The Vancouver Canucks kept fairly quiet on the first day of free agency and have been positively silent in the subsequent two months.

The Canucks added just three bona fide NHL players in free agency — defencemen Jamie Oleksiak and Luke Schenn, and bottom-six forward Paul Cotter — as well as a smidgen of AHL depth in Akil Thomas, Trey Fix-Wolansky, and Matthew Stienburg.

That’s it. That’s all.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. The Canucks, after all, are a rebuilding team that, ideally, would love to finish dead last in the NHL again this season and hopefully pick first overall in the NHL draft for the first time in their history. Short-term improvement isn’t really the goal.

A key component of a rebuild, however, is building up tradeable assets.

The Canucks have a handful of pending unrestricted free agents (UFAs) who could potentially be shopped at the trade deadline: Filip Chytil, Brendan Gallagher, Drew O’Connor, Paul Cotter, and Luke Schenn.

There’s an argument to be made that they could use more. After all, it’s hard to imagine getting a particularly high draft pick for any of those pending UFAs, barring a miraculously healthy season for Chytil or O’Connor erupting out of nowhere.

With a few free agents remaining on the board, should the Canucks look to sign someone else ahead of training camp?

There are a few questions that should be asked before the Canucks sign anyone.

The selling point for the Canucks as a free agent destination, beyond the money, is that you’ll get an opportunity to prove you can be helpful to a Stanley Cup contender, so that you can be traded to one.

So, the first question is, do the Canucks have holes on the roster that would allow a potential free agent to prove themselves to potential trade targets?

The second is related: can a free agent be added without blocking a spot for a younger player?

Those are questions we can potentially answer from the outside, but, internally, the Canucks will have other questions, namely, do they want to risk improving too much and thereby lose out on prime draft position? And, does the Canucks’ ownership have any appetite to increase the team’s salary for the coming season?

Let’s look at the two questions we can answer by taking a gander at the Canucks’ current depth chart for the upcoming season.

To be clear, this isn’t a full depth chart of the entire organization, but instead a chart of the team’s playable depth, namely players signed to NHL contracts. So, don’t get on my case for not including the likes of Caleb Malhotra, Brooks Rogowski, and Niklas Aaram-Olsen, none of whom have signed an NHL contract as of yet.

At forward, the Canucks have some holes.

Jake DeBrusk is the lone top-six winger on the left side, though Liam Öhgren showed promise last season. Drew O’Connor and Paul Cotter are potential trade chips, so there’s value in keeping some space open for them to play further up the lineup.

Meanwhile, Max Sasson and Arshdeep Bains are right at the border: a little too old to be considered prospects, and not quite established enough to be considered NHLers.

There’s a reason why there’s talk that Adam Novotny could potentially surprise at training camp and make the team to start the year: there’s an opportunity for him to sneak past the likes of Cotter, Sasson, and Bains to force his way onto the team.

At the same time, that’s a lot of bodies on the left wing, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for a veteran free agent like Michael Bunting or Jonathan Drouin.

Down the middle, the Canucks have a decent amount of depth, but lack penalty killers, which opens the door for Ilya Safonov to make the team as a bottom-six option. He’ll have competition from top prospect Braeden Cootes, though Cootes might benefit from marinating in Abbotsford to start the season.

An argument could be made to add a bottom-six centre, especially with Chytil’s uncertain health. However, the free agent market doesn’t have much to offer in the vein of two-way centres aside from the declining Adam Henrique and the been-there-done-that David Kämpf. It’s likely better to leave more opportunities open for Cootes and Aatu Räty.

Right wing, on the other hand, offers some possibilities.

Please feel free to quibble with Linus Karlsson’s placement on the borderline, but it’s primarily because he’s 26 and can’t really be considered “youth” anymore, but hasn’t really played enough in the NHL to be considered a “veteran.” This is a big season for the Swedish winger, as there’s a clear opportunity to battle for a top-six job with Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Brendan Gallagher.

But boy oh boy, are the Canucks lacking depth on the right wing beyond that, though that might be helped if Filip Chytil moves over from centre.

Would it make sense, then, to sign, say, Vladimir Tarasenko or Eeli Tolvanen to play in the top-six with an eye towards trading him at the deadline?

Tolvanen, in particular, could make a lot of sense. He’s still fairly young at 26, plays a decent two-way game, and can pop in some goals.

The Canucks’ defence and goaltending look fairly set in place.

With Oleksiak and Schenn added to the group, there’s room for Buium, Pettersson, and Willander, while still offering them veteran support. That leaves Kudryavtsev and Mancini (and possibly Mynio) to battle to be the team’s seventh defenceman.

That’s not a lot of NHL-caliber depth, however.

Are the Canucks comfortable with the idea of Jimmy Schuldt and Jack Thompson playing games in the NHL this season? Perhaps they are. But perhaps adding one more depth defenceman wouldn’t hurt.

As for goaltenders, the Canucks are likely comfortable with Nikita Tolopilo stepping in if and when injuries occur, and Ty Young is likely next in line and is due for a test to see if he can handle NHL games. The odds of the Canucks signing another goaltender are vanishingly low.