Canucks offseason primer 2025: Cap space, trade chips, UFA targets and more
The Stanley Cup has been awarded, and the starting gun that signals 'Go!' has sounded to mark the official start of the NHL offseason.
For the Vancouver Canucks, a team coming off a disappointing 2024-25 season, this is a critical offseason, one that has started in an unsettled fashion given the departure of head coach Rick Tocchet and the seemingly endless local speculation about the franchise's future and the future of its star player.
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The Canucks have significant needs to fill, significant departures that are widely expected to occur and a lot of questions to answer with the moves that Vancouver's hockey operations leadership team executes in the weeks and months ahead.
For those of you that haven't been obsessively following our work to this point in the offseason, let's get caught up ahead of the traditional silly season with a Canucks 2025 offseason primer.
While the big picture questions surrounding the long-term future of Quinn Hughes will be the largest factor shaping this already unsettled offseason, the Canucks' priorities and actions will be guided, as always, by who stays and who goes in unrestricted free agency.
The Canucks have seven key pending unrestricted free agents. At this point, it's anticipated that the two biggest names among them, Brock Boeser and Pius Suter, are more likely to test the open market on July 1 than they are to sign an extension in Vancouver at the 11th hour.
Now these things can always change with one phone call, but it's certainly trending toward Vancouver, which was already short-handed in terms of quality forward depth, losing even more talent up front at the outset of this offseason. The Canucks will need to identify and acquire replacements and upgrades, as the potential departure of Boeser and Suter will fundamentally alter the depth chart. Suter and Boeser walking on July 1 would also surely harm this team's special teams effectiveness without savvy reinforcement.
There are no easy answers on the open market this offseason. The pool of top unrestricted free agent centres is relatively shallow, and the top players in pending unrestricted free agency seem unlikely to even make it to July 1 in the first place. Among full-time centres still poised to be unsigned on July 1, for example, Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett is the only pivot who recorded more than 50 points this past season and is under 30. It's a similar story on the wings, where the level of talent falls off precipitously after Mitch Marner and Nikolaj Ehlers.
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The Canucks have long felt that the trade market is the more fruitful route this offseason to address their need for offensive pop. They will still explore their options and look for value in unrestricted free agency, though. Perhaps Vancouver will roll the dice on a gifted older player like Matt Duchene, who can fill in at both centre and wing and managed 82 points this past season (though he struggled at the pointy end of the Stanley Cup playoffs).
When you scan the options in unrestricted free agency, however, it's no surprise that Canucks hockey operations leadership intends to be aggressive on the trade market in seeking to find answers to their significant top-six forward questions.
The Canucks' offseason to-do list has already shifted significantly over the course of the past few months.
From Tocchet's departure, to the delay in getting Tom Willander under contract and up-and-running in the AHL during this Calder Cup playoff run (not that his absence has prevented the Abbotsford Canucks from going on an astonishing run to the Calder Cup Final), this offseason has already been something of a novel for the organization.
Vancouver has a lot of road to run if it's going to close the gap with the NHL's bona fide contenders.
The contemporary NHL is no longer a league driven by parity. Only four Western Conference teams have made it to the conference final since the 2019-20 season (plus Montreal from the North Division season). Only five Eastern Conference teams have made it to the conference final in that span, with only the two Florida teams actually advancing to contest the Stanley Cup Final in the last six years.
It's not enough to be good, get in and 'anything can happen' anymore. If the Canucks are going to compete with the best teams in the league, there are significant needs to fill.
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1. An elite forward: In the wake of J.T. Miller's departure (and Elias Lindholm's departure, and Bo Horvat's departure before that), it's tempting to suggest that the Canucks' biggest need is another top-six centre. However, Vancouver's most pressing need is elite talent, or young players with the potential to become elite. This need is position agnostic. If the Canucks are going to find a way into the mix with the teams like Edmonton, Dallas and Florida, they're going to need to find another elite forward (in addition to having Elias Pettersson bounce back).
2. A top-line calibre forward: The Canucks' forward group is short more than just one star-level contributor. They're also going to need at least one more top-of-the-lineup calibre contributor if they hope to measure up with the NHL's best teams. This is, again, somewhat position agnostic, which isn't to ignore the pressing need for centre depth. Ideally, one of Vancouver's two sorely needed big-ticket forward additions this summer will be a centre, but the need for high-end talent is greater than any positional need on the roster. The Canucks have maybe three top-line calibre forwards locked up for next season (Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson and Conor Garland), and even that evaluation is debatable. Arguably, all three of those players would be more devastating if slotted on a second or third line. A difference-making top-line calibre forward, in addition to another star-level player, is what it's going to take for the Canucks to hang with the best teams. Realistically, it will be challenging for Vancouver to achieve all of this in one offseason, but these are the most significant needs that it should focus on addressing.
