Braeden Cootes made such a strong impression at last year’s Vancouver Canucks training camp that it’s easy to see why some fans would want more of him, sooner rather than later.
Fresh off being selected in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft, Cootes turned heads all preseason with a mature two-way game that earned him plenty of trust from the coaching staff. He became the first 18-year-old to crack the Canucks’ opening-night roster in 35 years, then stayed with the club for three games before being sent back to the WHL. Even in that short stint, he looked far closer to NHL-ready than anyone expected.
That’s exactly why the temptation exists to push him into more NHL action this season. Under the new rule for first-round picks out of the CHL, Cootes doesn’t have to make the team straight out of camp. Vancouver could assign him to the AHL to begin the year and call him up whenever it wants.
But there’s a strong argument that the Canucks should do the opposite and keep his NHL exposure capped at nine games.
The reason starts with his entry-level contract. Cootes signed a three-year deal in the summer of 2025, but the first year of that contract has not technically begun.
For an 18- or 19-year-old player, appearing in 10 NHL games is the trigger that makes a season count as a year of pro hockey. Anything fewer than that and the contract slides.
That’s already happened to Cootes once because of his three NHL games last season. Since he is still under 20, he can slide the deal one more year if he stays under the 10-game mark again this season.
Even playing in the AHL wouldn’t change that. The Canucks have already seen this setup with Danila Klimovich.
Klimovich came over to the AHL at 18 instead of staying in Europe, and his entry-level contract slid for his first two North American seasons before finally kicking in during his third year in the AHL, when he was 20. During those first two seasons, he received only the signing bonus of $92,500 per year rather than his salary.
If Cootes spends most of the year in the AHL, the same thing would apply. His three-year contract would not begin until the 2027-28 season, keeping him on his entry-level deal through 2029-30.
That would also leave the Canucks with a lower cap hit in the final two seasons of the contract because the cap number would no longer include the signing bonus. Whether that matters to Vancouver depends on where the team is financially at that point.
There’s another layer here, too: expansion. The NHL could potentially expand to Houston or Austin, Texas for the 2029-30 season, which would bring an expansion draft in 2029.
In previous expansion drafts, first- and second-year pros were exempt from protection lists, and for a player under 20, only NHL games count toward that pro status. AHL games do not.
So if Cootes plays nine NHL games or fewer this season, then 2026-27 would not count as a pro year under the current rules. That would leave him as a second-year pro by the time of a possible 2029 expansion draft, meaning the Canucks would not have to protect him.
If he reaches 10 NHL games this season, though, that becomes a year of pro hockey. He would burn a year of his entry-level contract and be treated as a third-year pro for a 2029 expansion draft, which would force Vancouver to protect him.
There is one big caveat: the final details of the agreement allowing 19-year-old CHL prospects to play in the NHL still aren’t known. It’s possible, though unlikely, that a player who spends a year in the AHL under this rule could still be considered to have played a year of pro hockey for expansion-draft purposes.
Of course, all of this only matters if Cootes doesn’t force the issue. If he dominates camp, the preseason or the AHL, the Canucks will have no choice but to keep him in the NHL and sort out the long-term fallout later. And if NHL competition is what best serves his development this season, that’s the path they’ll take.
But with the Canucks focused on the rebuild rather than short-term gains, the smarter move may be to keep Cootes in the AHL and stop at nine NHL games.
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