It couldn’t have been the year Liam Öhgren expected to have, especially given it was his rookie season in the NHL.

Beginning the season with the team that drafted him, the Minnesota Wild, Öhgren struggled out of the gate. Spent some time up with the big club, and also down in Iowa with their minor league team. Through his first 18 NHL games this season, he had remained pointless, finding himself on Minnesota’s fourth line, likely to be sent down to the AHL once again.

That is, until the Canucks came calling and Öhgren was packaged together with two of his teammates, Zeev Buium and Marco Rossi, along with a first-round pick, headed to Vancouver in exchange for the team’s captain and superstar defenceman Quinn Hughes.

The narrative surrounding Öhgren following the trade to Vancouver was that he was just a throw-in that the Canucks had interest in back in 2022 when he was selected 19th overall by the Wild.

With the Canucks decimated by injuries at that point, they planned to give him a look in the NHL. Once some of their regulars got healthy and came back into the lineup, Öhgren would likely be sent down to Abbotsford. It all made sense given his lack of production up to that point in the NHL, paired with the fact that fellow Swede and Canucks 2022 first-round pick Jonathan Lekkerimäki was in Abbotsford, allowing the two of them to reunite as linemates in North America as they once were in Sweden.

That plan, however, didn’t come to fruition. From Öhgren’s first game in the Canucks lineup, you could tell there was something there. The size, speed, and skill the then-21-year-old – now 22 – showed there was no way the team could justify sending him down.

Though his point totals through his 51 games in Vancouver didn’t exactly pop off the page, Öhgren certainly popped every time he was on the ice. Each and every night, Öhgren was one of the most exciting players to watch in the Canucks lineup. He worked hard, he played fast, and displayed his skill. The flashes he showed are very promising for his future in Vancouver.

Not only were the flashes of talent exciting, but one of the more exciting aspects surrounding the team late in the season was the emergence of the BRÖ line featuring Öhgren, Rossi and Brock Boeser.

The stretch this trio had late in the season, where Boeser was scoring at a 40-goal pace over 82 games, and Rossi was producing at over a point per game, Öhgren was just shy of that point per game pace as well, brought some belief amongst fans in some of the pieces this franchise is going to rebuild around.

His offensive ability was promising, but his defensive responsibility is another area where he has improved down the stretch this season. Following the trade deadline, he was featured on the team’s penalty kill and was trusted late in games with the lead, although there weren’t many of those situations.

It still says something about the player when he’s playing in his first season in the league, and his coach trusts him in all situations, no matter what the state of the team is or who the head coach is.

To sum up Öhgren’s first season with the Vancouver Canucks, it has to be seen as a great, unexpected first impression and a promising starting point for a young player’s career. Maybe he doesn’t quite have the upside to become a first-line winger, but that was never the expectation. What he’s proven this year is that there is a lot of upside with this player, and he has the potential to be a very good contributor in the team’s middle-six forward group. He’s even earned a spot on the Swedish national team this offseason to take part in the IIHF World Championships, something many didn’t expect would happen given his start to the 2025-26 season.

Once seen as a throw-in by some, Öhgren has certainly proven he is much more than that.