Welcome back to WDYTT, the only hockey column on the internet to never resort to the use of stock images.

Speaking of stocks, we won’t even pretend to understand the financial variety. But there are hockey stocks, too, particularly when it comes to an individual’s ranking within an organizational depth chart, and especially when that individual is a prospect.

The Abbotsford Canucks are your 2025 Calder Cup Champions. Along the way, several prospects of interest to the Vancouver Canucks outperformed all expectations, including Playoff MVP Arturs Silovs, playoff leading scorer Linus Karlsson, playoff leading assist gatherer Arshdeep Bains, and playoff leading plus/minus skater Kirill Kudryavtsev. That’s to say nothing of a bunch of other prospects who had impressive runs of their own, either, like Max Sasson, Victor Mancini, and Ty Mueller.

We won’t beat around the bush here. The Abbotsford Canucks roster is just littered with upward trajectories, developmental-progress-wise, and that inspired the question you’ve already read from our headline.

All that said, the prospects in Abbotsford weren’t the only ones on the rise in 2024/25. Tom Willander signed his first NHL contract after two noteworthy years at Boston University (and a slight, nerve-wracking delay). Aatu Räty turned heads at the NHL level with his faceoff wizardry and a slew of late-season goals. Sawyer Mynio made the Canadian World Junior team.

And then there’s Elias Pettersson, the defender, who rose from being an arguable top-three prospect to the organization’s very best in most eyes.

It might not have been a memorable year for the Canucks at the big league level. But it was a real banner year for Canucks prospects. Which is probably enough preamble to get us to this week’s question.

This week, we’re asking you:

Let it be known in the comment section.

You answered below!

Probably FA day, where management announces the signings that almost nobody anticipated, like JDB last summer. Team refuses to sink to their true competitive level and have a proper rebuild so it’s hard to get too excited about their typically middle of the round draft picks, especially when they trade a lot of them in a misguided attempt to back into the playoffs for two free home dates in the foolish belief that “anything can happen if you just get it,” a strategy that has proven to be an abject failure since the Sedin extensions in 2013.

Training Camp…not because it’s a big event, but because the dust has settled and we get a taste of how motivated the individuals are and what the team looks like together. Don’t get me wrong, between now and FA Day it’s like betting at the races and watching your horse cross the line, but for those of us that analyse the sport all season long and place our (literal) bets on trades, draft picks and UFA’s, it’s impossible to choose just one!

Next Thursday, June 26, when Canucks make two big trades.

As a long suffering Canucks fan, July 1 is the magic date for me. Not for what the Canucks do, but it should be interesting to see what the Cup contenders do.

For me, it’s not just one event. It’s any event that involves the acquisition of players by trade or free agent signing. Second most exciting event: draft day.

For me the draft always delivers (I hope they go back to an in-person first round). Last minute deals, trades, highs of drafting the Sedins, lows of passing over Tkachuk to grab Juolevi. Even if there is no drama on the home front, then other teams fill the hole. Anything can happen on Draft day!

I’m usually excited for the draft, but the Canucks have been anti-climatic on that front for several years.

Now I am not “excited” for anything, rather I am scared as hell that ownership/management will pull some more OEL-style moves and set this team back another 5+ years.

Big fan of draft day, but this offseason, it will be the trading of #40.

For a team in Vancouver’s situation it should be draft day, a day of hope for most franchises trying to build a Cup winner. Maybe they surprise me, but to me this offseason holds more trepidation than excitement.

Draft day is usually filled with hope, but it can be frustrating when the Canucks aren’t picking in the first two rounds and aren’t contenders. It’s depressing when the Canucks make trades like the OEL/Garland trade.

Not optimistic about any scenario playing out on draft day. We are years away from a Cup run, so it’s just middle of the pack mediocrity as usual. They will try to land a big fish by trading assets or draft options, but with that I am again not optimistic. Nobody really is interested in the Canucks or their lineup with the exception of maybe Hughes. I’m not sure what I’m interested in other than trading the EP. We need some rugged toughness and hell-bent leadership. What we do have is mediocrity in abundance. What I’m really interested in is the debate of the no-tax in some franchise cities and how the Canadian market will play out.

All these dates are exciting and consequential in their own right, but I’m actually looking forward to July 2, 2025. The Free Agent Frenzy to end all Free Agent Frenzies is coming on July 1, and it really feels as though we’re going to wake up the day afterward inside a new financial era for the NHL.

The flat cap era is about to die a very public death, and this transaction junkie welcomes that!