3. Two top-six calibre forwards: Now that we've covered Vancouver's pressing need to add high-end talent into the mix, we can finally get to replacing Suter and Boeser's contributions if they walk on July 1. The Canucks are aware of the need to bring in at least three new forwards to freshen up their offensive attack this summer. Without question, the task at hand is a monumental one.
Given the severity of Vancouver's needs up front, the available salary cap resources are unlikely to be sufficient.
Vancouver has some meaningful cap flexibility going into this offseason, with just a hair over $12 million in available cap space to spend and a roster that's more or less filled out with NHL-level talent and only Aatu Räty to sign among key restricted free agents.
Despite having more dead money on the books than the average NHL team, as a result of the Oliver Ekman-Larsson buyout and the Ilya Mikheyev retained salary transaction, Vancouver will be able to add to its roster with due flexibility as a result of this summer's NHL record salary cap growth (which will accelerate at a fixed rate over the next two seasons). There is no crunch that the Canucks are going to be working through, no urgency to cut salary this summer.
(Image courtesy PuckPedia.com)
The real cap problem that Vancouver is facing isn't an overall lack of space; it's a relative lack of space. There are several teams, including younger sides that finished close to where the Canucks did in the standings like Utah, Anaheim and Columbus, that will head into this summer with nearly $30 million or more in available cap space.
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Vancouver has the space to make significant changes, but it doesn't have the sort of purchasing power that other teams will be able to wield over the course of what promises to be a wild NHL offseason.
Under the stewardship of president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin, the Canucks have generally been an aggressive team on the trade market. They look to trade at high volume and view their ability to get deals done and willingness to make significant trades as a competitive advantage.
The Canucks are motivated to make deals this summer, and here are some of the trade chips that we'll be focused on as the offseason unfolds.
• Teddy Blueger: Blueger has been quality during his two Vancouver seasons, but he's a movable player with a nearly $2 million cap hit and the Canucks may look to open up space for Räty to step into the middle six next season. That makes him a player to watch on the trade market this summer, even though the Canucks regard his penalty killing and defensive acumen highly.
• Thatcher Demko or Artūrs Šilovs: In the wake of the in-season Kevin Lankinen extension, the Canucks are currently poised to have three goaltenders on one-way NHL contracts, all of whom will require waivers next fall. The Canucks seem to be keen to try to extend Demko, who endured a nightmare campaign injury-wise and becomes extension-eligible on July 1. The player, likewise, appears open to extending in Vancouver. Any deal they do with their oft-injured star netminder, however, will have to involve some level of shared risk. If there's no progress made on a potential contract, could Demko become a trade chip this offseason, given the marvellous form that Artūrs Šilovs demonstrated in the Calder Cup playoffs? Alternatively, could Šilovs be part of one of the packages that Vancouver puts on the table this summer as they search for top-end forward talent?
• Pick No. 15 in the 2025 NHL Draft: It will be something of a surprise if the Canucks actually use their 2025 first-round pick. There are players in this draft class that Vancouver is high on, but the short-term needs are pressing, and even though this draft class is widely viewed as below average from a depth of talent perspective, the pick could have some meaningful value as a trade chip.
• Victor Mancini: The Canucks have emergency-level needs up front, but some surplus of talent on the back end. Acquired as part of the Miller trade with the Rangers in late January, Mancini has a ton of desirable traits — quality skating ability, a big frame and he's a right-handed shooter — and could be a marketable trade asset as Vancouver hunts for forward talent this summer. The Canucks are very high on him and would prefer to keep Mancini (and other organizational depth pieces like Sawyer Mynio, too, for that matter), but there's an understanding internally that they won't be able to accomplish what they need to without some level of pain.
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After another tough bounce in the NHL Draft lottery, which has always been cruel to the franchise, Vancouver sits in the middle of the first round at the 2025 NHL Draft. We don't expect the franchise to utilize that pick to actually select a player, but this does promise to be an especially unpredictable NHL offseason and stranger things have happened.
Even stranger still: Vancouver has a pick in each round of the 2025 draft, which is somewhat unusual for a franchise that has only selected in the second round on five occasions in the previous decade. Presumably some of those draft picks will be burning a hole in the Canucks' pockets over the next week or so.
Despite an industry perception that the 2025 draft isn't the most loaded class, there are some interesting names to track. Seattle Thunderbirds centre Braeden Cootes is said to have piqued Vancouver's interest, according to reports from The Athletic and CHEK TV's Rick Dhaliwal. Big, WHL goal-scoring centre Roger McQueen is an interesting, volatile name to track as the draft unfolds, given his unique upside and concerning recent injury history.
Beyond the draft, Vancouver has a handful of young organizational depth players who have performed at an extraordinary level in the AHL playoffs this spring. Some of those players look ready to make an impact on Vancouver's NHL roster next fall.
(Photo of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
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