The Vancouver Canucks moved to 3-0 on their first road trip of the 2025-26 season with a win against the Washington Capitals on Sunday morning. At the same time, however, they suffered an immense blow to both their spirits and their centre depth, with Filip Chytil exiting the game after a late hit from Tom Wilson.

At this juncture, we do not know the nature of Chytil’s injury. But given the severity of the collision and the fact that Chytil did not return to the game, it’s safe to assume that he is, indeed, injured. And given Chytil’s personal history, it’s probably also safe to assume that he might be out of the lineup now for a considerable time.

If there was one major weak spot on the Canucks’ depth chart heading into the season, it was at centre. It’s the position where the team still needs the most help, and where it could least afford to suffer any losses. But now it looks as though they’re going to have to afford this loss all the same.

So, what options do the Canucks have to withstand what could be a lengthy absence from Chytil?

The immediate roster shuffle isn’t too difficult to figure out. Teddy Blueger’s return to the lineup had knocked fellow centre Aatu Räty to the press box and healthy scratch status. With Chytil out, Räty presumably comes back in, leaving the team with a four-centre rotation of Elias Pettersson, Max Sasson, Blueger, and Räty.

How the team will arrange those four centres is a little trickier to determine.

Pettersson will remain on the top line, and given how heavily the Canucks are now going to have to rely on him, will be supported with as much talent there as possible. That probably means keeping Conor Garland on his wing, and then maybe Jake DeBrusk on the other side. That still leaves some talented wingers, like Brock Boeser and Evander Kane, for the new second line centre to link up with. But who would that second line centre be?

Blueger has been a positive contributor since returning, but those contributions are always best suited in the bottom-six. Sasson is up to two goals in three games, but has done his best work so far on the Castle Fun Park line with fellow Abbotsford graduates Arshdeep Bains and Linus Karlsson. The team may not want to break that unit up quite yet.

So, we could see a situation play out in which Räty goes right from healthy scratch to 2C.

That would result in a lineup that looks something like:

Chances seem good that a variation of this lineup will be rolled out Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, pending Boeser’s return from a personal leave and Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s own injury status.

Beyond this quartet of centres, however, the Canucks find themselves with very limited options to do anything different.

One thing that won’t be an option? Calling Braeden Cootes back up from the WHL. Because Cootes has already played a game for the Seattle Thunderbirds, he’s no longer eligible for regular recalls. He could still be recalled under emergency circumstances, but that would require the Canucks to run out of eligible call-ups first, and they’re far from that. Cootes will almost certainly have to remain in juniors for the rest of the regular season.

As it stands right now, the Canucks don’t actually have any cap space available for any forwards recalls. But that can be rectified in a couple of ways, including sending down Victor Mancini or by placing Chytil on Long-Term Injured Reserve, which would then open up some additional relief space. And it will probably have to be rectified one way or another, because if Lekkerimäki is also going to miss any time, then the Canucks are down to just 12 healthy forwards.

The most likely recalls at this point are the 22-year-old Ty Mueller, who had an excellent rookie pro season in Abbotsford last year, and Nils Åman. By ‘most likely,’ we mean ‘only real options.’ As of right now, Mueller and Åman are the only full-time centres in the organization even eligible for recall.

These are all, of course, short-term considerations. If Chytil is going to miss significant time, then the Canucks will need to also consider the medium- and long-term. A team that was already struggling with its centre depth is going to find it difficult to get by on internal coverage alone.

The Canucks could hope to get by with a waiver claim. But a glance at the waiver wire this season will show that very few centres of any real quality have hit it, and that’s not projected to change anytime soon. Even were a quality centre to be placed on waivers, the Canucks aren’t high enough on the priority list to guarantee they’d get them.

Instead, the Canucks could look to pilfer someone from the periphery of a lineup, effectively jumping the line on waivers to acquire someone for a late- or mid-round draft pick. Our own Tyson Cole recently recommended Hendrix Lapierre – ironically, of the Washington Capitals – as just such an acquisition.

Anything further than a low-cost, low-risk fill-in, however, is going to take far more careful consideration. It will, first and foremost, require some knowledge about how long Chytil projects to be out for, and perhaps how likely a return of any kind this season is. Were Chytil to be out for a truly long-term period, then the Canucks would be faced with both a need to accelerate their search for a true 2C, but would also gain some $4.4 million in effective spending space with which to aid that search.

But that’s definitely easier said than done. With Chytil on LTIR, the Canucks are topped out at that maximum of $4.4 million in relief space, which isn’t all that much to work with. As we look out at leaguewide rosters, we certainly don’t see many sub-$5 million needle-moving centres available for the taking.

Another possibility is that the team gets a little healthier around Chytil, and can thus afford to keep Chytil on regular IR, which would allow them to continue to accrue cap. This could lead to more cap space than $4.4 million being built up over time, but then ‘over time’ becomes the issue. If the Canucks are able to accrue enough space to replace Chytil by the Trade Deadline, but are already out of the running by then, there’s not really much point.

In other words, beyond the immediate, there are no easy answers when it comes to covering the considerable loss of Chytil.