WWYDW: The Bubble

Young Stars is over and main camp is just around the corner. The roster is unusually crowded this year, which means there are plenty of players on the bubble, and their performance at camp could make or break their season. Who do you think can surprise at camp and earn a full-time spot on the roster? At whose expense?

Last week I asked: Outside of Elias Pettersson, which player(s) are you most excited to see in action at Young Stars 2018?

To keep it simple: every Canuck draft pick plus Dahlen, MacEwen, and Chatfield.

I am hoping Kole Lind has a great tournament.
Like 1915 says, all prospects will be interesting too keep an eye on, hope we get 4 or 5 of them to be nhl calibre players at some point.

Juolevi, for two reasons. First, of all these players except perhaps Pettersson, he could have the greatest impact on the Canucks future. Second, he’s recovering from back surgery, and it will be interesting to see how well he’s recovered.

Juolevi. The key to any rebuild is not to select busts with top ten picks. Now that Olli’s beginning the third season after his draft year, it’s time for him to step up and shine. While his surgery may land him in the AHL to start the season, he absolutely needs to crack the NHL roster by the trade deadline. If Benning has whiffed on both the Virtanen and Juolevi picks, then the rebuild has been set back at least two years and ownership needs to look for a new GM.

I am truly hoping that juolevi, gaudette, and dahlen make an impact not only in the young stars and training camp that everybody will be in an outrage when theyget sent down to the minors or the less likely option that Benningactually keeps to his word and keeps them and gets rid of the extra baggage like mdz and gagner

Expectations are high for EP, I hope he can live up to them. Maybe Gaudette leveled up over the summer too? With all the rest, I look forward to the one or two prospects that went hard over the summer to up their game and jump some spots on the depth chart of our prospect pool. Maybe Lind or Palmu or Gadjovich come in and make us think, How can we not have that guy on our team? I remember last year Archibald was the last one cut in preseason. I am curious to see who makes it that far.

I’m very excited to see Pettersson and Gaudette for obvious reasons, but Jonathan Dahlen is the one I’m most intrigued by actually. This trade for a past-his-prime Burrows could go down as the Canucks best piece of trade thievery second only to the Naslund trade. I see Dahlen as a Filip Forsberg type player who can be very productive AND consistent during the regular season while quietly and naturally stepping it up a notch in the playoffs. Saying all this, I do kind of hope that he spends most of this year in Utica if for no other reason than to get a ton of top line minutes and fine-tune the transition of his game to the North American style. I have no doubt that he will blow people away in at least one of his call-up games.
One more note about Pettersson. It seems obvious to me that he is going to be the best player on the Canucks for years and years to come. Not necessarily this year, but very possibly the next. And the next and so on. I’m wondering if management is gun-shy about giving Bo the C because they suspect what no one else seems to be talking about yet: Pettersson IS the future Canucks captain.

Guillaume Brisebois…simply because Benning has been his personal cheerleader for 15 months now.