Canucks Bring Prospects to Main Camp, Invite Roy, D’Aoust, Moynihan, Valk

If you’re following the Vancouver Canucks on enough social media platforms, you can sometimes learn a few things. Today the Canucks released their full main camp roster, including the players previously left off due to their inclusion in the Young Stars Classic. However, just to screw with us, they did so only on Snapchat (so far, anyways).

Luckily our own Vanessa Jang spotted it and alerted us to the list. Thanks to a couple of pictures of a couple of pieces of paper, we now know which Canucks prospects and which Young Stars invitees made the cut to join the big boys this weekend in Whistler.

These lists have yet to be published on twitter, or the Canucks official website, likely because they are in the midst of media availability. They told me to screenshot the lists, and so I did. They are provided below, but if you don’t feel like looking through the lists, you can scroll on past them and I’ll just tell you below who was invited.

These photos reveal that the following prospects have been invited to main camp following their showings in Penticton:

Fowards Rodrigo Abols, Michael Carcone, Joe LaBate, Yan-Pavel Laplante, Brett McKenzie, Jakob Stukel, and defencemen Guillaume Brisebois, Cole Candella, Olli Juolevi, Evan McEneny, Carl Neill, Tate Olson, Ashton Sautner, Troy Stecher, Mackenze Stewart, and Jordan Subban.

In other words, they brought every one of the signed or drafted prospects that were in Penticton. Dmitry Zhukenov, who was invited to the Young Stars Classic, but couldn’t participate due to injury, is not on the main camp list, which is likely related to the aforementioned injury.

In addition, the Canucks are bringing five of the eight invitees from Young Stars:

Forwards Marco Roy, Alexis D’Aoust, Danny Moynihan, Curtis Valk, and goaltender Rylan Parenteau.

The three Young Stars invitees who were cut loose are forwards Tyler Coulter and Kyle Maksimovich, and defenceman Olivier Galipeau. In Coulter’s case, he will go back to the WHL and remain a free agent for the remainder of the season.

Maksimovich and Galipeau are different case, as both are draft eligible next year. As I outlined in my CBA piece yesterday, there was still a way for the Canucks to sign them if they desired, but they appear to have decided against that. In order to extend their temporary free agency windows, the Canucks would have had to sign Maksimovich or Galipeau to try-out contracts prior to the beginning of their respective CHL seasons. As both those season are now underway, it appears that that have neglected to do that, and thus the windows to sign those prospects have closed.

This a more of a shame in regards to Maksimovich, who was a very promising invitee. His pGPS percentage of 19 percent suggested that he was worthy of a 70-75th overall selection in the draft, and had been ranked by many services in the top 100 – I also had him on my list of talent left behind at the draft. He showed well in the only Young Stars game that he played in. The fact that he played in only the first game and the Canucks proceeded to dress 11 forwards for the remaining two games suggests to me that Maksimovich either sustained or aggravated an injury in Penticton. Whether this is a factor in allowing him to return to Erie unsigned is unknown.

This morning Jackson McDonald published an article suggesting three invitees that the Canucks should extend contracts to. While the ship has sailed on Maksimovich, the other two, Marco Roy and Alexis D’Aoust are both still in play. Both had excellent showings in Penticton, looking like two of the best Canucks forwards at the tourney – admittedly that wasn’t a tall task given that the Canucks were shockingly shallow on forward depth for the Young Stars games. The inclusion of Moynihan and not Coulter is a little peculiar, considering neither really jumped out in Penticton, but it’s certainly nothing egregious.

Additionally, it’s nice to see that Curtis Valk will be returning to main camp. He has been hovering around the Canucks organization for a couple of years, and has yet to receive an NHL contract. Personally, I’d love to see him get into an exhibition game. Though he’s tiny, at just 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, the former WHL All-Star has produced offensively at every level he’s been given an opportunity at. Last year, during a brief stint in the AHL, his size was visually jarring and yet he handled himself just fine and produced at a half-point per game over a dozen contests. I’d be interested to see how he’d handle NHL competition (or pseudo-NHL competition, as it often is in pre-season).

As for the rest of the players on the main camp list, there are no surprises. The list itself, minus prospects, was released last week. It contains the Canucks four PTO players (Tuomo Ruutu, James Sheppard, Kevin Carr, and Jack Skille), as well as a handful of players on AHL contracts (Darren Archibald, Carter Bancks, Wacey Hamilton, and John Negrin). The Canucks are carrying a whopping seven netminders into camp, including invitee Rylan Parenteau, and PTO recipient Carr, who make sneak in some playing time while Jacob Markstrom is at the World Cup.

Training camp officially begins today as the players meet at Rogers Arena. They’ll head up to Whistler on the weekend, and that’s where the fun really begins. We should get a look at line combinations in just a few days. The first pre-season game is set to go just five days from now, on Tuesday, September 27th.