Canucks must still accomplish these three offseason goals

The free-agent frenzy was, perhaps, not as frenzied as many hoped it would be this year. That’s mostly due to the majority of signings happening before July 1, as many teams found they had plenty of cap space on hand to re-sign their pending UFAs, and thus did so.

Though they waited a little longer to do it, the Vancouver Canucks were very much in this camp of sticking with the familiar. In fact, as of this writing and to this point in the offseason, Vancouver has added just one single player to the roster who was not there (or on the reserve list) last year, with that being Evander Kane.

Instead, the Canucks opted to re-sign Brock Boeser to a seven-year deal, and extended Thatcher Demko (three years) and Conor Garland (six years) a full season ahead of their own contracts expiring.

There will still be some changes, of course. Noah Juulsen jumped ship to Philadelphia, and Pius Suter’s eventual departure to another UFA suitor is now all but guaranteed. There are also a whole host of players looking to push themselves onto the big league roster from Abbotsford and elsewhere.

For the most part, however, it’s looking like business as usual in Vancouver for 2025-26. Business as usual, but at the same time, not quite finished business.

The Canucks still have some items on their to-do list for the summer of 2025, including these three major tasks.

Trading a Goalie

With Demko signed to a three-year, $8.5 million AAV extension starting in the 2026-27 season and with a full no-movement clause in all seasons, the Canucks have made a decision with cascading effects.

Amid last season, they also extended Kevin Lankinen on a five-year deal with a $4.5 million AAV, and a NMC of his own for the first two seasons of the contract.

That sets the Canucks up for a very expensive crease, with a cumulative $9.5 million for 2025-26, followed by a jump to a cumulative $13 million for 2026-27 and beyond.

That’s a lot to pay for a tandem, especially for a team that is already cap-strapped elsewhere. However, even if it is committed to the veteran pair, another move will still be necessary elsewhere.

As we’ve covered extensively already, reigning Calder Cup MVP Arturs Silovs is all out of waiver exemption. That means he either starts in the NHL this season or has to go through the waiver wire to be reassigned to the AHL.

It is always possible that the Canucks will opt for a three-goalie rotation and keep all of them on the roster. But that’s both atypical and impractical for a team already short on roster and cap space. The far likelier scenario now is that Silovs is sold off to the highest bidder, and Nikita Tolopilo and Ty Young take the reins in Abbotsford.

But getting good trade value out of a goalie who only really has a track record of success in the minors, along with a couple of good NHL playoff rounds? Easier said than done.

Plenty of teams would snag Silovs for free on waivers. That’s why sneaking him down isn’t an option. But being willing to take him for free and being willing to part with valuable assets in exchange for him are two very different things.

Finding a way to get the best return possible for Silovs, or solving the goaltending issue in another, more creative way — like perhaps a Lankinen trade of some sort — is the Canucks’ most immediate priority for the remainder of this offseason.

Cutting Cap

We wrote up a cap update before July 1, and deemed that the Canucks had an effective $7,050,000 available to add a single UFA to their roster.

They signed Boeser to a seven-year, $7,250,000 AAV deal. It doesn’t take much math to discern that this leaves them approximately $200,000 short on a depth chart that looks like this:

Forwards

DeBrusk ($5.5M) – Pettersson ($11.6M) – Boeser ($7.25M)

Höglander ($3M) – Chytil ($4.44M) – Kane ($5.13M)

Joshua ($3.25M) – Blueger ($1.8M – Garland ($4.95M)

O’Connor ($2.5M) – Raty ($775K) – Sherwood ($1.5M)

Bains ($775K) OR Karlsson ($775K)

Defensemen

Hughes ($7.85M) – Hronek ($7.25M)

M. Pettersson ($5.5M) – Myers ($3M)

E. Pettersson ($838K) – Willander ($950K)

Forbort ($2M) – Mancini ($870K)

Goalies

Demko ($5M)

Lankinen ($4.5M)

Dead Cap: Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s Buyout ($4.77M) and Ilya Mikheyev’s Retention ($713K)

Total Roster Cap Hit: $95,700,000

Total Cap Space Leftover: -$200,000 

Now, some maneuvering could be done here. Few expect either Tom Willander or Victor Mancini to spend much time in the pressbox, meaning they’ll likely shuffle back and forth between Abbotsford instead. If one were to replace Willander’s $950,000 salary with, say, Guillaume Brisebois’ league minimum $775,000 on this roster, they’d get closer to even, but would still wind up $20,000 short.

The team could easily make up this amount by running with a short roster of 22 players or fewer, but then there are concerns about injury coverage and the potential risk of losing a player like Arshdeep Bains or Linus Karlsson on waivers.

The reality is that the team will want a little more wiggle room than that, and that’s going to necessitate some sort of cap-cutting trade between now and opening night.

Looking at that depth chart, we see Teddy Blueger as a somewhat obvious candidate to go, and imagine there’d be a market for him. Other candidates for a trade include Dakota Joshua, Nils Hoglander or Drew O’Connor, though none would be ideal, and all have a role to play in the 2025-26 plans.

It could also involve a larger deal with multiple moving parts that ultimately leaves the Canucks with a few extra dollars to spare.

Of course, replacing Lankinen’s salary with Silovs’ would solve the cap issues entirely, but as we said in the previous section, that seems a long shot with Lankinen’s newly minted NMC.

Something has to give here, cap-wise. Nothing major, necessarily, but something. We’re not yet sure what it’s going to be.

Adding Offense to the Forward Corps

It doesn’t take the award-deserving analysis of the CanucksArmy crew to look at that projected Vancouver roster and point out where the weak spots lie.

The blue line is rock-solid, and as good as it’s been at any point in the last decade or more.

The crease has question marks, but the Canucks are committed to Demko now, and thus aren’t looking to make any moves there.

But the forward corps? There’s potential there, but that potential is resting on some significant "ifs," including a return to form for Elias Pettersson and a return to long-term health for Filip Chytil. 

If those two things come to pass, if Boeser continues to put up 30+ goals, if Garland maintains his newfound 50-point status, if Nils Hoglander can find his consistency, if Evander Kane has more in the tank and so on, the Canucks might just get better-than-expected results from their assembled forwards.

But even if all those ifs come to pass, this is still a group that could use some improvement, especially when it comes to productivity and outright offensive talent.

The trouble comes from the previous section and the aforementioned lack of cap space. What the Canucks ideally need to do with the rest of their offseason is to somehow find a way to both add offensive power to their forward corps while not adding any cap — and with a very limited number of tradable assets available to offer.

That’s going to prove incredibly difficult. We’re a lot more certain about the first two goals we listed in this article; the Canucks kind of have to move a goaltender, and they need to get under the cap.

Adding offense, on the other hand, will remain a goal — it just might not be an achievable one.