The Vancouver Canucks finally have a direction, and that direction is the rebuild. That much feels settled. What isn’t settled is how they manage the dozens of small decisions that come with it, especially in 2026-27, when the organization will be trying to do two things at once: raise the trade value of veterans and give young players the ice time they need to grow.
That tension is already easy to see with Drew O’Connor. He looks like one of the clearest trade chips on the roster.
He’s entering the final season of a two-year, $2.5 million extension, which will take him to UFA status next summer, and he carries a limited 12-team no-trade clause. On top of that, he just posted a career-high 17 goals and showed he can move up and down the lineup while bringing the kind of size and forechecking bite playoff teams tend to like in a rental.
All of that points to real deadline value. A second-round pick at or near the 2027 Trade Deadline, maybe more, is not out of the question.
If the Canucks were only thinking about maximizing return, the path would be obvious. Keep O’Connor in the top six.
Give him more power-play time. Put him with Marco Rossi.
Feed him every opportunity to stack points between now and March.
But the Canucks won’t be operating in a vacuum, and that’s where things get messy. Every extra minute O’Connor gets is a minute that could go to Liam Öhgren or Jonathan Lekkerimäki, both of whom may need those top-six reps to keep advancing as NHL forwards. There are only so many spots up front, and only so much time to distribute.
That’s the sort of calculation Vancouver will be making all season. On one side is the chance to turn O’Connor into a stronger trade asset.
On the other is the chance to help Öhgren become a legitimate long-term top-six scorer. The rebuild benefits from both, but not in the same way, and not on the same timeline.
The same sort of balancing act shows up everywhere else on the roster. Luke Schenn can be treated as a trade piece, while Victor Mancini looks like a long-term part of the picture.
Push Mancini too hard and scratch Schenn too often, and the Canucks could lose the chance to get meaningful deadline value for Schenn, the way the Jets did last year. Lean too heavily on Schenn, and Mancini’s development could stall right when he needs momentum.
Filip Hronek and Zeev Buium present another version of the same problem. Hronek is still the team’s best power-play quarterback right now, and probably its best trade chip overall, even if that move is more likely to come a few years down the road.
For the moment, the Canucks would want him piling up points and staying near the top of the lineup. But Buium is viewed as the quarterback of the future, and he needs reps on PP1 sooner rather than later.
There’s also the question of how much top-four work goes to Jake Oleksiak instead of Elias Pettersson or Kirill Kudryavtsev. And if Jake DeBrusk remains on the roster, does he stay in such a prominent power-play role, knowing those extra-strength goals are a major part of his value as an asset? Or do the Canucks start shifting that ice time toward someone who will still be around a few years from now?
At centre, the same dilemma gets even sharper. Everyone is hoping for a rebound from Elias Pettersson, but if it doesn’t come, what then?
The Canucks could decide to give Marco Rossi the 1C job and find out exactly what they have in him. That makes sense on one level.
But if Pettersson is eventually going to be moved, the team also has every reason to try to rebuild his value first by leaving him in prime minutes and hoping the points follow.
And while that conversation plays out, 19-year-old Braeden Cootes is waiting in the AHL as another possible long-term top-six answer who will need those minutes sooner rather than later.
None of these choices are truly all-or-nothing. That’s the point. Vancouver’s season will be built around constant adjustments between the short-term need to make veterans more attractive on the market and the longer-term need to develop the young core.
That kind of setup can create friction between coaching and management, and the Canucks saw a version of that last season when Adam Foote seemed inclined to lean on veterans while Patrik Allvin wanted to prioritize youth after the rebuild was declared.
This time, though, the fit looks better. Manny Malhotra appears to be aligned with Ryan Johnson and co-POHOS Henrik and Daniel Sedin on the rebuild plan, which should help keep everyone pulling in the same direction.
Even then, the choices won’t stop. They’ll just be debated, adjusted, and revisited all year long.
The Canucks may have one big goal in place, but the smaller ones underneath it will keep demanding attention all season. Sorting through those competing priorities is going to be one of the defining jobs of the 2026-27 campaign.
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