Welcome back to Blackfish: Our weekly Vancouver Canucks prospect report.

If you are new here, welcome. And if you are returning for another year, welcome back.

For those who are new to the report, we are a weekly, dedicated Vancouver Canucks prospect report. Each week, we provide updates on each prospect in some capacity. Whether it’s clips, breakdowns, breaking news, or simple statistical updates, we do our best to be your one-stop shop to stay informed.

While it didn’t coincide with a written report, we debuted a new show last season: the Blackfish Prospect show. Last year’s show featured a ton of draft content, but this year we’ll run it alongside the written portion. So be on the lookout for that to kick back off, likely in September.

This week, we open up with a yearly primer. We will talk about who’s in, who’s new and who you, the reader, can expect to see the most this year.

Let’s dive in.

As a result of a nine-man draft back in June, our Blackfish roster has a ton of new faces to feature. With that in mind, we are also making a few strict player limitations to go along with some graduations.

For weekly updates, we will keep players aged 23 and younger. In addition to age, we will trim those who have played more than 50 NHL games in their career.

This cuts out names that you may wonder about, such as Liam Öhgren, Max Sasson, Aatu Räty and even Elias Pettersson. Because of age, we are also not including names like Ilya Safanov, who has crossed the pond from Russia to North America, or newly signed tweeners Matt Stienburg, Trey Fix-Wolansky, or Akil Thomas.

On the backend, we will be cutting newly turned 24-year-old Victor Mancini, Jack Thompson and even goaltender Nikita Tolopilo, all of whom are expected to jump back and forth between the Abbotsford and Vancouver rosters.

In their place, we welcome the following names to the report.

Highlighting this year’s crop is the Canucks’ highest drafted player since the Sedins were taken in 1999, Caleb Malhotra. Entering the system as a polarized selection, all eyes will be on him as he makes his third league transition in as many years. After taking the OHL by storm in 2025-26, fans will now see how he matches up against heavier, tougher, and more mature players in the NCAA.

Playing for Boston University, Malhotra is expected to play a prominent role for one of the nation’s top teams and should be given every chance to showcase himself at the new level.

You can expect to see him featured in our report weekly.

Joining him with the Terriers is Niklas Aaram-Olsen, who will follow in Tom Willander and Wilson Bjorcks’ footsteps and join the college route after a promising junior career overseas. Although he’s a Norwegian forward, he has spent his last few seasons developing within the Swedish Örebro system. And like a certain Vancouver Canuck prospect who grew up in that system, Aaram-Olsen has put together a strong point ledger over his young career.

Now jumping to the NCAA level, his ability to produce points will be put to the test as he navigates the grittier North American game. The good news? He tested in the top-5 in several of this year’s combine results, so his athletic ability and compete level is not something to take lightly.

As a top-50 pick in the most recent draft, you can expect us to bring him up every week, along with his newly gained teammate Caleb.

Another name featured prominently in our 2026-27 report is Adam Novotny. If you’ve followed this author in the past, you know that he is rather fond of this pick, and sees him as a name who could play pro hockey as early as this season. Of course, we don’t expect him to do so, and another season with the Peterborough Petes of the OHL is a near guarantee. But it should be a big year for the late first-round (potential) steal. After leading the Petes in his first year in the league, the expectation is that he not only replicates that, but takes a major jump from his 65-point campaign.

Whether it’s scoring goals from a one-shot release, running a heavy forecheck or being a savvy 200-foot player, he can do it all and will certainly be a name to keep an eye out for pro deployment in April.

Finally, we have our final weekly feature out of the new crop, and that’s this year’s 33rd overall pick, Brooks Rogowski. The 6-foot-7 giant showed off why Canucks fans should be excited about what’s to come when he showcased himself as one of USA’s best players during this year’s WJC Showcase. Signed to Michigan State for 2027-28, Brooks will remain in the OHL for one more season, where he will play a big role on the Oshawa Generals.

The best part about this list of four is that all four should be featured in this year’s World Junior Championship.

The remaining names are new, but may not get weekly time within our report. With a total of 30 eligible players within the Blackfish roster, there will be a rotation throughout the season.

Dmitri Ivchenko has yet to see the lion’s share of starts over in Russia, but that’s about to change. Playing for Omskie Yastreby of the MHL, the crease is now expected to go to the newest Vancouver goaltending prospects. While he hasn’t played a ton, his numbers have been incredible in past seasons. Can he replicate that with a heavier load? Time will tell. But one thing is certain: he will be an interesting case to keep tabs on overseas.

After a quick one-and-done season with the Medicine Hat Tigers, Yaroslav Bryzgalov is off to College with Merrimack. He has a good chance of seeing middle-six deployment with his new squad, and the biggest area we will be looking for him to clean up is his skating.

