Heading into the 2024/25 preseason, there were many who expected one of the Vancouver Canucks’ top forward prospects to challenge for a spot on the team.

There just weren’t all that many who expected this top forward prospect to challenge for a spot on the team.

Yes, Jonathan Lekkerimäki has been given plenty of opportunity to shine and has made the most of a good portion of that opportunity. But he’s still been almost entirely outshone by someone who started out a little lower on the depth chart in Aatu Räty.

Now, where folks were wondering how the Canucks’ roster might shake out if Lekkerimäki beat the odds and cracked the team out of camp, they’re asking the same questions about Räty. But they’re perhaps not arriving at the same set of answers.

Lekkerimäki’s potential spot on the team was easy enough to figure out. Though we had it a bit off on the importance of locking in his performance bonus cushion – that only becomes necessary if and when the Canucks go over the cap via LTIR relief, something they’ll try to avoid – it didn’t change the fact that the only real place for Lekkerimäki on the actual roster was in the top-six. He received lots of ice-time alongside Elias Pettersson and Jake DeBrusk both in camp and in an exhibition game, and that’s realistically the only place he could have fit in that would justify not sending him to Abbotsford for at least the start of the year.

But those same restrictions don’t necessarily apply to Räty.

For one, he’s a fair bit older and more experienced than Lekkerimäki, at 21 years old and already on his third full season in North America. He’s also perceived as having a more well-rounded game that might reasonably fit in outside the Canucks’ top-six, especially with how head coach Rick Tocchet tends to roll his forward lines.

There aren’t many who are interested in having Räty come up and skate fourth line minutes, especially not with him still retaining waiver-exemption and the ability to play a bigger role in Abbotsford. But a top-nine deployment? That could definitely work out in the favour of both the Canucks in the present moment and Räty’s development in the medium- to long-term.

But how would it look?

As was the case with Lekkerimäki, Räty’s short-term spot in the lineup is easy enough to figure out if Dakota Joshua is not ready to go as of opening night. Räty would ostensibly then just cover Joshua’s spot until his return.

This would put Räty in the midst of a forward corps approximately 12 deep, made up of Elias Pettersson, JT Miller, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Danton Heinen, Teddy Blueger, Pius Suter, Kiefer Sherwood, Nils Höglander, and Daniel Sprong. Nils Åman or Phil Di Giuseppe could join as the extra forward, while Joshua recovers on the IR.

How the lines shake out, however, could get interesting. The organization seems dead-set on developing Räty as a centre at the NHL level, and so it stands to reason that they’d prefer if his first extended opportunity came at that position.

Pettersson and Miller are locked pretty tightly into a share of the 1C/2C responsibilities, and they’ve got a fairly dedicated collection of wingers accompanying them in the top-six in the form of Boeser, DeBrusk, and then two of Höglander, Heinen, and Sprong. Could Räty fill-in as one of the wingers? Sure, but that defeats the purpose of developing him as a centre, and as anyone can see, there’s already plenty of talent available for those roles.

Placing Räty somewhere on the so-called ‘third line,’ a place Joshua would normally occupy himself when healthy, makes more sense.

Coming into the season, many expected Suter to skate in between Joshua and Garland on that line. But Suter’s ability to play the wing on a scoring line creates a somewhat unique possibility. Räty could centre a line that features Suter on one wing and Garland on another. That would afford him some talented linemates, including one in Suter who can take some of the pressure off of playing centre at the NHL level whenever necessary.

It’s almost a perfect fit. And it still makes for a very strong fourth line of Sherwood, Blueger, and whichever of those aforementioned scoring wingers isn’t skating in the top-six at the moment.

But then what happens when Joshua returns, assuming no further injuries have occurred in the meantime?

One simple enough solution is to just call the audition complete and send Räty back down at that point. He won’t require waivers yet, and him being in Abbotsford was the original plan all along.

But if he makes the team outright, and if he continues to show well in early-season games, there may be a desire to keep him around, even after Joshua comes back. That becomes trickier to fit, but not impossible.

Assuming the team still wants to keep Räty at centre, he could simply slide in between Joshua and Garland, a spot that has already proven successful for three different centres in Suter, Blueger, and Elias Lindholm.

That would leave Suter without an obvious role. But then again, a fourth line of Sherwood, Blueger, and Suter would have to be considered among the strongest in the league. And for how long would the Canucks really have to ‘worry’ about a fully healthy forward corps, anyway?

A healthy roster is almost a theoretical concept in Vancouver. But theoretically speaking, we’re looking at something like:

It’s really hard not to like the looks of that lineup. Particularly if, as it has the potential to do, it stays under the salary cap. Sticking to the realm of theory, theoretically that should allow the Canucks to focus any accrued cap space on blueline upgrades, moving this group all that much closer to contention.

Räty’s making of the team would be unexpected, but not entirely out of line with where the franchise should be at in this stage of development. A team on the rise does traditionally want prospects pushing for spots from within, a sort of internal churn that ensures a turnover of talent and helps keep costs low with their entry-level contracts.

If Räty makes this roster, it will be because he earned the spot. There’s no doubt about that. And if he’s played well enough to earn the spot, it stands to reason that the Canucks are a better overall team for having him on it.

It’s easy enough to look at that prospective roster with Räty on it and see the possibility. He’s done about all he can to make it happen. From here on out, the decisions lie in the hands of the Canucks’ coaching staff and front office – but the Räty path is definitely there, should they choose to pursue it.