VANCOUVER — Tyler Myers knew he was extending the Vancouver Canucks’ trade mission when he walked into the dressing room earlier this week and teammates started chirping him.

“The guys were, like: ‘You still here?’” Myers said Wednesday, chuckling over the phone in a call with Sportsnet. “It wasn’t hard to do, but it was a little weird. It’s a situation you don’t see too often around the league, but I enjoyed my time with the guys. I was lucky enough to be around everyone today when the trade happened, so I got a chance to say goodbye. A lot of players don’t get that opportunity. Yeah, it was emotional.”

After nearly seven tumultuous National Hockey League seasons in Vancouver, where a couple of impressive playoff highs by the Canucks were followed by precipitous drops, Myers walked out of the dressing room for the last time after the Dallas Stars acquired the 36-year-old defenceman for second- and fourth-round draft picks.

Although he grew up in Calgary, Myers was born in Texas, where his mom still lives and there is support for his family.

He met his wife, Michela, while playing junior hockey in Kelowna, and the couple have made their home there since Myers won the Calder Trophy with the Buffalo Sabres in 2010. Their children, Tristan, Skylar and Tatum, have been raised almost entirely in British Columbia. There is established medical support here for Tristan, whose special needs Tyler has spoken about publicly.

So waiving his no-movement clause to leave the Canucks with a year remaining on his contract was not easy.

“For sure it was a factor; we discussed that quite a bit,” Myers said of family implications. “But we’ll figure it out, and Tristan actually adapts to change very well. He’s excited about getting a new jersey.

“When all of this started a couple of weeks ago, I really didn’t know what to think about anything. We just wanted to take some time and let everything play out and then go over our options. When we found out that Dallas was a possibility and started to think about that, I just realized it checked a lot of boxes for us. I still have family down there and an opportunity to join a team that has a chance to compete for the Stanley Cup.

“It was special not only for me but for my family to play in Vancouver, and we’re just incredibly grateful and fortunate to say that we had that chance. We call B.C. our home and it was incredible for the family — and I’m thinking about my kids, too — to have the run that we had. Vancouver will always hold a special place in our hearts.”

The Canucks took Myers out of the lineup one week ago, a day after the Detroit Red Wings made a trade offer that Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin presented to the player.

Despite ongoing interest from Dallas, Wednesday’s trade came together only when Stars GM Jim Nill called Allvin as the Canuck boss was driving across the Burrard Bridge on his morning commute to the arena.

Despite the uncertainty and mental stress of the last week, Myers continued to report to the rink each morning for practices and workouts and team meetings. He wanted to play games, too, but the Canucks kept him out of the lineup to protect their asset.

“I do want to set the record straight on one thing — that I wouldn’t waive (my NMC) to go to Detroit,” Myers said. “That just wasn’t true. When this thing started, we just wanted to assess every possible option and, in the end, we just landed on Dallas. I have a lot of respect for Detroit and Steve Yzerman.”

Everyone in hockey has respect for Myers, a 17-year veteran who has played 1,123 NHL games.

Derided by some in the market when former Canucks GM Jim Benning signed him as a free agent in 2019, Myers managed to transform “Chaos Giraffe” from an insult into a term of endearment.

It turned out the chaos was rarely his fault, and the six-foot-eight blue-liner earned respect from reporters and admiration from teammates for how well he handled the many plot twists — one of the biggest being the organization’s dramatic pivot to a rebuild this winter, less than two years removed from a 109-point season that ended one win short of the Stanley Cup semi-finals.

“I think kind of how he handled everything in the last week just proved to me everything that I was thinking,” winger Brock Boeser, Myers’ longest-tenured teammate, told reporters Wednesday morning. “Like, he handled it so good. He showed up to the rink every day — everyone knowing he’s probably getting traded — still working on his game, still in the gym, still communicating with guys, still acting like he’s here.”

The trade looks like a win-win for everyone involved.

Myers gets to try to win a Cup in Dallas, the Canucks receive second- and fourth-round draft picks (in 2027 and 2029) and the Stars, with salary retention cutting the veteran’s $3-million cap hit in half, get an experienced, capable defenceman who adds character, leadership and depth to a formidable team that breezed to a 6-1 win in Vancouver on Monday.

But even as the Canucks prepared themselves for their senior skatesman’s exit, there was a sobering finality to the door closing behind him when Myers left Rogers Arena before Wednesday’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes.

“A great leader, a good human, going to miss being around a guy like that,” coach Adam Foote said. “A true professional every day.”

Foote added: “I think he’ll leave his mark on this dressing room for a long time.”

“I mean, he’s just such a kind, caring dude,” Boeser said. “He came to the rink every single day, good days or bad days, (and) always had a smile on his face. Always in the gym, always working hard, always working on his game, shooting pucks on the ice. That’s something that will stick with me. He was just one of those veteran guys that was just so good to everyone. We’re going to miss him, but he deserves a chance to win a Cup.

“Yeah, it’s tough, but I think we all knew and saw that this was coming, so at least we had some time to prepare and got to spend some time with him before he left.”

With his NMC and roots in B.C., Myers was not expected to be the first Canuck traded on NHL deadline week.

The team has been dangling free-agent-eligible forwards Evander Kane and Teddy Blueger since November.

Both could still be moved before Friday’s deadline. But the Canucks have other players available, too.

A combination of factors — the NHL’s new playoff salary-cap, contract lengths and trade restrictions, and the spectacular under-performance of several Canuck players — has made it a challenging market for Allvin.

“Yeah, the market is interesting,” he said. “I don’t even know if it is a market or not. This year, when you have a salary cap for the first time in the playoffs, it changed. It’s hard to get a feel for it. There is some ongoing discussions, and we’ll see here over the next 48 hours if something materializes or not.

“I would imagine there’s going to be around the league more trades, but how many, I don’t know. As you guys pointed out, the protection and terms (involving Canuck players) are probably things that teams are looking into as well.”

The Hurricanes are the Canucks’ final opponents before Friday’s deadline. Vancouver has a road game that night against the Chicago Blackhawks, so the Canucks will have to make sure they have enough players for their lineup if there are a couple of buzzer-beating trades.

The last-overall team is a grotesque 2-15-4 in 2026 and haven’t won a road game.

“I want to see more fight in the group,” Allvin said. “It’s their job, the players’ job and our job, to prepare every night for the fans and playing for the crest. You can lose games, but you’ve got to play the right way and you’ve got to compete. And that’s what I want to see from my group here moving forward. I want to see us getting better. Losing games is not great for anyone, and we owe it to the fans here that have been great in Vancouver, and our players should play hard every night.”

Asked about struggling centre Elias Pettersson, who has no shots on net in three games since the Olympics, no goals in 14 games and was benched by Foote in Saturday’s 5-1 loss in Seattle, Allvin said: “I believe he was pretty honest in saying that his game isn’t where he wants it to be. That being said, it’s easy to say that you’ve got to be better, but what are you actually going to do to be better? And I think that the action is something we want to see.”

With Myers traded and Pierre-Olivier Joseph going on injured reserve after being hurt on Monday, the Canucks have recalled minor-league prospect Victor Mancini to fill out the defence. Wednesday’s trade means Filip Hronek is the only defenceman left from the group that made it to Game 7 of the playoffs’ second round just 22 months ago.

“It is sad,” Hronek said. “But at the same time, something new and exciting is coming.”