First preseason win at Rogers Arena.

Braeden Cootes has been one of the biggest storylines coming out of training camp. The 2025 first-rounder has built on a strong camp by being one of Vancouver’s best forwards through three preseason games, definitely making a strong case to crack the opening night roster at the very minimum to see what he can do at the NHL level.

Alongside Evander Kane and Jonathan Lekkerimäki, the latter of whom also looked like a genuine top-six contributor last night, the trio racked up some of the best numbers amongst all Canuck forward lines. Their 0.53 xGF was the best out of any Vancouver forward unit, while a 0.09 xGA meant that their xGF% stood at 85.11, which was also a team-high. They were thrown out into a variety of situations and never really looked out of place. Granted, the quality of opposition wasn’t the highest across the board, but a good outing is still a good outing.

It’s interesting to watch this non-broken-down version of Quinn Hughes. The Canucks captain definitely wasn’t going all out last night, but even just from him getting reps in, it was impressive to witness just what he’s capable of. Hughes led all Canucks with a 0.91 xGF at 5v5, the next highest mark being his pairing partner in Filip Hronek with a 0.72. He was on ice for a 10-3 scoring chance differential, with a further 4-2 high-danger chance advantage. Something to note as well was how Hughes saw 100% of his shift starts and faceoff starts in the offensive zone at 5v5 play, perhaps another example of the Canucks coaching staff wanting him to get more reps in those situations.

Given the issues the power play and penalty kill units have had in the past couple of seasons, this preseason represented a new opportunity under a new head coach to reimagine what they would look like. Obviously, it would’ve been nice to see these things against some more NHL-calibre competition, but the results against the Kraken definitely are promising.

Let’s look at the power play first. They only spent 2:22 TOI, all of which came in the third, on the man advantage, but even in that limited span, they looked like dynamite. The numbers had Vancouver racking up a 6-1 shot difference, a 5-0 scoring chance difference, and a 3-0 lead in high-danger chances. Again, this was essentially a power play, accompanied by some adjustments, which is remarkable efficiency when it comes to chance generation.

The penalty kill might fly under the radar, but they were darn good themselves. Seattle got two cracks on the man advantage and couldn’t generate a single thing against Vancouver. In total, during 4:00 shorthanded, Vancouver only gave up 2 scoring chances, with zero high-danger chances coming. If those are the results from your PK alone, you’re in a good spot to win some hockey games.

Vitaly Kravstov and Vilmer Alriksson were not really a factor in this game, which is a disappointment given that they’re the ones battling to leave an impression. Both players finished below 0.10 xGF, which isn’t great when facing the type of opposition that they were deployed against. At the very least, Alriksson had a 3-1 scoring chance edge during his TOI, but Kravstov was basically doing cardio after losing his assignment defensively on Seattle’s 2-0 goal. The Russian winger literally wasn’t on ice for a single scoring chance by the Canucks. The roster cuts are coming, and these two definitely didn’t do themselves any favours here.

Was it the most perfect game? No. The Canucks probably should’ve blown these guys out, given the difference in calibre up and down the lineup. But at the same time, Vancouver was getting their reps in, doing some good things throughout the entire game before cranking up the heat to get the win. That’s always fun to watch, and there’s plenty of promising things to keep an eye out for as the preseason continues.

Vancouver travels to Edmonton for their next contest, facing the Oilers on Sunday.