After an offseason in which their top waiver priority was a frequent topic of conversation, the Vancouver Canucks finally used said priority on Friday, plucking goaltender Leevi Meriläinen off the waiver wire from the Ottawa Senators.

It’s not the most consequential transaction in recent Canucks history. Meriläinen is clearly seen as having current and future potential by this Vancouver front office, but they’re claiming him to fill a backup role in a season when the Canucks plan to lose a lot of hockey.

Still, the Meriläinen claim has a lot of important implications that should be discussed somewhere, and that somewhere is here. We’ll go through it point-by-point.

This is probably the most important point to make here. When news broke of the Meriläinen claim, you could find plenty of reaction online along the lines of “they wasted their top waiver priority on this guy?”

But they didn’t. The concept of a team making a waiver claim and then going to the back of the priority list is an invention of fantasy hockey, and is not reflected in the NHL rules. The NHL’s waiver claim priority list is always determined by the standings in reverse order, and claims made have no impact upon that. Up until November 1, the priority list is determined by last season’s standings – ergo, the Canucks will stay in the top priority spot until then, no matter what.

Past November 1, waiver priority is determined by the current season’s standings. So, the only thing that will change the Canucks’ spot is if they manage to rise above last place in the standings by then. Chances are best, then, that the Canucks retain the spot even beyond November.

That does mean that, if a goaltender they liked better than Meriläinen were to hit the waiver wire, they could still make the first claim on that goaltender. That would probably necessitate placing Meriläinen back on waivers, but more on that later. For now, let’s assume they’re sticking with Meriläinen.

This might sound a little harsh, but the Canucks simply would not have made this claim if they thought Nikita Tolopilo was the right fit as their backup to start the 2026-27 season. At the very least, this claim confirms that the team believes Meriläinen is the better fit.

And it’s not too hard to see how they reached that conclusion. With an eye to the future, Meriläinen is two-and-a-half years younger than Tolopilo, so he should be seen as having more potential left within him. And, being drafted in the third round compared to Tolopilo’s undrafted status, one might argue that Meriläinen has always had more potential.

The two’s NHL stats are roughly comparable, with Meriläinen having the slight experience edge, but Meriläinen’s AHL stats have been consistently superior.

GM Ryan Johnson said he’d be making claims whenever he saw players on the wire who were better short- and long-term fits for his roster than what he currently had, including in the crease. In claiming Meriläinen, he seems to have done exactly that.

For a time, there was a discussion around starting the season with three goaltenders on the roster: Thatcher Demko, Kevin Lankinen, and Tolopilo.

Demko starting the season still injured, and now on Injured Reserve officially, obviously made that a whole lot less likely. And the pickup of Meriläinen is really the nail in that coffin. With the 24-year-old Meriläinen in place and on the Canucks’ roster, one can assume they’ll want him to play as often as possible behind Lankinen. The idea, then, of him splitting his starts with someone else, be it Tolopilo or PTO Chris Driedger, is counter-productive.

Barring another injury, Lankinen and Meriläinen should start the 2026-27 season in the starter and backup roles, respectively. Johnson pretty much confirmed the avoidance of a three-goalie solution himself, speaking after the claim: “It’s not something that I’ve intended to do. Obviously, we’ll get through tomorrow night (against Seattle). The three-goaltender system, from my experience at any level, is complicated for everybody and more so for the goalies themselves.”

That almost certainly puts Tolopilo himself onto the waiver wire. He’s already played his maximum two preseason games, anyway, and Lankinen is projected to get the start in the final exhibition match against Seattle.

Tolopilo might get another practice in with the team, but the Canucks still need to cut two players from their roster before opening day on September 29. Those two further cuts will be two goaltenders, and those goaltenders are Tolopilo and Driedger. That means Tolopilo hits the waiver wire no later than Monday.

At this point, it’s hard to guess whether another team would claim Tolopilo on waivers. He has some potential of his own and an excess amount of size, so it’s conceivable there’s interest. That said, other, seemingly superior goalies are still projected to hit the waiver wire, and other teams might reasonably prioritize those claims.

For now, we’d put the odds at slightly below 50/50 that Tolopilo gets plucked. But the Canucks still need to have a plan in place in the event that he is claimed.

Currently, the goaltending duo in Abbotsford is the rather inexperienced Ty Young and Aku Koskenvuo. Chances are the Canucks want at least a little more coverage down there, both for potential injuries and the possibility that Meriläinen doesn’t work out. Plan A is waiving Tolopilo successfully and having him resume his duties as the Abbotsford starter. If Tolopilo gets claimed, it’s probably on to Plan B, which we assume is signing Driedger, waiving him, and then having him share starts with Young and/or Koskenvuo in Abbotsford.

In claiming Meriläinen, the Canucks are committing to having him on their NHL roster, at least for now. One might prefer it if they could try him out and still send him down to Abbotsford, in lieu of Tolopilo, if he doesn’t look quite right or ready. But that’s not how waiver claims work.

If the Canucks wanted to reassign Meriläinen to Abbotsford, they’d first have to place him on waivers again. Having been claimed, there’s no 30-day period of waiver-exemption for Meriläinen, as there is for players who pass through unclaimed.

That means offering Meriläinen up to all other 31 NHL teams. And given that the Canucks used their top priority slot to claim Meriläinen, they have no real way of knowing who else might have been interested in him. 

Even if the Canucks tried to slip Meriläinen through waivers down to Abbotsford, they’d first have to face the prospect of an Ottawa reclaim.

When a player gets claimed on waivers and then is placed back on waivers within the same season, the team who lost them in the first place gets a one-time opportunity to reclaim and demote that player themselves.

This isn’t an automatic or guaranteed right. Ottawa would have to put in a claim for Meriläinen from whatever their spot in the priority list happened to be at the time. And they’d have to be the only team to put in a claim. But if that happened, the Senators would get Meriläinen back with the option of sending him right down to the AHL themselves with no further waiving required.

It should be said, though, that immediately upon losing Meriläinen, the Senators traded for goalie Jonas Johansson, who had himself already been passed through waivers and is now their presumed AHL starter. That means that, if Meriläinen hits the waiver wire again, the Senators might not see the need in reclaiming him. Meriläinen ending up in Abbotsford eventually, then, is still possible, especially in the event that Demko ever returns to health and the lineup. It would just require the Canucks placing him on waivers and having no one, not even the Senators, put in a claim.

As we’ve already covered above, claiming Meriläinen did not cost the Canucks their top waiver priority spot. It does cost them an active roster spot, of course. And the Canucks are now responsible for Meriläinen’s cap hit of $1.1 million, which is a little higher than Tolopilo’s own $850,000 – not that it matters much to the cap-flush Canucks.

A waiver claim does come with a real financial cost, too, albeit a relatively small one. The Canucks had to pay the Senators a flat-cash fee of $67,500 (USD). This amount does not count against the salary cap.