The 2026-27 NHL regular season, for the first time in a long time, opens up in September this year. By the time you’re reading these words, we’re fewer than three weeks away from opening night.

Things on the roster front seem quiet, and have been so for a while now. Aside from the Adam Novotný ELC, that Zeev Buium extension, and the Chris Driedger PTO, GM Ryan Johnson and Co. haven’t made a transaction since July 2, when they signed Matthew Stienburg to a one-year contract.

Some folks might have expected more outright change by this point. Thus far, the Johnson front office has only completed four trades: a draft pick swap with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the selling of Nils Höglander to the Nashville Predators for a third-round pick, the picking up of a half-retained Brendan Gallagher from the Montreal Canadiens for future considerations, and the swapping of Marcus Pettersson to the New York Rangers for a 2030/2031 first-round pick.

That last trade came on July 1, the same day as the Free Agent Frenzy. And, when it happened, most probably assumed that it wouldn’t be the Vancouver Canucks’ last trade of the summer. But so far, it has been.

The question we’re looking at today, then, is how likely it might be that the Canucks make another trade before the 2026-27 season officially kicks off. Do they still have one more move up their sleeve, or are they rolling with the roster they’ve got at this point?

It’s probably best to start with the fact that the Canucks don’t need to make a deal. They’re certainly not hurting for cap space, and aren’t anywhere near the cap floor. No one appears to be outright blocking another player from getting an opportunity.

We’ve talked a little bit before about the roster congestion at the top of the forward corps. The Canucks will have all of Jake DeBrusk, Brock Boeser, Liam Öhgren, Linus Karlsson, Drew O’Connor, Filip Chytil, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, and Brendan Gallagher vying for top-six winger spots. Even if the Canucks focus on a top-nine structure, that’s still a few too many names.

But it should still be easy enough for the Canucks to give increasing minutes to their young wingers, like Lekkerimäki and Öhgren, as they are earned, and to shave more and more minutes off the veterans as the season progresses. There’s still room, at the very least, for all of these players to make the opening night roster, and thus, no real need to trade anyone prior to that.

The defence is pretty much set one-through-eight, with Victor Mancini and Kirill Kudryavtsev set to be the extras to start, either in the press box or down in Abbotsford. There’s no need for any wheeling and dealing there.

The current goaltending situation is also unlikely to be dealt with via trade. Thatcher Demko’s health remains in question, and until there’s more certainty, the team isn’t going to part with their literal backup plan in Kevin Lankinen. Were Demko to be fully ready to go by the end of Training Camp, we could envision a scenario in which the Canucks seek to trade Nikita Tolopilo, rather than waiving him, as they did with Arturs Silovs a year ago. But Silovs was almost a guarantee to be taken on waivers, whereas Tolopilo is more of a 50/50 chance. Given Demko’s health concerns, it seems likely that the Canucks would rather risk waiving Tolopilo, and then potentially having him available in Abbotsford all year, than to pick up a fifth or sixth round pick back for him. (If such a return was even available.)

In terms of the other teams around the league, it’s worth noting that there is still an outrageous amount of cap space available, though it has dwindled considerably over the course of the summer. Some teams that were linked to the Canucks in trade talks are plainly out of the picture for now. The Los Angeles Kings, for example, were reportedly interested in Elias Pettersson, and at one point had plenty of cap space to accommodate him. But now the Kings are down to less than $2 million in cap space, and there’s just no way that a team with playoff ambitions is going to do the kind of roster reconstruction required to change that over the next couple of weeks.

The same could be said for the St. Louis Blues, another team linked to Pettersson that has whittled their way down to about $4 million in cap space. Certain doors that may have been open earlier have now been closed, at least for the time being.

The Anaheim Ducks, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Calgary Flames, the Detroit Red Wings, the Montreal Canadiens, the Nashville Predators, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Seattle Kraken all have at least $9 million in space remaining. So, technically speaking, if the Canucks wanted to get rid of another veteran contract before the season, there’s room elsewhere. But most of those teams have fairly settled rosters at this point and are about to start their own training camps. The right time for them to use that cap space on veteran additions probably comes later in the year, not right now.

For specific Canucks players, the situation also seems to have settled. Many believed that DeBrusk was going to move this summer after his comments about not having signed up for a rebuild. But upon arriving at camp, DeBrusk seemed to have changed his tune, speaking highly of Vancouver as a city and stating directly: “I want to say this on the record: I have not asked for a trade…I signed in Vancouver for a reason. I wanted to help them win and I still think I can help them.”

We’d put good money on DeBrusk still being traded at some point before the conclusion of his current contract, but it no longer seems imminent. And, in the end, that’s probably the right call, because DeBrusk had a historically anomalous season last year. The odds of DeBrusk only putting up 18 even-strength points again are very low, which means he’s a good bet to restore some trade value over the course of the 2026-27 season. By waiting it out, the Canucks could get a better return for him.

The same almost certainly goes for Pettersson, too. Johnson has spoken about Pettersson a lot this summer, and the emphasis has been on creating a positive environment in which Pettersson can rediscover as much of his game as is possible. Down the road, that probably still translates to Pettersson being traded eventually, but this is another situation in which patience is probably rewarding. It’s not like Pettersson’s trade value is going to drop much from where it is, and any combination of him rebounding and continued salary inflation should increase his value considerably.

A good or even decent season from Pettersson, and the offers should get better. Or, maybe he really resurrects his career, at which point the Canucks might just keep him around for the duration. Either way, there’s not much downside to waiting it out.

So, overall, we’d say the chances of the Canucks making a trade between now and opening night are relatively low. However, two factors give us pause.

The first is the Detroit Red Wings, still without a GM this late in the summer. Previously, the Red Wings were said to be one of the teams most interested in Pettersson, but GM Steve Yzerman stepping down would have obviously put any trade talks on hold. Whenever they hire a new GM, one wonders if talks resume.

That said, Detroit’s interest in Pettersson was predicated on their needing to trade captain Dylan Larkin, who publicly requested a trade. That still hasn’t happened. So, to expect a new GM hire to come in, trade Larkin, and trade for Pettersson within the span of a couple of weeks is a lot to ask. If this door re-opens, it probably re-opens later on in the season.

The other factor is Johnson’s reported interest in taking advantage of the Canucks’ top position on the waiver claims priority list. The Canucks get first shot at anyone placed on waivers between now and November, and to hear Johnson talk about it, he’s planning to make at least one claim.

Any player claimed on waivers, especially if they’re a forward, will have to equate to someone else not making the roster. One wonders if Johnson’s interest in waivers has anything to do with ongoing plans to complete a trade. In other words, is he eyeing a forward who might hit waivers because he knows he can open up a spot with another veteran trade? Or is it more a question of seeing where someone like Lekkerimäki is at in camp, and then maybe picking up an alternative if he’s not quite up to snuff?

Either way, we’ll know soon enough. The puck drops on September 29 all the same, trades or no trades. And at this point, we’d bet on no trades.