You’ve read and heard plenty about the Vancouver Canucks‘ youngsters. When the rebuild truly began following the Quinn Hughes trade, the Canucks added three players under the age of 25 to their roster, including two players who were first-round picks not that long ago: Zeev Buium and Liam Öhgren.

The Canucks gave Öhgren penalty killing minutes down the stretch of the season and consistent middle-six usage at 5v5. He excelled, and one would expect that he’s primed for similar usage under new head coach Manny Malhotra. The story was slightly different for Zeev Buium, and that’s the inspiration for today’s article.

Here are three players the Canucks need to provide ample opportunity for in the 2026-27 season.

Following the Hughes trade, Buium immediately stepped in as Filip Hronek’s defence partner. He tallied a goal and an assist in his first game, and his Canucks tenure truly couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start. Eventually, though, it became clear that Buium was still very much a rookie defenceman trying to learn the ropes at the NHL level. He saw his ice time decrease, and while he still showed flashes at times, it wasn’t until the final 15-or-so games of the season when Buium started consistently logging 20-plus minutes a night.

The more concerning thing was that Buium wasn’t getting as many reps as possible quarterbacking the Canucks’ first power play unit. Instead, the Canucks gave Tom Willander some looks there (which, hey, that’s another young defenceman and isn’t the worst thing in the world, but Willander’s profile should allow him to be a successful NHL DMan even without PP time), and of course, Filip Hronek.

Let’s be clear: if Buium is going to reach his ceiling as the elite offensive defenceman the Canucks hoped they were trading for, he’s going to need to be a power play quarterback. In a season where wins and losses don’t really matter, and where developing players will be prioritized, it’s very important that the Canucks give Buium as many reps as possible on the first power play unit. Hronek can absolutely still be part of PP2, but if the Canucks are serious about rebuilding, they’ll give Buium as many chances as possible to run PP1. As we touched on last month, there are millions of dollars in revenue for the club riding on their young players hitting their ceilings, and giving Buium every chance to grow needs to be a priority next season.

One of the truly baffling decisions Adam Foote made down the stretch of his first and only season as Canucks head coach was how often he made Aatu Räty a healthy scratch. Räty appeared in 66 games with the Canucks last season, tallying four goals and 10 assists. As everyone knows by now, Räty is a faceoff ace with intriguing size. Räty put up 40 points in 43 games with Abbotsford in 2024-25, and was one of Manny Malhotra’s most trusted players in all situations.

Räty has shown flashes at the NHL level, but has yet to find the level of consistency needed to be an NHL staple… on a winning team, of course. There is no real reason the Canucks shouldn’t be giving Räty every chance to play a ton of minutes, get reps on the penalty kill, and learn from his mistakes. When you think about players who should benefit the most from Manny Malhotra being the Canucks’ new bench boss, Räty’s name is certainly high on the list.

Similar to Räty, Lekkerimäki is a player who excelled under Malhotra in the AHL, but has yet to stand out at the NHL level. And while a lot of that can be attributed to the weaker competition in the AHL, I’d urge everyone to read this quote from a February 2025 interview we did with Malhotra about why Lekkerimäki was finding success at the AHL level:

“Obviously, there’s a couple things in his game that make him a special player,” Malhotra said. “Number one, his ability to get out of tight spots. He has an incredible set of hands, and he’s in a lot of situations offensively where he has numbers closing on him, he has back pressure, he has D with tight gaps, but he finds a way to advance a play and make something out of nothing, which is a pretty special talent to have. And he’s able to do those things at a high pace. So that’s number one.

“And then obviously you talk about his goal-scoring ability. He does have an elite shot. He gets it off quite quickly, but the most impressive thing for me in the way he’s scoring is he’s getting to tough places. He gets inside, he gets to the slot, he gets around the net. And if you look at his heat map or his goals, the majority of them are within 10-15 feet of the net, probably even less than that. So his willingness to get inside is what is making him so successful at this level.

“The progression for him, the evolution of his game, is just to continue to play with that fearlessness of being able to get inside, and continue to execute with the puck. You saw when he did get a couple games in the NHL, he was able to do the same thing. He advanced plays, he got pucks out of tough spots to his linemates and to D-men. So he’s an intelligent player that is just learning what it’s like and how heavy guys are at the next level.”

It feels like Lekkerimäki has gotten away from getting to the inside at the NHL level. Most of his shots in the NHL have come from mid-long range over his first two NHL seasons (24 games in 2024-25, 13 in 2025-26). This past season was a bit of a write-off for Lekkerimäki, as he underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in February. He’s been back in the gym training since April, however, so hopefully, adding some muscle can help him on his quest to finally stick at the NHL level in 2026-27. As always, most of it will be up to the player, but the Canucks certainly need to ensure there’s a middle-six spot that Lekkerimäki can slot into if he shows he’s ready for it. What the Canucks don’t need during this rebuild is a logjam of wingers (especially ones over the age of 25) taking opportunities away from their younger players.

As we wrote earlier today, it would be wise for the Canucks to look to move out a veteran or two this offseason, as that would help clear the path for players like Lekkerimäki to step in and grow.