Three Vancouver Canucks prospects suddenly have room to breathe with the big club. It’s all thanks to a trade none of them were part of.
Three Canucks Prospects Can Stay With One Trade
As the preseason drew to a close in Vancouver, three young players were looking to make an impression. The salary cap loomed large, injured players were coming back, and the waiver wire was ready to trip them up.
President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin said they are not interested in using LTIR. But with Thatcher Demko a question mark, Dakota Joshua not quite ready, and Pius Suter day-to-day there might not have been a choice.
One thought was starting the season with just 21 players on the roster. That could work for their home games, with AHL Abbotsford minutes away. But their third game is in Florida, and any injuries to a short roster will need replacements quickly. It’s a risky proposition.
Teams always want to choose players based on their skill and fit. It doesn’t always work out that way, though, and outside considerations would have forced the Canucks hand. Then management worked a deal the team has tried to make for three years.
The Trade that Made it Work
The Canucks paid to move Tucker Poolman‘s contract, retaining $500K of the $2.5 million deal. They bundled it with a fourth-round pick in 2025 to the Colorado Avalanche, a team in need of LTIR space. Vancouver also got back Erik Brännström, a puck-handling defensive prospect now on his fourth team.
Brännström was immediately sent to Abbotsford and will need to pass through waivers. The Canucks may lose him, getting no player in the deal. That would be unfortunate, as he adds some depth on defence, but the deal would still be a good one. Cap space, after all, is what they wanted and got.
With that extra $2 million – not putting Poolman on the team to get his LTIR space – Vancouver can carry everyone. The Canucks won’t be forced to reduce the number of players on their roster until the injured players return.
Both Joshua and Demko are currently on regular injured reserve. Players on injured reserve still have their salaries count against the cap, but teams can fill their roster spaces. That means they’ll carry a full 23-man roster, plus Joshua and Demko. Decisions will need to be made, but not just yet.
The Choice Between the Three Canucks Prospects
The decision lies between three forwards, all with different strengths.
Nils Åman
Nils Åman is 24 years old and the veteran of the trio. The centre has played 111 games with the Canucks, with seven goals and 23 points. Coach Rick Tocchet trusts him enough that he played an additional five games in last season’s playoff run.
Åman is decent defensively, the fourth-line centre and a penalty-killing specialist. He’s worked on his speed during the offseason, and this is likely what he will be for his career. Expect 10-12 minutes a night and half again as many points in a season.
It’s not exactly an advantage, but Åman needs to pass through waivers to be sent to the AHL. He is good enough that other teams – especially ones with a weak penalty kill – could take him. He is cheap, trustworthy, and young. That’s exactly the kind of player teams look for if they need to fill spaces.
Of the three Canucks prospects fighting for two – or one – spots, Åman is the safe choice to stay.
Arshdeep Bains
If you like “Local Boy Done Good” stories, Arshdeep Bains is it. Ignored in his draft year, he returned to the WHL as an overager and won the league scoring title. But overagers tend to be good scorers in junior and are rarely worth the contract.
The difference is Bains used the draft snub to ask what he needed to change to make the NHL. He signed on with the Canucks, put his head down, and focussed on improving his all-around game. In the first year, those lessons came at the expense of his scoring. In the second, he played well enough to earn a call.
The winger totalled eight games with the big club, with little in the way of counting stats. After an adrenaline-filled first game, he started to play over-cautiously. He didn’t stick but did get a return call later in the season.
Bains has shown in his preseason games that he took those lessons to heart. He is a calmer presence out there, more confident in his play. Breaking into the big club is going to be tough, especially on the wing. But it wouldn’t surprise us to see him stay as their 13th forward.
Aatu Räty
Speaking of surprises that shouldn’t be, Aatu Räty. A big part of the Bo Horvat trade, Räty spent his first North American pro season in four different cities under four different coaches. So his point totals may not have blown anyone away.
Playing a full season in Abbotsford let him find his feet in North America. He produced decent numbers in the AHL playing mostly on the wing. He has good size – the heaviest of these three – and, like Bains, had a knack for putting up points. There was talk of him possibly going first in his draft year.
That didn’t happen, as he fell all the way to 52nd overall in 2021. Still, he knows where the net is on both sides of the ice. If the team wants to keep him, he has the physique and hockey sense to start on the fourth line.
If it comes down to a choice, Räty has two big advantages over the others that could keep him with Vancouver. First, he can not only play centre, but he can switch hands while there. No rookie is “good” at faceoffs, but he is very good for his age. For a team lacking right-handed centres, that might be enough.
Second, he has the highest upside of all three players. Bains had an age advantage as he led the WHL in scoring, while Räty was second in scoring on his Liiga team as a 19-year-old.
Decisions, Decisions
There are different pressures on the team, and only some of them are financial. If Vancouver decided to carry eight defencemen and 13 forwards, for example, then these three aren’t going to start with the big club. Or if they carry three goalies – a possibility, given Demko’s health.
Defenders Mark Friedman and Noah Juulsen both make around $50K less than any of these forwards. If the team wants to get really titchy about saving money for trade deadline day, that might bump one of the others.
But there’s every chance we see all three start the season in Vancouver. At least for their first two games, both at home. Joshua won’t take the ice for a bit, and Suter might be out for at least one of those games, too.
If so, then these three Canucks prospects will have two more games to make their best arguments to stay.
Main Photo Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images
