks come up with something close?

This is how another NHL person put it:

“Three or four firsts. Four seconds and Vancouver takes back Marc Staal and Brendan Smith (who have a combined cap hit of roughly $10 million for the next two seasons).

“That’s a broad outline. It’s the same as trading for Elias Pettersson or Auston Matthews, really.”

That’s some outline. And there was another possible outline including both Bo Horvat and Troy Stecher.

It would be this year’s first, a 2020 unprotected first, two second-round picks, Horvat, Stecher and one more player and take back all that cap space.

With the picks and cap space in either scenario, the Rangers could trade back into the top 10, get two players in the first 10 picks and then go out and sign, say, Erik Karlsson and Artemi Panarin to get their new faces of the franchise.

Maybe the Canucks get Jack Hughes, but they also would likely be setting up a dynasty for their 1994 Stanley Cup final rival.

I asked this same question of the Canucks’ hockey market and the response was pretty big and as you’d expect the people of Vancouver put together deals which were far more Canucks friendly.

The question:

Send me the “best” packages to trade up to get Hughes — Jason Botchford (@botchford) April 12, 2019

The answers:

There were more than a hundred entries and I saw only two which included Stecher.

And, interestingly, he’s low-key one of the Canucks’ most-valuable assets.

For the past two seasons, he has been the Canucks’ most-effective blueliner when matched against the league’s top players.

Here are the Canucks defencemen ranked in DFF percentage which is the differential of high-danger unblocked shot attempts, essentially an expected goals-scored ratio.

This is the 2017-18 season from Puck IQ:

And this is the 2018-19 season:

Along with the DFF percentage you can see the Canucks are controlling more than 50 percent of shot attempts when Stecher is on the ice against opponents’ best players.

I asked Boy Genius, Harman Dayal, about this.

“These are all the other defenceman in the league who control more than 50 percent of shot attempts against elite competition: Mark Giordano, Jeff Petry, T.J. Brodie, Mattias Ekholm, Jaccob Slavin, Zdeno Chara, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Seth Jones, Brayden McNabb, Brian Dumoulin and Justin Faulk.”

In other words, it’s not common or easy and it suggests strongly Stecher has established himself as a legitimate top-four defenceman who is probably the team’s best option on the right side of the top pairing.

Stecher struggles more against the grinders and the scrubs and Chris Tanev has been the opposite.

This is against the lowest tier competition in 2017-18:

It was the same story this season:

I asked Boy Genius for a theory on this one.

He said: “Research has shown that teammate quality is four to five times more important than competition and that’s because the former is constant while the latter is always fluctuating.

“In other words, your defence partner, for example, is gonna be the same on almost every shift while if you’re playing in a matchup role you’re likely only playing elite competition 40 percent of the time.

“Naturally, your defence partner in that case would dictate your on-ice results more than who you’re going up against. In Stecher’s case, most of his minutes against elite competition over the last couple seasons are with Alex Edler and to a lesser extent Ben Hutton, while his soft minutes are more likely to be alongside Michael Del Zotto or Derrick Pouliot.”

(Top photo: Kevin Light/Getty Images)