Who will be among the Canucks’ final NHL roster cuts?

It’s all come down to this.

Earlier this week, the Vancouver Canucks announced a round of 17 cuts from their Training Camp 2025 roster. That left them with 18 forwards, 11 defenders, and three goaltenders remaining – and, presumably, one more round of cuts left to make.

Those cuts will, by necessity, occur between now and Monday, October 6’s deadline for teams to announce their ‘opening day’ rosters. The Canucks will have two more exhibition games between now and then upon which to base their decisions.

Two more exhibition games…and this article.

Some of the Canucks’ upcoming cuts are easier to predict than others. As of now, the 18 forwards on the roster are, in alphabetical order: Nils Åman, Arshdeep Bains, Teddy Blueger, Brock Boeser, Filip Chytil, Braeden Cootes, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Nils Höglander, Evander Kane, Linus Karlsson, Vitali Kravtsov, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Drew O’Connor, Elias Pettersson, Aatu Räty, Max Sasson, and Kiefer Sherwood.

The Canucks will need to whittle that list of 18 down to 14 or 15, representing 13 or 14 forwards on the opening day active roster and Höglander on IR.

Some cuts are easier to make than others. Åman, for example, has largely been invisible all preseason. Going unnoticed and essentially just being a neutral presence on the ice used to be Åman’s calling card, but it’s definitely hurt him now that he needs to distinguish himself from a pack of other forwards. As of now, he’s not even scheduled to take part in the next preseason game.

The same goes for Kravtsov, who has certainly looked better in this exhibition stint than he did in his last turn for the Canucks, but who still lacks any standout traits that make him a slam-dunk NHLer. With Höglander out, many assumed Kravtsov would be in line to cover those minutes, but it looks as if that role will go to somebody else. With Kravtsov not even in the preseason lineup right now, one wonders if GM Patrik Allvin is working on a trade destination as we speak.

Lastly, we arrive at Max Sasson. Unlike the previous two we’ve listed, Sasson has had a generally positive Training Camp experience, and could be argued to have played his way onto the roster. But Sasson didn’t exactly steal a job, and he remains one of the few forwards in the running who is still exempt from waivers. That will almost certainly lead to him being demoted to start and heading to Abbotsford as one of the presumed first call-ups.

And, if the team wants to start the season with 14 forwards on its active roster – meaning just seven on the blueline – then that’s it. They could get away with just three more forward cuts to Åman, Kravtsov, and Sasson and call it a day. However, in the past, they’ve traditionally operated with 13 forwards and eight defenders. If that’s the approach they want to take at the start of 2025-26, they will need to cut one more forward.

This one really comes down to a choice between Bains and the 18-year-old Cootes.

If we’re talking about who has done more to earn the spot during this preseason, it’s Cootes, hands down. He arrived in camp with essentially no one predicting he would land a spot, and yet he’s forced the organization to consider it all the same. On a roster starved for centres, Cootes has plainly been the team’s third-best, at worst, thus far. The Cootes decision is less about whether he can succeed at the NHL level, which he clearly can, but rather whether asking him to do so at this age is the right decision for his long-term development.

Bains, meanwhile, has had the opposite experience in camp. Coming off a championship with the Abbotsford Canucks, Bains was expected to battle for a permanent spot, but he’s once again struggled to bring his considerable skill up to the speed of the big leagues. Bains has been a step behind AHL linemates Karlsson and Sasson in terms of effectiveness, and it could be costing him an important chance.

Prior to this, Bains has probably shown enough for the team to keep him around as the 13th forward to start the year, if they ultimately decide it is best to send Cootes back to junior. But it’s tough to say that’s a job Bains has truly earned. At this point, it’d almost be by default.

Of course, the team could always keep both Cootes and Bains, as we mentioned earlier, but that would require doing something a little different with the blueline.

The shape of the D corps is a bit easier to figure out than the forwards. Here, the Canucks have 11 players remaining in camp, including Guillaume Brisebois, Derek Forbort, Filip Hronek, Quinn Hughes, P-O Joseph, Victor Mancini, Tyler Myers, Elias Pettersson, Marcus Pettersson, Tom Willander, and Jett Woo.

The first two cuts here are the simplest to decide upon; they just might not happen right away. Woo had offseason surgery that will keep him out for several months, and Brisebois appeared to suffer a long-term injury of his own shortly after camp opened. Both players will be placed on something called Season Opening Injured Reserve, or ‘SOIR.’ This is a special kind of IR dedicated to players who played fewer than 50 NHL games last season, and it carries a reduced cap hit based on the number of days the player spent on an NHL roster during that season. For Brisebois, that equates to $88,802. For Woo, who did not get called up at all last year, it’s a $0 cap hit.

Either way, Brisebois and Woo will remain on SOIR until they are healthy, at which point they will be waived and reassigned to Abbotsford. So, that eventually brings the Canucks’ blueline down from 11 bodies to nine.

From there, the Canucks will need to whittle down to seven or eight D, depending on what they want to do with their forwards.

The veterans Forbort, Hronek, Hughes, Myers, and M. Pettersson are each about as safe as it gets. They’ll almost certainly be joined by the younger Elias Pettersson to form the effective top-six to start the season, with Forbort and Pettersson II alternating on their off-side.

That leaves two or three spots remaining for the trio of Mancini, Willander, and Joseph. But, really, it’s primarily a battle between Mancini and Willander.

The team won’t keep both on the roster, given that both are exempt from waivers and can play top-pairing minutes in Abbotsford. It will be one or the other, and the odds favour the older Mancini after a standout camp and preseason thus far.

But Willander is naturally a less flashy player, but the more appearances he puts in, the more appealing he becomes. This is a battle that could and probably should come down to the wire. Right now, it’s Mancini, but Willander is playing on Wednesday and will have the opportunity to pull back ahead in the race.

Whichever of Mancini and Willander doesn’t cut goes down to Abbotsford, leaving Joseph on hand as the designated 8D. Another possibility, however, is to cut Joseph as well, and leave the team with seven defenders instead of eight.

In the end, that decision comes down to whether Cootes is sticking around, and if he is, then it becomes a matter of who the team would rather expose to waivers: Bains or Joseph. Based on the preseason, Joseph has both put in a better performance and would be the more likely of the two to be claimed on waivers. For that reason, we believe the team will stick with an 8D system and place Bains on waivers when the time comes.

Fortunately, the last cut is the easiest to make. Tolopilo has cleanly established himself as the third-string goaltender going into the season, but he’s not supplanting a healthy Thatcher Demko or Kevin Lankinen anytime soon. He’ll be headed down to play starting minutes in Abbotsford as soon as the team no longer needs an extra goalie on hand.

So, if we’re talking predictions, then we predict the final cuts to be Åman, Kravtsov, Sasson, Bains, Tolopilo, and one of Willander or Mancini (but probably Willander).

And what’s left after that?