The Vancouver Canucks are in a bit of a tough spot as they attempt to determine the short- and long-term futures of their NHL blueline.

It’s not exactly ‘between a rock and a hard place’ territory. It’s more a case of awkward and uncertain timing.

The gist of the issue is that the Canucks need defensive help now, as in right now in the 2024/25 regular season, and especially as they begin to head toward the 2025 playoffs. That’s led to GM Patrik Allvin and Co. exploring the trade market for NHL defenders early on this year.

At the same time, the team also has some stellar defensive prospects that should be ready to make an impact…sometime soon.

How soon? That’s the rub.

If those prospects aren’t going to be ready this year or next, they’re not really relevant to the Canucks exploiting this current competitive window, and further NHL-level reinforcements are absolutely needed. But if the prospects in question were to be ready sooner rather than later, those reinforcements might not just be redundant, but might actually get in the way of the prospects’ natural progress.

Thomas Drance recently wrote about this for The Athletic, stating that “When it comes to the state of the blue line, a topic that has long preoccupied Canucks hockey operations leadership since they arrived in Vancouver, the organization feels like they’re caught in between the present and the future and have to be mindful of precisely how they proceed.”

Now, when we talk about this somewhat immediate succession plan, we’re primarily talking about three individuals: (the other) Elias Pettersson, Cole McWard, and Tom Willander.

And that somewhat naturally leads to a question of just how soon the Canucks can reasonably expect each player to contribute at the NHL level.

Each hockey prospect is an individual, of course, and their paths are pretty much impossible to prognosticate with any real accuracy. But each prospect also carries a profile of attributes that they share with other past prospects, and that can at least give us a bit of a road-map to base our predictions on.

Today, we’re going to look at the arrival times and performance levels of D prospects from recent draft classes around the league to see if we can make a more concrete estimate of when the Canucks can expect these youngsters to step into the lineup full-time.

With that said, we’re leaving McWard aside for now. Signed as an undrafted free agent out of the NCAA at the age of 22, McWard already carries a very unique prospect profile, which makes predicting his future all but impossible.

With Willander and Pettersson, however, we’ve got a far bit more data.

We’ll start with Willander. Drafted 11^th overall in 2023, Willander is easily the most-hyped pick the Canucks have had in their system since Quinn Hughes.

When we look at Willander’s draft class, we don’t find many players making a big league impact quite yet. Only six players – Connor Bedard, Zach Benson, Leo Carlsson, Adam Fantilli, Matvei Michkov, and Will Smith – have played more than 10 NHL games thus far.

Of the set, only Benson was drafted later than Willander at 13^th overall. And none of them play D. In fact, not one defender from Willander’s draft class has suited up for a game as of yet.

Of course, that’s not exactly relevant to the question at hand, because the Canucks need Willander to make an impact soon, but not necessarily right now. The plan for him seems to be to try to sign him at the conclusion of his NCAA campaign this year, perhaps get him into some NHL action in late March, and then ideally transition him into more regular play for 2025/26.

To get some relevant case studies for next year, then, we’ve got to look at the draft class that came a year before Willander’s.

The 2022 class does have some blueliners playing everyday roles at the NHL level, albeit not many. Pavel Mintyukov, drafted 10^th overall and already on his second year with the Anaheim Ducks, leads the pack with 81 career games. Kevin Korchinski, drafted seventh overall, is in second place with 76 games, but they all came last year, and he’s spent all of 2024/25 in the AHL thus far.

Simon Nemec, drafted second overall in 2022, has earned 69 games so far, and David Jiricek, drafted sixth overall, has played 53. But both of them have subsequently been demoted to the AHL for additional seasoning as of the present moment.

Other D drafted in 2022 have seen spot duty this season, but the only other one playing a real role at the NHL level right now is Lane Hutson (62^nd overall) for the Montreal Canadiens.

So, right now, in their Draft+2 years – which is where Willander will be as of next season – there are just two defenders from the 2022 draft class playing full-time NHL minutes. And, to be fair, they are big minutes; Mintyukov is averaging 20:47 a night and Hutson is up to 22:54.

But then it must be noted that Mintyukov and Hutson are playing those minutes for two of the worst teams in hockey.

So, if Willander were to be ready enough for regular minutes with the Canucks by the 2025/26 season, he’d be doing what only two defenders from the draft class before his are doing in the current moment, and he’d have to be doing it on a much, much better team with much higher stakes.

It does seem like a bit of a tall order.

Even the 2021 draft class, now on their Draft+3 campaigns, aren’t exactly taking over NHL bluelines. Here, JJ Moser (60^th overall) leads the pack with 224 games, followed by Owen Power (1^st, 184 games), Luke Hughes (4^th, 98 games), Ryker Evans (35^th, 57 games),Brandt Clarke (8^th, 46 games), Olen Zellweger (34^th, 44 games), and Simon Edvinsson (6^th, 19 games).

There’s enough there to say that there’s at least a good chance that Willander could be ready by 2025/26. But the list is light enough to say, at the very least, that if Willander isn’t ready by then, no one should be all that surprised. There are still some really good D prospects from 2021 that have yet to crack the NHL full-time, including names like Shai Buium, Scott Morrow, and Logan Mailloux. They probably will, given enough of a wait, but as Tom Petty always said, the waiting is the hardest part.

What does all this mean for Elias Pettersson II?

The comparables don’t really change, they just become harder targets for Pettersson to hit as someone drafted in the third round at 80^th overall, as opposed to Willander’s more lofty position.

If we’re talking the chances of Pettersson making an impact this current year, we’re talking a real longshot. Sure, Hutson is already here making a difference for the Canadiens, and he was drafted just 18 spots ahead of Pettersson. But, then, Hutson is a special prospect who really started gaining momentum in his Draft+1 season. It was an atypical growth spurt in talent that Pettersson himself just hasn’t experienced yet.

If we’re talking next year for Pettersson, the picture becomes a little rosier. That comparable of Moser, drafted 60^th overall in 2021 and already on his fourth NHL campaign, looks really promising.

But then Moser is just one prospect out of many, and his path hasn’t been a usual one. He’s a possibility, not a likelihood.

What we can tell you is that, over the past five drafts running, only three defenders drafted in the third round or later are playing a true full-time NHL role right now, and those are Emil Lilleberg in Tampa, Wyatt Kaiser in Chicago, and Matt Kessel in St. Louis. None of whom are playing particularly large roles.

It’s important to throw a little cold water on our own analysis here. Not only are we working with what are essentially small sample sizes of draft classes, but those draft classes can range wildly in quality from one year to another. Beyond that, as we said near the outset, each and every prospect is on their own individual path. The past is precedent, but it isn’t determinative. Those looking for additional optimism here can take solace in the fact that both Willander and Pettersson have progressed very well since being drafted, and often those post-draft years count as much as where a player was drafted in the first place.

What it all adds up to this this: there is indeed a chance that one or both of Willander and Pettersson are ready for regular NHL roles as of the 2025/26 season. But there’s also a chance that they won’t, and recent history might even suggest that the odds are against it.

Overall, this isn’t a problem. Prospects take the time they take to develop, and that’s just the way it is.

But this reality has to have an impact on the Canucks’ immediate plans. It suggests, at the very least, that outright counting on Willander and Pettersson to step into the lineup in the near future is a bad bet to ride on, and that acquiring some NHL-level reinforcements in the meantime is all but a necessity.

The future is still coming. It just might be slightly more delayed than the Canucks and their fans may have hoped for.