3 Vancouver Canucks training camp battles everyone will be watching
The calendar is about to switch from August to September, which means Vancouver Canucks hockey is just around the corner.
Players will soon begin trickling into the city for informal skates ahead of training camp, which begins Sept. 18 in Penticton.
The Young Stars tournament has been axed this year. In its place, the Canucks have a prospects game scheduled with the Seattle Kraken on Sept. 13 in Everett, Washington.
The Canucks chose continuity this summer, following a tumultuous 2024-25 season, which saw a number of in-season roster changes.
Among those who finished last season in Vancouver, Pius Suter and Dakota Joshua are the only notable players who aren’t being brought back. Notable newcomers include Evander Kane and Pierre-Olivier Joseph.
But that only tells part of the story.
Coming off a Calder Cup championship, there are more than a handful of Abbotsford Canucks standouts who have a shot to make the NHL squad. They also have a pair of recent first-round picks in their early 20s that could be ready for duty.
Here are three training-camp battles everyone will be keeping a close eye on.
Battle of the young defencemen
On defence, Vancouver’s top four appears set in stone barring injury: Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, Marcus Pettersson, and Tyler Myers.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of possibilities.
Veteran blueliners Derek Forbort and Joseph probably have the inside track to earn a spot by virtue of the fact that they require waivers to be sent to the AHL.
That’s not the case for a quartet of young blueliners: Elias Pettersson (21), Tom Willander (20), Victor Mancini (23), and Kirill Kudryavtsev (21).
Pettersson showed the most at the NHL level last season, but the left-shot defenceman will have to play his off-side once again if Forbort is in the lineup. Maybe that gives Mancini an edge, coming off an impressive playoff run in Abbotsford. If not now, then when for the 23-year-old?
Is Willander ready for NHL action? It’s a tough ask for a 20-year-old coming out of the NCAA, but the 11th overall draft pick in 2023 will get a long look.
Kudryavtsev appeared in two NHL games for the Canucks last season, and his stock has clearly gone up since being drafted in the seventh round of the 2022 draft. He’s the biggest long shot of the four young blueliners, but the 21-year-old Russian is in the mix.
Third-line centre battle
There’s no doubt where the Canucks are most thin, and that’s at centre ice.
The recently married Elias Pettersson and Filip Chytil figure to be Vancouver’s top two centres, but just who will be their third-line centre is up in the air.
Teddy Blueger can do the job, but he’s more well-suited as a fourth-line centre that’s also counted on heavily to kill penalties.
The hope is that Aatu Räty takes the next step.
The 22-year-old Finn showed a lot of promise last season, scoring 11 points (7-4-11) in 33 NHL games with the Canucks. He was also very productive in Abbotsford, scoring 40 points (17-23-40) in 43 AHL games.
Räty missed most of the AHL playoffs due to injury, so we’ll see if that negatively impacted his offseason training.
If not, he represents hope for the Canucks’ centre conundrum.
Abby grads, Kravtsov battle for last winger spots
Most of the Canucks’ winger spots are spoken for. Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Evander Kane, Nils Höglander, Kiefer Sherwood, and Drew O’Connor will make the opening-night roster if healthy.
That leaves about seven forwards battling for just two to three open spots.
Expect Linus Karlsson and Arshdeep Bains to get long looks after they finished atop Abbotsford’s playoff scoring leaders. Karlsson was better than a point-a-game player in the AHL last season in both the regular season (39 points in 32 games) and playoffs (26 points in 24 games). The gritty 6-foot-1 forward also got better as the season went on at the NHL level, finishing with six points (3-3-6) in 23 games — including five points in his final 10 games.
Bains scored 24 points (7-17-24) in 24 AHL playoff games, to go with 43 points (11-32-43) with Abbotsford during the regular season. The Surrey native hasn’t been able to translate that success to the NHL level yet though, registering just one point (1-0-1) in 13 NHL games.
How much improvement will we see from Jonathan Lekkerimäki? We know the 21-year-old already has an NHL-calibre shot, scoring six points (3-3-6) in 24 games in Vancouver last season. In Abbotsford, he scored 28 points (19-9-28) in 36 AHL regular-season games and seven points (3-4-7) in 16 playoff games.
Vitali Kravtsov is a wild card. A ninth overall draft pick by the New York Rangers in 2018, he’s making his return to North America after two years in Russia. The 6-foot-2 winger is still just 25 years old and coming off a big season in the KHL, where he posted 58 points (27-31-58) in 66 games.
Is that a sign of good things to come or just another KHL mirage?
The last two forwards with a shot to earn a spot are a pair of centres who can also play the wing, in Max Sasson and Ty Mueller.
Sasson, 24, scored seven points (3-4-7) in 29 NHL games. In Abbotsford, the speedy forward tallied 32 points (13-19-32) in 41 regular-season games before posting 14 points (5-9-14) in 24 games in the playoffs.
Muller is probably the biggest long shot of this group to earn a roster spot, but don’t rule out the 22-year-old. The 5-foot-11 forward earned a call-up to Vancouver for two games in his first season of pro hockey, following three years in the NCAA. He scored 39 points (12-27-39) in 64 AHL regular-season games and added 12 points (3-9-12) in 24 postseason games.