In Penticton, on this very week, the Vancouver Canucks will open up their 2025 Training Camp. GM Patrik Allvin and Co. will decide on which players to invite from the ranks of this past weekend’s rookie showcase in Washington State and from the organization’s AHL-only contracts. Decisions are already being made.

And they’re only going to get tougher from here on out.

This promises to be a particularly competitive Canucks camp, with plenty of jobs on the line and plenty of interesting candidates vying to fill them. Today, however, we’re talking about a decision that doesn’t really involve any individual names, but that will still need to be made all the same. Today, we’re talking about the arrangement of players on the roster, and what exact shape it will take for the 2025-26 campaign.

The Canucks, like any NHL team, are allowed to carry a maximum roster of 23 players at any one time – not counting those on the Injured Reserve. With teams usually dressing 20 players on any given game night, that usually allows for three extras on the roster at a time.

For the past several years, the Canucks have almost always gone with the arrangement of 13 forwards, eight defenders, and two goalies, meaning one extra forward and two extra D. Their reasons for this have generally been the increased wear-and-tear that defenders tend to incur at the NHL level, combined with the excess travel that the Canucks typically do, which leaves them with a desire to have the maximum amount of coverage on their blueline.

But other arrangements are possible. Many teams instead carry 14 forwards, seven defenders, and two goalies, giving them two extra forwards and only one extra D.

And other teams don’t even carry the maximum 23 players. This includes the 2024-25 Canucks, who often dropped their roster down below the max in order to temporarily demote waiver-free players to Abbotsford as a method of accruing cap space.

Any and all options are on the table for 2025-26. Below, we’ll take a look at the various pros and cons of each of them.

As we said at the outset, this is the traditional model. It works well for injury coverage, with the team having not one, but two extra defenders they can throw in at any time. In fact, it works doubly well for injury coverage, because most defenders can survive a game or two on the wing in a pinch, but the same is often not true in reverse.

It’s not just short-term injury coverage, either, but also keeping an entire extra pairing up to NHL speed to prepare for those inevitable longer-term injuries, too.

Carrying two extra defenders also tends to work great for practices, allowing the coaching staff to run drills and scrimmages with up to four pairings, or with two sets of two.

In this scenario, the Canucks would be able to carry their established top-four of Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, Marcus Pettersson, and Tyler Myers, then both of Derek Forbort and Elias Pettersson, who earned their spots last season. It would leave plenty of room for one of Tom Willander or Victor Mancini to claim that 3RD spot that has been left open for them. And it would allow for P-O Joseph or Jett Woo or some other veteran to stick around as the 8D – which mostly means pressbox duty, but occasionally means time in the lineup. Think Mark Friedman in the early going last year.

It would seem likely, however, that the 8D in question would play a lot less than 8Ds have in the past. That’s because, with Elias Pettersson and Derek Forbort both capable of playing the right side, they’re far more likely to do any filling in that is required. Some will question what the point is of carrying a player who will only really play when true injuries strike.

Another downside of the 13F/8D model is that it requires an awful lot of that extra, 13^th forward. In theory, they’ve got to be ready to replace anybody in the lineup, which kind of requires them to be a centre, something the Canucks are already a little short on.

With this structure, the Canucks would get to carry two extra forwards at a time, and only one extra D.

Which, as we already mentioned in the last section, isn’t too bad from a blueline perspective. The Canucks have had to carry extra defenders in past season, in part, because their overall D corps has been questionable. That’s no longer the case.

When healthy, that top-four is going to eat up the majority of the minutes. And if Elias Pettersson, Forbort, and one of Willander or Mancini are on the roster, the team will want that trio sharing the vast majority of the bottom pairing minutes. Like we said, that really doesn’t leave that much for the 8D to do – so why not wait until an injury strikes, and just call up another D at that point.

The Canucks’ greatest roster congestion is at forward. They’ve already got 10 established NHL names up front in the other Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Evander Kane, Filip Chytil, Nils Höglander, Drew O’Connor, Kiefer Sherwood, and Teddy Blueger, and with the shortage of centres, a space is already penciled in for Aatu Räty.

That leaves limited space to fight over for the likes of Linus Karlsson, Arshdeep Bains, Vitaly Kravtsov, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Max Sasson, and more.

A roster of 14 forwards allows room for the 11 established names, plus three more from the above list. It could save the team from having to put someone like Karlsson or Bains through waivers. It could create more runway for someone with high offensive potential, like Lekkerimäki or Karlsson, to find their feet.

This model also works particularly well if neither Willander nor Mancini are ready for NHL deployment right off the bat. If that comes to pass, it’s an even easier call to roll with 14 forwards and then pick out a veteran 7D to perform spot duty.

With this being the last year in which ‘paper’ demotions to the AHL are allowed, let’s be clear: the Canucks will be operating with a less-than-maximum roster at times in the 2025-26 season. They’re not quite as flush on waiver-exempt players as they were last year, but they’ll still be able to send the likes of Elias Pettersson II, Willander, Mancini, Lekkerimäki, and Sasson up and down with impunity. Expect them to do so on off days at home, as they did last year, in the name of accruing additional cap space.

Beyond that, however, it’s tough to imagine the Canucks ever taking just 21 or 22 players with them on the road.

The Canucks will be traveling some 48,378 miles this upcoming season. That’s 77,405 kilometres. It’s the fifth-most in the league, but given the additional border crossings required of Canadian teams, we’d hazard an estimate that the Canucks will be spending the second-most time on the road this season, trailing only the Edmonton Oilers.

Well-traveled teams generally require extra bodies on hand because they get less rest, and are frequently further away from their AHL squad, making call-ups sometimes difficult.

The Canucks also don’t really need to tempt fate in this way. They’ve got ample cap space on hand already, and should be able to add to that amount effectively with off-day demotions. There’s just no reason for them to roll with a reduced roster beyond that, especially when doing so likely involves exposing some players to waivers that they’d rather not.

Suffice it to say, then, that the real choice is down to a 13F/8D split or a 14F/7D split, with the smart money currently on the latter.

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