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

As always, we begin the show by encouraging you to check out this week’s episode of the Blackfish Prospect Show.

We hope you enjoyed your first taste of preseason action. We’ve covered the game against the Seattle Kraken in detail across our website this week, so we won’t go into much detail here.

What we will pause and talk about, however, is Braeden Cootes, who showed up in a big way as the team’s most dynamic forward. After never truly standing out as the best option in either Prospect Showcase game last weekend, we got exactly what we wanted from Cootes in his preseason debut. He was dynamic, brought his typical workhorse mentality, and even flashed both a high-end release and vision while collecting a goal and an assist.

Placed on a line alongside Arshdeep Bains and Jonathan Lekkerimäki, we may have gotten an early glimpse of what could become one of the better lines in the American Hockey League. Perhaps that’s nothing more than wishful thinking. But with Lekkerimäki still looking to establish himself and Cootes pushing toward the professional ranks, there’s certainly a world where those three spend plenty of time together in Abbotsford this season.

Speaking of where prospects should play, Tyson Cole and I discussed Adam Novotný this week and whether he should play in the AHL, if possible, or return to the OHL. As you’ll see from the clip below, I am firmly on the return-to-junior side of the ledger. Since he’s technically loaned to the OHL, a loophole could let him stay in Abbotsford alongside Braeden Cootes for the 2026-27 season.

But should he?

With the ideal landing spot of the NCAA not being a possibility, the decision essentially comes down to Peterborough or Abbotsford. And while you always want to challenge your prospects, I feel some are greatly underestimating how difficult the American Hockey League is. Granted, Novotný was a very good player in the OHL last season, but he was by no means dominant. Fast-tracking him into a league where he’d be fighting for minutes and opportunities doesn’t necessarily make the best results. Returning to junior would allow him to become the primary option in virtually every facet of the game. That’s top-line minutes. First-unit power play. Serious defensive situations. Late-game opportunities.

Let him go back and dominate. Then, when Peterborough’s season ends, you can revisit the possibility of an Abbotsford call-up in the spring. While the two players can never be directly compared, Danila Klimovich provides a useful example of what can happen when a young player is rushed into a league before he’s ready. Klimovich struggled to find a rhythm at the professional level after making the immediate jump and never caught his break. Now, in hindsight, most would agree that sending him to the QMJHL would have been the right call. There’s no need to rush Novotný down the same path. Let him grow. Let him dominate and let him build that confidence. But what say you? I can certainly see the other side of the coin, with some people begging to challenge prospects with the professional game, so please let us know in the comments.

I don’t know about you, but September has always felt like the true New Year. If you’re in school or have kids, it marks the beginning of a fresh year. And if you play hockey — or simply spend far too much time watching it — everything begins ramping up again.

This season, we’re blessed with an even earlier timeline, with true regular-season hockey arriving in just one week. It’s a beautiful thing.

What is a shame, however, is what that accelerated timeline means for some of the younger names trying to make an impression. Rather than receiving a full training camp and somewhere between one and three preseason games to showcase themselves, many were left with a shortened camp and just one game. For higher-pedigree prospects such as Cootes, Brooks Rogowski or Novotný, it probably doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. They will see another day and get their games. But for some of the lower-profile names we’ll discuss today, that shortened runway certainly doesn’t do them any favours.

A few received roughly the amount of time we expected. Others, however, appeared on today’s list of cuts and gave us at least a moment of pause.

Following one preseason game against the Seattle Kraken, the following players were assigned to the Abbotsford Canucks:

Vilmer Alriksson, Gabe Chiarot, Anri Ravinskis, Aku Koskenvuo and Ty Young.

Let’s begin with Chiarot, who was probably the most significant name of the group. Significant not because we expected him to challenge for an NHL job, but because the wording of the transaction clarifies where his 2026-27 season should be played. While not surprising, an option could have seen Chiarot return to the Ontario Hockey League as an overage 20-year-old.

Although possible, that option never made much sense to us. As a gritty, “B-game” type of player, the prospect of Chiarot beginning his professional career in the American League always felt like the route best suited for his development. And after winning an OHL title and Memorial Cup, he just looked ready.

With this news, it appears he’ll make his professional debut and likely compete for a middle-six role with the Abby Canucks. We don’t expect him to put up massive numbers, but that’s not really the point or his game. Chiarot can kill penalties, finish his checks and won’t shy away from digging into corners or battling for 50/50 pucks. Now, we get to see how those elements translate against professional competition.

We wanted one more look at Vilmer Alriksson.

We thought he played well in his lone preseason appearance and consistently impressed training-camp onlookers with his improved shot and even noticeable improvements in his skating. We don’t expect Alriksson to be a legitimate call-up option this season, especially given Ryan Johnson’s comments earlier this week. But that’s also why we would have liked one final look.

At 6-foot-6, the physical tools are obvious. What we’ve been waiting to see is whether the rest of the package can begin catching up. There were at least some early signs of that this September, and it’s a shame we won’t get to see him flash those in one last match.

Ty Young and Aku Koskenvuo were two other names that surprised us slightly. With Thatcher Demko continuing his recovery, we thought there was a chance that one of the two — likely Young — would see some preseason action. It’s certainly no shock that both are heading to Abbotsford, where they are expected to form the tandem this season. Still, with four preseason games on the schedule, we thought there might have been enough runway to give one of them a look.

Then again, getting Kevin Lankinen the necessary reps before regular-season action begins is another perfectly reasonable way to go about business. For Young and Koskenvuo, the real competition now begins in Abbotsford.

As for Ravinskis, there wasn’t much surprise there. We consider him more of a depth option, even at the American League level, and his assignment was expected.

Also released from their PTOs and returned to Abbotsford were: Austin Brimmer, Bennett Schimek, Joe Arntsen, Tim Rego and Gavin White.

We don’t have a ton to say about this group of AHL-contracted players, but much like Alriksson, we were hoping to see a little more of Schimek. We don’t often spend much time praising an AHL-signed player in this column, but the former Arizona State forward has continued to show he can handle the American League level and hasn’t looked out of place alongside Vancouver’s prospects throughout camp.

At the end of the day, he was always destined for Abbotsford. Still, he was one player we thought could begin making a case for an NHL contract sooner rather than later. Alas, he’ll return to the minor-league level and keep trying to prove it.

Finally, Lucian Bernat was assigned back to his junior club, the Owen Sound Attack. Nursing an injury, Bernat couldn’t participate in training camp and instead joined Thatcher Demko and Akil Thomas in separate skates before the main groups took the ice. That made his return to Owen Sound a formality more than anything else.

The OHL has identified Bernat as a potential breakout candidate this season, and that will ultimately matter more for his development than anything he could have accomplished during a shortened NHL camp.

Now, the goal is simple: get healthy, get back into the Owen Sound lineup and prove them right.

That will do it for this week, but check back next week as we will have our final list of cuts and prospects returned home.

You can watch this week’s episode of Blackfish below!