Give it a month or so, and the Vancouver Canucks and every other NHL team will be back on the ice for their various training camps. Give it two months, and the 2025-26 regular season will have already begun.

The summer of 2025 has brought change to the Canucks, though perhaps not as much as some were expecting. There’s still plenty of time for that to change, but it is increasingly looking as though the Canucks will be pursuing some of their ‘missing pieces’ well into the season itself…and perhaps beyond.

Which makes this as fine a time as any to temporarily leave the 2025 offseason behind and take a very early look ahead to the 2026 offseason – and, more specifically, how much cap space the Canucks can look forward to having available at that point.

The 2026-27 cap ceiling

The NHL received a $7.5 million cap ceiling increase this offseason, with the ceiling going from $88 million to $95.5 million. And it’s set to receive an even bigger increase next offseason, with the ceiling going from $95.5 million to $104 million, a jump of $8.5 million.

It’s a double-edged sword, really. The Canucks will be glad to have an extra several million to spend – it’s just unfortunate that all their rival teams will receive it, too.

Raises incoming

The Canucks signed a number of contracts this offseason, and two of them don’t officially start until the 2026-27 season. Which means that a couple of significant raises are already locked into the 2026 and onward books.

As of July 1, 2026:

– Thatcher Demko goes from $5 million to $8.5 million, a raise of $3.5 million.

– Conor Garland goes from $4.95 million to $6 million, a raise of $1.05 million.

Coming off the books

The Canucks will have several contracts and cap hits that expire as of July 1, 2026. Some of these players will be re-signed in the interim, some will not:

– Evander Kane becomes a UFA ($5.125 million).

– Derek Forbort becomes a UFA ($2 million).

– Teddy Blueger becomes a UFA ($1.8 million).

– Kiefer Sherwood becomes a UFA ($1.5 million).

– Linus Karlsson becomes a UFA (or an RFA if he plays 53 games or more this season) ($775K).

– Victor Mancini becomes an RFA ($870K).

Another tiny chunk of dead cap comes off the books, too, in the form of Ilya Mikheyev’s $712,500 in retention coming to an end.

That leaves the 2026-27 with a rough skeleton depth chart that looks like…

A skeleton depth chart for the 2026-27 Canucks

DeBrusk ($5.5M) – Pettersson ($11.6M) – Boeser ($7.25M)
Höglander ($3M) – Chytil ($4.44M) – Garland ($6M)
O’Connor ($2.5M) – Räty ($775K) – ___________
Bains ($775K) – _____________ – ____________
Hughes ($7.85M) – Hronek ($7.25M)
Pettersson ($5.5M) – Myers ($3M)
Pettersson ($838K) – Willander ($950K)
_____________ – _____________

Demko ($8.5M)
Lankinen ($4.5M)
Dead Cap: Oliver Ekman-Larsson ($4.77M) [Last year before this amount is cut in half!]

That all adds up to 17 of 23 roster spots filled, and a grand total cap hit of $84,992,500, which is a full $19,007,500 under the projected cap of $104 million.

Which means at this earliest, most basic stage of preview, we can say that the Canucks will have a little more than $19 million to spend on up to six additional players, or an average of about $3.17 million per player.

Adding from within

We can probably make that depth chart a little more up-to-date and accurate with a few additions from within.

One of those open wing spots should be occupied by Jonathan Lekkerimäki by the start of the 2026-27 season at the latest (assuming he’s not traded in the interim). He’ll be in the last year of his ELC with a cap hit of $918,333.

Add Lekkerimäki to the books, and the Canucks are left with $18,089,167 to sign up to five more players, or about $3.62 million per player.

Chances are likely that a few other ELCs can be counted on to bring the overall cost down, and to leave more over to be spent on new additions. This might include Kirill Kudryavtsev and Braeden Cootes. We can probably also count on Mancini’s RFA extension not being too pricey, either.

Just for fun, let’s add all three to the roster, with Mancini pencilled in at a currently-generous $1.5 million extension. (Worth noting that Max Sasson is another name who should be in the roster mix at this point, especially given that he loses his waiver exemption after this season. But we want to leave two spots open for this projection, so we’re putting him aside for now.)

With Lekkerimäki, Cootes, Kudryavtsev, and a re-signed Mancini all on the roster, the Canucks are now at 21 of 23 roster spots filled, and an estimated cap hit of about $89,200,000. That would leave them with roughly $14.8 million to spend on just those two remaining roster spots, or an average of $7.4 million per spot.

Conclusions

The Canucks might not find themselves flush with cap space as of the 2026 offseason. But they should still have more on hand to spend than they have in this current 2025 offseason, even with those two raises already on the books.

This year, the Canucks were really only able to bring in one new player of note in Evander Kane and his $5.125 million cap hit, and they sort of had to let Pius Suter go in order to even have that room available. That contrasts sharply with the $14+ million set to be available in 2026. That’s plenty of cap space to re-sign Kane, if they wish, and to add another $10ish million forward on top of him.

Of course, having that cap space and having something to spend it on are two different things. Part of the reason the Canucks can currently count on so much cap space in 2026 is because they haven’t spent to the cap in the present day – they’re still $3.27 million under the projected cap for 2025-26.

Chances are, however, that said cap space gets spent eventually – hopefully on the mega Quinn Hughes extension, which he will be first eligible in the 2026-2027 offseason. And depending on the length of contract involved in that spending, the Canucks could definitely find themselves eating into their 2026-27 cap space – and beyond – well before the 2026 offseason has begun.

That’s why this is just a very early preview and an extremely rough sketch of what the Canucks will have on hand come the summer of 2026. The time in between will ensure that the reality is at least a little different.

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