The Canucks just unveiled their roster for the 2016 Young Stars tournament in Penticton. While top prospect Brock Boeser will not be attending due to the NCAA restrictions, fans will get a chance to see the recent fifth overall pick, Olli Juolevi, and the presumed goalie of the future, Thatcher Demko, as well as a wealth of other prospects and invitees.

You can skip the release and see the official roster list here.

There are 11 defencemen on the roster, ten of which are already Canucks prospects, and the final player being Olivier Galipeau, who was previously at the Canucks development camp in Shawnigan Lake.

Olli Juolevi highlights a group of defensive prospects that is actually beginning to look fairly formidable. The list also includes 2016 draft pick Cole Candella, 2015 draft picks Guillaume Brisebois, Carl Neill and Tate Olson, 2014 selection Mackenze Stewart (he’s a defenceman again!), 2013 draft pick Jordan Subban, and free agent signings Troy Stecher, Ashton Sautner and Evan McEneny. Ryan Biech covered Galipeau (among others who aren’t returning) in his preview of the development camp defencemen here.

Here are the defencemen with the invitee, Galipeau, italicized:

14 forwards were selected to attend the tournament as Canucks, and they are considerably more of a mishmash than the defencemen. The list includes 2016 selections Jakob Stukel, Brett McKenzie, and Rodrigo Abols, 2015 selection Dmitry Zhukenov, 2013 draft choice Cole Cassels, and 2011 pick Joseph LaBate. Two free agent signings are also present – Yan-Pavel Laplante and Michael Carcone – as well as Curtis Valk, who has been contracted to the AHL’s Utica Comets for the past couple of years after attending previous development camps and tournaments.

Five other invitees round out the forward list, all but one of which were at the development camp in Shawnigan Lake in July: Tyler Coulter, Kyle Maksimovich, Danny Moynihan, Marc-Olivier Roy and my personal favourite, Alexis D’Aoust. Since we’ve seen many of these names before, you can read Ryan Biech’s preview of the forward here for more in depth analysis.

The goaltending looks stronger than it has in the history of the tournament, with Thatcher Demko, the NCAA’s most valuable netminder in 2015-16, at one end, and Michael Garteig, a free agent signing and backstopper of the NCAA championship finalists, Quinnipiac University, at the other. Coming in as a pretty clear third wheel is invitee Rylan Parenteau, who also attended the Canucks development camp in July (more from Ryan Biech, again, here).

We already knew the schedule, but I won’t make you poor people go and try to find it again. Here you go:

Friday, Sept. 16 – 7:30pm: Vancouver vs. Edmonton

Sunday, Sept. 18 – 2:00pm: Vancouver vs. Winnipeg

Monday, Sept. 19 – 3:00pm: Vancouver vs. Calgary

Not that anyone cares, but can I just say that I hate this schedule? School is back in session and I have a kid in kindergarten, so this whole Friday night and Monday afternoon thing is bogus. What’s the deal with no games on Saturday? Awful.

The Canucks have been putting this tournament on for six years now, and never before have they looked so strong on defence and in net. I mean, it’s been a couple of years since they could actually bring a real prospect to this thing, with piles of invitees filling in between the pipes in recent years. And even before that, don’t get me wrong, I like Eddie Lack, but he’s no Demko.

That being said, this is pretty clearly the least impressive group of forwards they have ever sent to the tournament. While most years’ tournaments are populated with highly touted forward prospects like Jake Virtanen, Jared McCann, Bo Horvat, Hunter Shinkaruk, Brendan Gaunce, and Nicklas Jensen, a combination of graduation and trades have left with no first round picks to send to Penticton. In fact, the highest drafted player among the forward group is Cole Cassels, picked 85th overall in 2013, and he just happens to be coming off of a brutal year. Add to that that the NCAA is preventing Brock Boeser and two of the Canucks other more intriguing forward prospects, Adam Gaudette and Will Lockwood, from attending, and things are looking pretty sparse up front.

So if the Canucks’ prospects are intending to put on any sort of for a Penticton crowd which is still technically within their jurisdiction of fandom, it’s likely going to be more of the goal saving than goal scoring variety. At least they can be thankful that some of the fire power from last year, like Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, Calgary’s Sam Bennett, and Winnipeg’s Nikolai Ehlers, won’t be back after graduating to the NHL. Instead, they’ll just have to contend with the new crop: Edmonton’s Jesse Puljujarvi, Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk, and Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine (actually, Laine won’t be there since he’s at the World Cup, but still). Welp.

Western Canadian teams suck, by the way.

The tournament starts one week from today, and single game and double header tickets are still available from www.valleyfirsttix.com. Grab ’em if you can! These tournaments tend to be entertaining even if there’s less flash up front than in previous years.