The Canucks can't enter next season with this roster... can they?!

Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports

With the NHL Draft and the start of free agency now well in the rearview mirror, the Vancouver Canucks’ roster looks a heck of a lot like the one that finished last season.

In fact, it looks a lot like the one Jim Benning handed off to Jim Rutherford last December.

That was over nine months ago.

Did anyone see this coming?

Rutherford came to Vancouver with the reputation of a guy with an itchy trigger finger when it came to trades. Of course, it’s Patrik Allvin, who was hired as general manager in January, who is ultimately responsible for making player personnel moves, but he is a Rutherford hire.

In June, an NHL insider reported that management considered the Canucks’ dressing room a “country club,” and that a major shakeup was imminent. Moving a core player, if not more than one, seemed like an inevitability.

It never happened.

J.T. Miller is still here. So are Brock Boeser, Conor Garland, and even Tanner Pearson.

That isn’t to say positive moves haven’t been made.

Trading Travis Hamonic for a third-round pick last season was a stroke of genius. We’ll see if Travis Dermott was worth a third-rounder, however. They got an asset for Tyler Motte, but nobody should celebrate the acquisition of a fourth-round pick too hard.

The Canucks won the Kuzmenko sweepstakes, and that is a serious feather in the cap of management — whether he becomes a valuable contributor or not. And Brock Boeser’s new contract did make the best of a bad situation.

Other than that? They gave Ilya Mikheyev $19 million, and added a fourth-line centre in Curtis Lazar.

Bravo?

The most glaring problem facing the Canucks right now is their defence. They haven’t added a single NHL defenceman to their group, unless you count Jack Rathbone, as the 23-year-old will be given a shot with the big club next season.

A team should never make a trade just to say they’ve done something — the Edmonton Oilers learned that lesson the hard way when they traded Taylor Hall. And clearing cap space is easier said than done, as we’ve seen around the NHL this summer.

But Rutherford admitted himself that this offseason hasn’t gone according to plan, during an interview on The Bob McCown Podcast more than three weeks ago.

“We need to do more than what we’ve done, but you can only do things if you have a partner to do it,” said Rutherford.

“We felt that we needed to get more balance with our forwards. I believe that we’ve done that. We have to address our defence, which has been harder to do in the offseason.

“There were some defencemen available in free agency — it didn’t work for us, whether it was term or what they were looking for. It appears that it’s going to take longer to address the defence than we would have liked. We’re going to have to do it through trades.”

The Canucks are deeper than last season up front, and they do boast a nice 1-2-3 punch up the middle with Miller, Elias Pettersson, and Bo Horvat. It would also be reasonable to assume that some of their younger players, notably Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, could improve.

Banking on Luke Schenn to play big minutes as a top-four defenceman again is a lot to ask. So is expecting Dermott or Rathbone to play their off-side and fit in well on a pairing with Quinn Hughes.

Those are the types of things that should be considered a bonus if they happen when you enter a season, not something that your playoff hopes hang on to.

What about the penalty kill, which ranked tied for second-last in the NHL last season? They’ve added a pair of penalty-killing forwards in Mikheyev and Lazar, but they’re hardly PK specialists. Both players ranked fifth in shorthanded ice time among forwards on their respective teams last season.

So, as we approach the start of training camp on September 23, we should find out if Allvin’s patience pays off. Does a free agent fall into their lap at a bargain price? Does a team panic and give in to their price on Miller?

The Stanley Cup isn’t a realistic goal next season, so there’s no reason to panic, and management needs to view things with a wide lens. But there are pressure points coming.

Most expect Horvat to sign a contract extension with the Canucks this summer, as he can become an unrestricted free agent next offseason.

Miller, on the other hand, isn’t expected to re-sign. If he plays next season in Vancouver, the team could move him before the trade deadline, but they also run the risk that he gets injured, meaning they’d lose him for nothing.

But what if the Canucks are in a playoff spot by the trade deadline? Would they keep Miller and lose him for nothing next summer? That’s not a wide-lens decision.

Is Nils Höglander destined for fourth-line minutes next season? They’ve got a lot of forwards and he wasn’t exactly a favourite of Bruce Boudreau’s. The Canucks might be better off clearing space for him to play or move him rather than risk tanking his value.

Canucks fans and media have been patient with the new management group, as they should be. They didn’t inherit an enviable situation, and there’s still time before next season begins.

But at some point, management is going to have to remake this defence, if not the forwards as well.

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