He already brings an intriguing combination of size and vision, and if he can clean up his stride and add that dynamic element to his game, there is certainly a reason to stay interested. We expect to feature Bryzgalov every couple of weeks.

Fifth-round pick Connor Davis is in the same boat as he jumps from the USHL level to the NCAA. The big question for Davis will be how high he plays up the lineup. Situated on an always-competitive North Dakota team, there is a good chance that this workhorse two-way forward gets pushed down toward the bottom-six.

Another interesting follow is Lucian Bernat, and whether he can translate from the Finnish U20 league to the OHL. Taken 75th overall by the Owen Sound Attack in the 2025 CHL Import Draft, Bernat will make the jump and bring over his goal-scoring release to North America.

Finally, we have the 6-foot-6 Swedish defenceman, Samuel Eriksson. Playing within the Färjestad BK system, we should see him play primarily at the U20 level, with stints in the SHL alongside one of our former favourite seventh-rounders, Lucas Forsell.

Now, here are the returnees.

There’s a decent chance that we include Jonathan Lekkerimäki and lose him in quick succession, but there is also a world where he finds himself back in Abbotsford and into our weekly Blackfish reports.

We’ll take it week by week with him, and likely won’t cover him unless he’s down in Abbotsford.

The same could be said for Braeden Cootes if he makes the Vancouver Canucks out of training camp. If we had things our way, Cootes would play the majority of his 2026-27 season in Abbotsford, but it’s ultimately going to be his play that dictates that reality.

We expect Riley Patterson to be a prominent and weekly contributor to our report this year. Now officially in his rookie pro season, we will be keeping very close tabs on his development. We expect him to be seen in a top-six role right out of the gate, despite being a young rookie.

We will also see key contributions from the young defensive duo of Kirill Kudryavtsev and Sawyer Mynio. We do expect Kudryavtsev to make a solid push for Vancouver at this year’s training camp and be a routine tweener this season. Although we saw tremendous development with Mynio, we expect him to need one more season to be considered an NHL defenceman.

Also in our Abbotsford section, both Vilmer Alriksson and Ty Mueller will appear in our report this season. However, they may not be featured as heavily as others in a heavy news week. For Mueller, we project him to be a bubble NHL player navigating his final season on our Blackfish roster as a 23-year-old. He showed he can at least handle NHL reps, so now it’s about becoming a consistent fourth-line presence.

Of course, we will see both goaltenders Aku Koskenvuo and Ty Young every week, since they are likely to split starts for the season with the baby Canucks.

One dark horse for this section will be Gabe Chiarot. We spoke to Chiarot often during his Memorial Cup run, and he never confirmed where he will play this season. That said, there is a real chance we’ll see him in Abbotsford this season as a 20-year-old.

One player who will be in Abbotsford, but won’t be a prominent name in our reports, is Anri Ravinskis.

If Chiarot isn’t back in the OHL, our CHL section will comprise the formerly mentioned Rogowski, Novotny and Bernat, as well as London Knights goalie Aleksei Medvedev.

Despite a terrible second half, the starting job will be handed back to the Russian netminder, and we fully expect him to be a bounce-back candidate and will be a top fixture in our 2026-27 report.

This year’s NCAA crop will feature a few new faces, in addition to the above-mentioned Malhotra, Aaram-Olsen, Brysgalov and Davis.

Both Kieren Dervin and Parker Alcos have left our CHL circuit and joined the collegiate ranks. Dervin made the move early in the summer, decommitting from Penn State to join the Michigan Wolverines. While it’s a major plus to be developing within a program like Michigan, it likely takes away from the guaranteed playing time he would have carried over at Penn State.

As for Alcos, he will join Matthew Lansing at Quinnipiac. Both should be moderately covered in our report.

Over in Michigan State, we should see a much bigger role for Anthony Romani, who had himself a very encouraging second half in 2025-26. With the departures of a few key names, Romani should slide into the top six of a top school, which could translate into some much larger numbers before potentially making the jump to pro by season’s end. He should be a solid fixture in this year’s report.

There, but likely lower on the update totem pole, will be Wilson Björck (Colorado College), Aiden Celebrini (Boston University) and Matthew Perkins (Northeastern).

For a second straight season, our “rest of the world” section is going to be rather quiet and sometimes not even featured in our report. In addition to the already mentioned Samuel Eriksson, Basile Sansonnens is the only other player playing overseas.

After a decent year as a rookie among men in the Swiss National League, the Swiss-born defender will stick with Lausanne HC for the season.

We look forward to another year of Blackfish! See you every Wednesday, folks.