Vancouver Canucks release 2023-24 opening night roster

The Vancouver Canucks have released their opening night roster for the 2023-24 NHL season. The Canucks’ roster features 13 forwards, seven defencemen, and two goaltenders.

Here are the 13 forwards listed on the Canucks’ opening night roster:

Brock Boeser, Conor Garland, JT Miller, Sam Lafferty, Nils Höglander, Pius Suter, Phil Di Giuseppe, Elias Pettersson, Teddy Blueger, Anthony Beauvillier, Dakota Joshua, Vasily Podkolzin, and Andrei Kuzmenko.

The seven defencemen are:

Carson Soucy, Filip Hronek, Quinn Hughes, Noah Juulsen, Guillaume Brisebois, Tyler Myers, and Ian Cole.

Tthe two goaltenders on the Canucks’ NHL roster are Casey DeSmith and Thatcher Demko.

As expected, the Canucks did some things to make the money work to be cap compliant. For example, Vasily Podkolzin is listed on the roster, but will almost certainly open his season with the Abbotsford Canucks. The Canucks’ season kicks off on Wednesday, when they will welcome the Edmonton Oilers to Rogers Arena for their home opener.

Some key things to note about the Canucks’ roster:

-Ilya Mikheyev still isn’t healthy enough to play, and will open the season on IR. Mikheyev was shut down last January after playing through an ACL injury that he sustained in the 2022-23 preseason. This gives Nils Höglander — and maybe even Vasily Podkolzin — a prime chance to get into some NHL games and improve on a lacklustre preseason showing.

-Akito Hirose and Cole McWard are both not included on this roster. Neither player needs to clear waivers to report to Abbotsford, and GM Patrik Allvin announced earlier today that both players had been sent to the AHL, with Vasily Podkolzin being called up. As we wrote last week, Podkolzin needed to be included on the opening night roster in order for him to be recalled later in the season without his performance bonuses getting in the way.

-The Canucks are still able to add a player like Mikheyev or Soucy to LTIR to give themselves some more breathing room, as explained by PuckPedia below:

At the end of the day, this is all very silly and hard to follow for the average NHL fan.

“Here is our opening night roster; it doesn’t make that much sense; a good chunk of these guys won’t actually be in our opening night lineup for various reasons, but this is our opening night roster! Take a good look!”