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Blackfish: Cootes and Patterson remain on fire, Lekkerimäki’s soft hands, and more
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Dave Hall
Feb 11, 2026, 16:00 ESTUpdated: Feb 11, 2026, 12:56 EST
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Welcome back to Blackfish: our weekly Vancouver Canucks prospect report.
Before we dive in, a quick housekeeping note: beginning this week, Blackfish will officially move to a Wednesday release. We’ll share more on the reasoning behind that change at a later date.
As for the hockey, it was another busy week across the system. Braeden Cootes had an explosive stretch in Prince Albert, Riley Patterson continued to torch the OHL, and locally, Abbotsford split a weekend series while Jonathan Lekkerimäki stole the spotlight with a filthy shootout move.
Let’s dive right in.

Abbotsford Canucks

The good news is that the Abbotsford Canucks split their weekend series against the San Jose Barracuda, leaving them just six points out of a playoff spot. The less encouraging part is that they’ve now played 48 games, the most in the division. That’s five more than the Henderson Silver Knights, the very team they’re chasing for the eighth and final spot.
Somewhat surprisingly, Nikita Tolopilo started both games, which meant no goaltending prospect action for this week’s report. However, what we did see was Jonathan Lekkerimäki put on a show.
After being sprung all alone, the Swede was hauled down on a breakaway, setting the stage for one of the prettiest goals of his season. Showing excellent patience and soft hands, Lekkerimäki went backhand in the shootout to score his team-leading 11th goal. He later added a secondary assist, pushing him to 18 points on the year, just five back of the team lead.
Jumping into a share of the team lead was Ty Mueller, who posted a goal and two assists over the weekend. It’s been an excellent stretch for the 22-year-old centre, who now has 10 points in his last nine games. After a slow start plagued by injuries, Mueller has stepped into a clear top line role, handling important faceoffs and contributing in all situations — much like he did last season.
Injuries, unfortunately, remain a constant theme. Both Sawyer Mynio and Vilmer Alriksson missed the weekend. Alriksson’s injury was covered in last week’s report, while Mynio’s status remains unclear. He had been wearing a bubble ever since returning from the missing weeks earlier.
As for Kirill Kudryavtsev, sources have told CanucksArmy that he is dealing with a high ankle sprain, which forced him out of the AHL All-Star Game, resulting in Ben Berard replacing him as Abbotsford representative. Timelines for those injuries can be tricky, and this one appears no different.

Kalamazoo Wings (ECHL)

Down in Kalamazoo, Josh Bloom recorded a three-point game, highlighted by a patient move that completely undressed the goaltender. He did miss Kalamazoo’s final game of the week for an undisclosed reason, but through six games with the Wings, Bloom is now producing at a point-per-game pace.
In net, Ty Young dropped both of his starts. It was a rough week statistically, as he allowed nine goals on 66 shots. After opening his ECHL stint with a strong 7-2-0-0 run, Young now sits at 7-4-1 with a 3.02 goals against average and a .903 save percentage. Not ideal, but Kalamazoo continues to struggle to consistently generate offence, so it’s not a great environment for netminders at the moment. That seems to be a common theme throughout the entire organization right now.

CHL

Braeden Cootes turned 19 on Monday and celebrated with one heck of a birthday weekend. The Alberta native posted two goals and four assists, giving him six points in two games and seven points over a three-game week. He then followed that hot streak over to Tuesday evening, where he potted another goal and a helper.
He also saw heavy usage in the faceoff circle, going 23-for-31 over the weekend. Since Cootes joined the lineup, the Raiders are 12-2-1, have clinched a playoff spot, and currently sit atop the Eastern Conference.
His production has finally caught up with his play in Prince Albert. Cootes’ tallies are up to 24 points in 16 games since joining the Raiders and 47 points in 33 games on the season. He now sits as the WHL’s top scorer in the month of February with eight points, and the top scorer since January 23 with 17.
Over in Ontario, Riley Patterson continues to rack them up for the Niagara IceDogs. With another two goals, he’s officially set a new career high in points. His 29th goal — a heavy one-timer from the flank — not only matched his previous best in goals, but pushed him to 63 points in just 44 games.
Unsurprisingly, Patterson has taken a significant jump in our CanucksArmy prospect rankings, so keep an eye out for that update.
Tuesday brought Gabe Chiarot a three-point game, which included an on-brand Chiarot goal. Pushing his check out of the way, he managed to sneak a backhand goal for his 18th of the season. He has been a bit snakebitten since joining the Kitchener Rangers, despite seeing top-six deployment. That marked his first goal in nearly a month, with his last tally coming on January 16.
In goal, Aleksei Medvedev split his week, stopping 61 of 68 shots across two games. He came close to making it two wins, but fell in overtime.

NCAA

Aiden Celebrini appeared in this year’s Beanpot Final, where Boston University fell 6–2 to Boston College. Celebrini played his usual role on the right side of BU’s third pairing, logging 15:45 in the loss.
At Quinnipiac, Matthew Lansing continues to quietly produce in a bottom-six role. With two goals and an assist, he’s now up to 15 points in 30 games, good for a 0.5 points-per-game pace. As noted in last week’s Honourable Mentions, Lansing is benefiting from — and contributing to — a strong Quinnipiac squad that currently ranks fifth in the nation.

Rest of the world

While Ilya Safonov made it into our Honourable Mentions list during our CanucksArmy top-15 prospect rankings, Basile Sansonnens saw a significant jump. Now ranked 13th, he benefits from a smooth transition toward competing amongst men at the Swiss National level.
His profile doesn’t offer much offensive intrigue, if any, but a smooth-skating, physical frame is an encouraging foundation to build on. Now, to turn those raw tools into something tangible going forward.
Be sure to keep an eye out as we move into our top 10 and toward our top-ranked prospect. We are running with a prospect per day.
That will do it for this week’s Blackfish. Until next week, folks.

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