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JPat’s Monday Mailbag: Canucks prospects’ Olympic futures, Lekkerimäki’s benching, and more
Jeff Paterson's weekly Vancouver Canucks mailbag.
Jeff Paterson
Feb 2, 2026, 10:00 ESTUpdated: Feb 2, 2026, 01:57 EST
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It’s February. The countdown is on to the Olympics, but before then, the Vancouver Canucks still have a couple of games to play. The team is in Utah and Vegas this week before the National Hockey League goes dark for three weeks. While NHL hockey will stop, Canucks talk will not. You’ve got plenty of questions about this hockey club and, as always, we will do our best to answer some of them with our weekly Monday mailbag. Let’s get started.
It was difficult to understand the thinking on Saturday night as Jonathan Lekkerimäki logged one 25-second shift over the final 12:03 of the third period. And then watched as many others got shifts in an exciting 3-on-3 overtime. Head coach Adam Foote was asked about it postgame and said that there were concerns over Lekkerimäki’s defensive game, but that he expects the forward to learn quickly so that he can be an option in similar circumstances. No one is saying that Lekkerimäki needed to log more ice time than others, but he ought to have played more than he did.
The stakes are as low as they can possibly be right now, and the Canucks remain the last-place team in the league. Play the kids. Live with whatever mistakes they may make and use those as coachable moments. If this team is truly committed to the rebuild, it needs to start making decisions that will help advance the rebuild. Parking a player like Lekkerimäki for the second half of the third period and all of overtime didn’t make any sense on Saturday. And still doesn’t a few days later.
Well, we don’t know for certain that Lekkerimäki wasn’t part of the shootout plan. The Canucks only had two attempts, so the third shooter remains a mystery. My hunch is it would have been Liam Öhgren who has scored on two of his three attempts for the Canucks this season. But maybe it would have been Lekkerimäki. Maybe. We all remember his stick twirl before scoring in a shootout in New Jersey last season.
And he had already scored a pretty goal earlier on Saturday. So he certainly deserved some consideration. With Elias Pettersson now 0 for 5 and Jake DeBrusk just 1 for 5 (although, to be fair, he hit both posts with his attempt on Saturday), perhaps it’s time for the Canucks to reconsider their shootout roster altogether. Run Öhgren out first. Let Lekkerimäki have a go. Give Drew O’Connor a shot. Maybe see what Tom Willander can do. When the top of the order is a combined one for 10, it feels like it might just be time to redefine the top of the shootout lineup.
I’d have to say Tom Willander simply based on the competition Cootes and Buium will face on future Canadian and American Olympic rosters. Only 13 right-shot Swedish defencemen have appeared in an NHL game this season. So it’s a limited field to begin with. And at 35, Erik Karlsson is likely appearing in his final Olympic games, which further clears a path. Willander has plenty of developing to do before he’s on the Swedish Olympic radar, but he also has plenty of time to continue to grow his game. We’ll see how Buium and Cootes fare in the years to come. Both have represented their countries at the World Juniors, and Buium played for Team USA at the World Hockey Championship. The Olympics are another level altogether, but it’s certainly something any top NHL prospect can aspire to. 
I’m pretty sure the Trevor Linden ship has sailed. Linden gave it a shot and wound up on the wrong end of a power struggle to rebuild the roster a decade ago. Linden seems like he has settled into a successful business career away from the rink and I just don’t see him deciding to return to hockey management. And the Sedins appear to have found their groove in player development, but have shown no signs of wanting to climb the corporate ladder at Rogers Arena. At one point, a few years back, they looked at various opportunities within the team’s front office and decided they could best apply their skills on the ice rather than in the boardroom. By the looks of it, they seem fairly content doing their part in player development both in Vancouver and in Abbotsford. 
The Pittsburgh Penguins are a fascinating story. As of this writing, they are on a six-game win streak and sit eighth in the overall NHL standings with 67 points. But their top five scorers are 31 or older (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Anthony Mantha, Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson).  Three of those five are over the age of 35. So what happens when Crosby and Malkin –  two of the greatest players of their era – decide to pack it in? Where will that leave the Penguins? Obviously, they look to have landed a terrific young player in Coquitlam’s Ben Kindel, but he’s the only roster player under 25 who has made any sort of statistical impact this season.
So it feels premature to declare the Penguins’ rebuild on the fly a true success at this stage. Kyle Dubas has shown a willingness to make moves to help the hockey club and will surely continue to try to address needs with an eye to the future. But let’s slow the roll on any sort of victory lap for the Pens at this point. They still look like a team that will take them as far as Sid and Geno will take them. And that hardly sounds like a rebuild of any kind to me.
I’m saying Gavin McKenna. I know Ivar Stenberg struck gold and looked good at the World Juniors and profiles as a guy that will be ready to hit the ground running in the NHL when his time comes, However, I still think if the Canucks have the chance to grab McKenna, they should. Don’t overthink it. Run to the podium and pick the guy that’s been hyped for years now. He’s starting to find his scoring form at Penn State, he would be putting up ridiculous numbers had he spent his draft year in the Western Hockey League, and he seems like the type of prospect the Canucks could market to a fan base hungry for a next wave of star power.
As for what to do if they wind up third, I think you take Keaton Verhoeff and figure it out from there. I know this team needs offensive help, but a talented right-shot defenceman is always a coveted commodity. I think it would be a misstep to look past Verhoeff with the third pick. Unless the Canucks were prepared to move down in the first round and gain some draft capital for their efforts. But after the way this season has gone, it would be ludicrous for the Canucks to wind up with anything less than the third overall selection. 

What went wrong with prospect evaluation in drafts like Julevi and Virtanen and how do we avoid that in the future?

— ZaiderJake🇨🇦 (@jzaider.bsky.social) 2026-01-31T21:07:01.190Z

Clearly, much went wrong with those high first-round picks in 2014 and again in 2016. Jake Virtanen checked off a lot of boxes with size, speed, skating ability, and the fact he was a local product, but his hockey IQ and the drive to excel were lacking. Needing a defenceman after selecting forwards in the first rounds in 2013, 2014 & 2015, the Canucks locked onto Olli Juolevi after he excelled at the World Juniors and never really seemed to consider alternatives.
The organization is still paying for those whiffs a decade later. However, the management group responsible for those picks is no longer in charge, and this new front office has a solid track through its first four drafts (seven of their picks have already touched NHL ice – six for the Canucks and Hunter Brzustewicz for Calgary). There is always an element of risk when evaluating teenage hockey talent, but this group seems to have a handle on its scouting process. Obviously, the stakes are massive when picking near the top of the draft, but it sounds like any one of the top five in this year’s draft class has star potential. You’d like to think the Canucks can’t miss regardless of where they are slotted at the top of the first round. 
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