What I’m hearing about the Canucks’ final roster decisions, trade plans and more – The Athletic
If Braeden Cootes keeps playing the way he’s played throughout training camp and in the preseason, he’s going to be on the Vancouver Canucks roster throughout the year.
This was always a possibility. Cootes has a profile, as a right-handed centre, that Vancouver is otherwise utterly devoid of. Canucks management entered prospect camp and training camp with an open mind about Cootes’ ability to push for a roster spot as an 18-year-old.
What’s happened instead, however, is admittedly something of a surprise to Canucks management. The club was confident that Cootes was going to be a good player, but he wasn’t expected to arrive as a complete player, right down to his positioning and work in the faceoff circle, at 18.
Behind the scenes, he’s been more than diligent; he’s been consistent and exceptionally mature. He carries himself like a player who might be ready for this.
Even as Vancouver publicly downplays its conviction about Cootes, internally, the conversation around him is beginning to shift materially. Of course, he’ll still have to maintain his level for another week, and this week will be crucial for Cootes in addition to some other aspirants for opening-day roster spots, but he’s in the driver’s seat going into the final week of preseason to break camp with the NHL team.
The internal discussion, in fact, has shifted somewhat from whether or not Cootes might get a look in Vancouver to open the year, which now seems increasingly likely, and has begun to hone in on whether or not he would benefit from going back to junior, or if he might be capable of sustaining the level required to contribute in the NHL all season.
Cootes, essentially, has performed to a level where he’s continued to raise the bar. As Canucks decision makers get down to brass tacks and hold high-level meetings with hockey operations leadership and the coaching staff this week, that’s the tenor of the discussion that now surrounds Vancouver’s 2025 first-round pick.
In the wake of a pair of fascinating preseason games against the Seattle Kraken and the Edmonton Oilers, The Athletic has worked the phones to get a sense of how Vancouver’s final preparation for the 2025-26 campaign is trending. Here’s some of what we’re hearing as we enter the final week of the NHL preseason slate.
The trade market and Vancouver’s priorities
Ever since Canucks president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin took the wheel of Vancouver’s hockey operations, they have characteristically been active on the trade market in the final weekend before the opening-day 23-man roster deadline hits. Extremely so, in fact.
Ahead of three consecutive seasons, the Canucks have consummated deals in this timeframe. In 2022, Vancouver dumped Jason Dickinson’s contract in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks. In the fall of 2023, Vancouver bought Sam Lafferty from Toronto. Last year, Vancouver exchanged Tucker Poolman’s Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTI) contract for Erik Brännström in a cooperative cap management maneuver with the Colorado Avalanche.
The opening-day 23-man roster deadline falls early next week, making this upcoming weekend a key one to pay attention to, especially given the observed history of Vancouver’s current hockey operations leadership group.
Indeed, in checking into the Canucks’ priorities this week, we weren’t surprised to hear that Allvin is active in trade discussions as the start of the regular season approaches. Senior team officials cautioned, however, that it’s difficult to gauge whether the Canucks will be able to accomplish the sort of trade they’re looking for prior to setting their 23-man opening-day roster early next week.
There’s additional uncertainty this year because the trade market is unsettled relative to previous seasons. In past years, Vancouver has been pressed up against the upper limit of the salary, which isn’t the case this time around. Likewise, most of Vancouver’s potential trade partners aren’t feeling the same level of crunch that became typical for NHL teams in advance of the season during the flat cap era.
The trades that we generally see precede the opening-day roster deadline are relatively minor: a team purchasing a depth piece flier that was on the verge of hitting waivers, or shedding salary, or utilizing LTI space on short-term veteran reinforcements.
During the flat cap era, however, when there was virtually no space in the NHL system, teams were more aggressive in exploring the trade market before the season as a means of maximizing their LTI capture or solving various cap accounting issues.
It was those sorts of pressures that stimulated deals like the Dickinson and Poolman trades. And it’s those sorts of pressures that have been generally relieved by this summer’s cap growth.
As a result, the sort of trade talks and deals that Vancouver is currently exploring, weighing and even agonizing about in advance of the season are of a different variety entirely. And of an entirely greater magnitude.
We’re not talking about a Canucks team that’s on the hunt to bolster their depth or make a marginal deal, after all, though we shouldn’t rule out the possibility entirely. Vancouver, instead, seems to be excited about how young players at a whole host of positions have performed at camp, and the organization is eager to give those players a shot to contribute.
What the Canucks are shopping for is unchanged from this summer: an impact centre. Ideally, a second-line calibre player, but an above-average third-line centre would potentially do as well.
What the Canucks are really working through in trade talks at the moment is the process of weighing the complexities of making an all-in move, potentially at the expense of trading some of the young players that the organization is excited about and who seem to be on the verge of making an impact at the NHL level.
Even as Vancouver extended a whole host of veteran players over the past few months, the Canucks have prioritized keeping an eye on the future with more emphasis since executing the J.T. Miller trade last January. This is still the Canucks we’re talking about, however, and the pull of short-term priorities is never far from front of mind.
There is a significant organizational desire to put the best foot forward this season and help secure the future of their best player and captain, Quinn Hughes. Vancouver’s odds of retaining Hughes, it’s believed internally, will be maximized by ensuring that this upcoming season is a successful one. So what is that worth to the club? Is it worth parting ways with Jonathan Lekkerimäki? Tom Willander? A Victor Mancini-calibre young player?
