The Vancouver Canucks have made some headways over the last two days.

On Sunday morning, they made a trade with the Colorado Avalanche, sending Tucker Poolman and his $2.5 million contract, along with a fourth-round pick in exchange for defenceman Erik Brannstrom. With Noah Juulsen and Mark Friedman currently slated to be the Canucks’ seventh and eighth defenceman, Brannstrom was placed on waivers to assign to their AHL affiliates, Abbotsford Canucks.

Flipping to the East Coast, the Boston Bruins signed Jeremy Swayman to an eight-year extension. Now with Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo as the Bruins tandem, Boston put Jiri Patera on waivers, who they nabbed from the Canucks last week.

Well, everything’s coming up Canucks! As on Monday morning, they were able to re-claim Jiri Patera from the Bruins. In fact, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that Vancouver was the only team to place a claim on him, meaning that he could be freely sent to the AHL without clearing waivers as they were the original team to place him on waivers.

Then, shortly after Friedman was done making his waiver claims, Chek TV’s Rick Dhaliwal shared that recently acquired defenceman Brannstrom had cleared waivers and would report to Abbotsford.

It can’t get much more perfect in Canucks-land after these moves as they head into the season.

Without Jiri Patera and Jonathan Lemeuix – who was just sent to Kalamazoo of the ECHL – the Abbotsford Canucks would have just two goaltenders, Nikita Tolopilo and Ty Young, to start the season. Leaving first-year head coach Manny Malholtra with minimal options to have a successful inaugural season.

Patera has one thing Tolopilo doesn’t have: AHL experience. Patera has logged 85 games in the American League, while Tolopilo has just 35. Granted, last season was Tolopilo’s rookie campaign, where he finished with a 20-13-1 record, a 2.83 goals against average (GAA) and a .905 save percentage (S%). Patera holds a 37-40-6 record, 3.04 GAA and a .903 S% in his time with the Henderson Silver Knights.

Brannstrom on the other hand, is certainly more of a depth option, but a needed one at that. With how this defence corps is constructed, the Vancouver Canucks have just Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek, who you could categorize as established puck movers. Carson Soucy and Tyler Myers are competent in that regard; However, the third pairing of Derek Forbort and Vincent Desharnais lack in that area.

The 25-year-old defenceman has been a consistent member of the Senators’ blue line over the past two seasons, logging 150 games, scoring five goals and 33 assists for 38 points in 16:21 minutes of ice time. What’s most surprising about Brannstrom’s game is that he finished with a plus-five rating in both of those seasons – on a Senators team that wasn’t necessarily deemed as defensively sound.

Looking into the left side of the Abby defence, it was fairly crowded even before adding Brannstrom. Now, Brannstrom, who projects to be the leader of the clubhouse, makes it even more difficult for Malholtra to make time for young defenders Elias Pettersson and Kirill Kudryavtsev.

And if the former first-round pick starts out strong with Abbotsford, he could earn himself a call-up if Vancouver suffers an injury or needs an offensive threat from their bottom pairing.

With these moves today, the defence corps and the crease in Abbotsford look much more promising for Malholtra and the rest of the young players to develop in a competitive 2024-25 season.