Training Camp is upon us, and on paper, the battles have already begun.

Plenty of attention has been paid to the big-ticket competitions for spots on the 2024/25 Vancouver Canucks. There are, for example, two spots in the top six to be fought over between all of Nils Höglander, Danton Heinen, Daniel Sprong, Pius Suter, and maybe even Jonathan Lekkerimäki. Lower down the lineup, there’s a near certainty that one of the forwards hoping for a fourth-line job is going to come up short.

And then, who really knows what the heck is going on in the crease?

But if there’s one area where there doesn’t seem to be much debate to be had about the shape of the roster, it’s the Canucks’ blueline.

Most seem pretty certain about who is going to make up that blue line. You’ve got your 1D in Quinn Hughes and 2D in Filip Hronek. Whether those two pair together or not, they’re to be joined in the top four by Tyler Myers and Carson Soucy. The presumed bottom pairing in terms of minutes, if not exact deployment, are new guys Vincent Desharnais and Derek Forbort.

Beyond the starting six, most assume that the seventh defender will be Noah Juulsen. Then, if the Canucks choose to and can afford to carry an eighth defender, that would presumably be Mark Friedman.

However, teams should always try to avoid just handing out gigs in Training Camp without the need for players to compete for those gigs, and that notion tends to hold particularly true the further one travels down the depth chart. Really, no one should be anything more than pencilled into an extra spot on the roster, even if they spent the entirety of the past season there. Juulsen and Friedman are no different.

The good news, then, is that there may be more of a genuine battle for the Canucks’ extra blueline spots than previously anticipated.

The Penticton Young Stars Classic kicks off on Friday, where a sizeable collection of Vancouver prospects will duke it out with those of the other Western Canadian franchises. But two of those most in the running for the Canucks’ blueline will not be there.

Cole McWard is suffering through what’s being called a “nagging minor injury” and will skip the tournament to go straight to main camp, also held in Penticton. Jett Woo, meanwhile, is just skipping ahead to main camp – no injury required.

That probably indicates that Woo and McWard – assuming he recovers in time – are not just being given outside shots to snatch jobs away from Juulsen and Friedman. They’re being given a genuine chance at becoming the Canucks’ extra defender from the jump, and that’s both a great thing for the competitive spirit of camp and potentially an important one for the shape of the 2024/25 season.

No one really puts much thought into the seventh and eighth defenders on a team, especially not in September, when the team is mostly injury-free. But that can change mighty quickly.

Last year, Juulsen entered the season as the 6D on the chart, behind Hughes, Hronek, Myers, Soucy, and Ian Cole. A preseason injury to Soucy bumped Juulsen further up the chart, and, due to necessity, trading for Mark Friedman from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Even after Nikita Zadorov was acquired to complete the top six, the extras still played plenty. All told, Juulsen dressed for 54 regular season games last year (and two more in the playoffs), more than half the schedule, while Friedman dressed for 23, which is more than a quarter.

Meanwhile, lower down the depth chart, there were precious few opportunities to play. Akito Hirose got into three games, and McWard dressed for one, the last of which came in November.

That’s why this battle at the bottom matters. Whoever winds up the seventh or eighth on the chart will play, and they’ll probably play a fair amount – enough to have a legitimate impact on the outcome of the season. Whoever winds up below them probably won’t unless the blueline injuries reach catastrophic levels, at which point that factor will have more of an impact than whoever happens to be filling in.

For Woo, the stakes couldn’t be more clear. Most folks don’t reach a make-or-break moment in their careers at the age of 24, but hockey players are different, and for Woo, that moment is now. He’s a “veteran prospect,” even though he’s younger than Hirose and only a year older than McWard. He went through waivers unclaimed last October. If he doesn’t steal an NHL spot away this year, he can’t guarantee getting the same shot next year.

But the shot is there now. Woo now has four AHL campaigns behind him and a total of 200 AHL games. He’s improved in each of those seasons, bringing his career high in points to 31 as of 2023/24, but his improvement in his own end of the ice is far more notable.

Woo is now considered one of Abbotsford’s most reliable two-way defenders – and he’s still the same Woo that once drew almost all of his headlines for bone-crushing hits.

Is that enough to earn him a job? It hasn’t been in the past. But Woo is better now, and this is the most clear-cut shot he’s been given. The skipping of Penticton is an opportunity, and it’s also a message. Maybe not entirely ‘do or die,’ but ‘do or demoted,’ with no real answer as to when the next opportunity might come.

Of course, Juulsen and Friedman must still be considered to have the inside track. Juulsen has a remarkable ability to fit in fine enough with just about any partner on either side of the ice, and he’s got a significant physical element of his own. Meanwhile, Friedman is a serious agitating presence, something that’s rare on the blue line, and he has a near-manic devotion to sacrificing his body for his team.

If Woo is going to supplant one of them, he’s going to have to perform better than he ever has before. If he needs to supplant both of them – meaning the Canucks start with only seven D, and thus only have one extra spot up for grabs – it’ll be a truly heated contest.

Which is, again, the best thing for the Canucks in the long run. The 2024/25 season is shaping up to be one that matters, and that has to start from the get-go. Beginning the year with a roster full of players who truly fought their way onto the roster is the best energy a team can bring into their schedule.

We’ll take a brief moment here to mention that this won’t necessarily be just a three-way battle. Juulsen, Friedman, and now Woo seem to be the players most in the running for extra spots, but if he’s healthy enough for it, all indications are that McWard will get a real shot, too. Then there are some more veteran options like Christian Wolanin and Guillaume Brisebois. For those willing to count those players out now that they’re ‘AHL vets,’ consider that Juulsen himself was thought to be that not too long ago and has suited up for 99 games for Abbotsford over the past couple of years.

Things can change quickly, and no status is permanent on the fringes of an NHL lineup.

The Young Stars Classic starts Friday. But the most important battles start the week after, and they might just be the most intense right on those fringes.