At his season-opening news conference, Rutherford alluded to this tension at length, describing his organization as being “caught in the middle.” The Canucks are a team with serious pressure and incentive to win now, but also a team that’s beginning to slant their priorities toward the future — eschewing, for example, trading its 2025 first-round pick for immediate help at centre ahead of the draft this past summer — and believes it’s just at the beginning of seeing those efforts begin to yield NHL-ready talent.
How Vancouver decides to move forward, given these delicate, competing priorities, will shape this upcoming season. It could potentially shape outcomes for the franchise for many years to come.
Whether it all comes to a head this weekend with a trade or not, that win-now temptation will remain, and the Canucks will continue to work the phones aggressively in an effort to land an impact centre to bolster this lineup.
Nils Höglander will be sidelined eight-to-10 weeks after undergoing surgery on Monday. (Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
The impact of Nils Höglander’s multi-week absence
On Monday evening, the Canucks announced that forward Nils Höglander underwent surgery and will miss eight-to-10 weeks as he recovers. The injury is being described as a lower-body injury, but is reportedly an ankle injury, according to The Athletic contributor Rick Dhaliwal. Höglander initially sustained the injury in a preseason game in Abbotsford last week.
It’s an unfortunate setback for the team and the player. Höglander worked hard this offseason, arrived at camp in excellent shape and was a standout in Penticton and in his two preseason appearances.
Höglander’s extended absence will have some significant knock-on effects, both in terms of Vancouver’s depth up front and in the numbers game as the Canucks work through final cut decisions this week.
For what it’s worth, the external impact of the Höglander injury is likely to be muted. We’d wondered if Vancouver might revisit conversations with unrestricted free agent Jack Roslovic in the wake of Monday’s development. Roslovic has been linked with the Canucks for months now, and Vancouver did consider adding him in the free-agent bargain bin this summer. Ultimately, Vancouver backed away from the pursuit in favour of providing young players in the system with more opportunity, and based on what we’re hearing, the team is content with that overall decision. I don’t get the sense that the possibility of adding Roslovic is something the Canucks intend to revisit at this juncture.
Vancouver’s priority, at this point, is to try to identify and acquire a legitimately impactful middle-six centre. The sort of player capable of either pushing Filip Chytil down the lineup to play on the third line or giving the third line a significant boost above what can be reasonably expected from one of Teddy Blueger and Aatu Räty this season. Preserving the cap space Vancouver carved out with the Dakota Joshua trade, rather than utilizing it on a player that isn’t a clear upgrade, is seen as a key part of accomplishing that goal.
Whether it’s a player like Roslovic or Michael McLeod, one of the five members of the 2018 Hockey Canada side who were found not guilty of sexual assault in August and are now able to sign with NHL teams in mid-October and return to NHL action as of Dec. 1, the Canucks intend to aim for a higher calibre addition than what’s presently available in free agency.
It’s the internal impact of the Höglander injury that could be felt more significantly. His absence will open up an opportunity in the top nine to start the campaign and give Vancouver some additional flexibility in shaping the opening-day 23-man roster. That latter factor will make it slightly easier to give an 18-year-old player like Cootes a look early on in the season (although he was trending toward earning that look regardless), and could also offer something of a lifeline to wingers like Lekkerimäki and Linus Karlsson, who were right on the bubble of making the team out of training camp.
The competition on the back end
Elias Pettersson, the defender, Willander and Mancini have all put in sterling preseason performances. The trio of young defenders have provided the Canucks with something of a surplus of ascending young players on the back end, and are still jockeying for a spot on the opening-day roster and — most likely — in the opening-night lineup as we enter the final week of the preseason.
Vancouver will hold meetings with hockey operations staff and Canucks coaches to make final decisions over the course of this week, but the decision will ultimately be up to head coach Adam Foote. It’s a tightly contested competition, one of the stiffest roster battles I’ve ever covered at an NHL training camp, and I genuinely don’t get the sense that any of the three players have emerged as a clear and obvious front-runner at this point.
That makes this a vital week for these three young defenders, who may have a preseason game (two, at most) to make a final argument for why they should start the season at the NHL level.
Adding to the complexity and difficulty of this roster battle, for any of Willander, Mancini or Pettersson to break camp with Vancouver, they’ll have to do so as a third-pair defender. After a very strong showing at training camp, Pierre-Olivier Joseph has been somewhat uneven in his preseason appearances. He is, nonetheless, given his experience, the clear front-runner to open the season as the Canucks’ seventh defenceman. There’s a remote possibility that two of the young defenders could open the season in the Vancouver lineup, with Derek Forbort drawing out as the seventh defender, but based on what I’m hearing, that’s unlikely at this juncture.
As we reported last week, Vancouver wants to make sure that none of these three young defencemen spend undue time watching NHL games from the press box this season, and intends to use its AHL affiliate in Abbotsford to maximize game reps for whichever of Mancini, Pettersson and Willander isn’t contributing on an everyday basis in the NHL. As a result, this particular roster battle could even persist into the regular season, with Vancouver employing something of a rotation between the three young defenders, with all three getting an extended NHL look at various times while the other two contribute on the top pair down in Abbotsford.
As the preseason nears its conclusion, the competition for that third pair spot appears to be the most in doubt and the most heavily contested one on the roster.
(Photo of Braeden Cootes and Quinn Hughes: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
