As a team, the Vancouver Canucks don’t have many “make-or-break” moments left in their 2025-26 campaign. They’ll be eliminated from playoff contention in fairly anticlimactic fashion sooner rather than later. They’ve already got last place all but locked up. While a few of the remaining games might find a way to matter for one reason or another, the only truly consequential date left on the calendar, for the Canucks as a whole, is the Draft Lottery, scheduled for May 4.

But on an individual basis, there are a handful of members of the team that may reach a make-or-break moment in their personal careers in the nearer future than that. We’re talking about those players in their early-to-mid-20s who have yet to fully define their place in the NHL, and who, due to the constant churn of competition in this league, may be running out of time to do so.

For these players, the rest of 2025-26 will matter, in the long run. So too might the start of the 2026-27 season. In a league where little can be taken for granted, that may be all the time they have to more firmly establish themselves.

These are those make-or-break Canucks:

It’s no secret that Höglander is currently mired in the worst season of his already six-year NHL career. He’s at just a single goal and two assists through 25 games, and looks to be more snake-bitten than Cleopatra. But if he maintains that minuscule production all the way through the rest of 2025-26, there’s going to be another word thrown around regarding Höglander, and that word is “buyout.”

In the NHL, buyouts are significantly less onerous when applied to the contracts of those under 25. This is the last offseason that Höglander will be under 25. Were the Canucks to buy him out during the 2026 offseason window, he’d incur cap penalties of $533,333, $1,133,333, $433,333, and $433,333 over the next four years. That represents significant savings on Höglander’s $3 million cap hit for the first two years, and a barely noticeable amount in the two thereafter.

But buying Höglander out would be as much about roster space as cap space. If he’s going to continue to not produce at all, his spot in the lineup should reasonably be usurped by a younger talent with more potential, and if he cannot be traded, a buyout represents a fine opportunity to clear him out – an opportunity that would become considerably more expensive as of the 2027 offseason.

Höglander has the rest of this season to convince the Canucks not to pursue this option, and that he’s still got some potential of his own worth hanging onto.

Sasson is also 25 going on 26, but we’re not talking buyout for him. He’s secured a two-year, $1 million AAV beyond this season, and that’s hard to see as anything but reasonable. But Sasson is approaching career-defining territory all the same.

With the top line that won the Calder Cup with Abbotsford last season, the three players have each gone in a different direction this year. Linus Karlsson has seemingly proven his chops as a top-nine NHL player, and got the extension to show it. Arshdeep Bains, meanwhile, seemed to prove he was not yet an NHL talent, and might never be, by passing through waivers.

But Sasson is still somewhere in between. It’s been indicated that, if he has a long-term future in the NHL, it’s on the wing, not at centre. But the nature of the Canucks’ centre depth in 2025-26 has meant that Sasson has had to play there an awful lot all the same. Sasson has the rest of this campaign, and the whole exhibition and preseason schedule next year, to show that he can be an effective, potentially long-term solution as a fourth line wing – perhaps one who could occasionally move up the lineup. Beyond that, the ongoing youth movement will be that plenty of others are clamouring for that opportunity soon enough.

In other words, Sasson has the inside track on a depth wing job, but if he doesn’t really seize it for himself, he’ll lose that inside track and perhaps the job itself.

The stakes are lower for Räty than they are for Höglander and Sasson, and not just because he’s a full two years younger. Räty is a centre, and a centre with a somewhat-ambidextrous ability to take faceoffs, at that. Not just take faceoffs, but win them at a well-above-average clip. These traits alone will all-but-ensure that Räty has an NHL job through his 20s, if he wants it. There are just certain qualities that always have value around the league, and Räty has some of them.

But in terms of defining his career, Räty is starting to run out of road to show he can be anything but a permanent bottom-six fixture. He was once thought to have enormous potential – at one point, prior to his draft year, thought to have 1OA potential – but the older Räty gets without a true offensive breakout, the lower the odds become.

At times, Adam Foote’s treatment of Räty has become frustrating, like when Räty got five points in five games in early December and was rewarded by becoming a healthy scratch. At the same time, however, one can see why Foote looks at Räty’s game and can’t help but feel there is something more to give. With David Kampf out of town, Räty should at least stay in the lineup from here on out. But with folks like Braeden Cootes incoming soon enough and a Teddy Blueger extension possible, any real top-six, or even “middle-six,” opportunities Räty gets need to be seized upon, because each may be his last.

Like Räty, Mancini will probably always have job opportunities in the NHL because he is large, plays defense, and shoots right. Sometimes, it really is that simple. But in terms of establishing himself as something more than a bottom-line defender, that’s where Mancini may be running out of road.

Mancini has about 24 games of waiver-exemption left. He won’t hit that threshold his year, but should early on in 2026-27. That means the Canucks will actually have a bit of an incentive to cut Mancini at next year’s training camp, should he look unready in any way, as it’ll be about their last opportunity to do so without waivers.

But Mancini will receive plenty of chances over the course of the next month to show he is, in fact, ready, and perhaps ready for a larger role. He needs to move fast, because Filip Hronek is already in place on the right side, and because Tom Willander looks steadier every day. The longer Mancini goes on without flashing top-four potential at the NHL level, the more Hronek and Willander start to eat up all the minutes on the right side, and the less chance Mancini gets of ever showing he can handle those minutes himself.

There is a little less pressure on Mancini than there is Räty, simply because the Canucks don’t have much in the way of incoming young RDs to threaten him. But were the Canucks to draft someone like Keaton Verhoeff, that would change pretty quickly. Mancini’s best chance to show he can be something more is the remainder of this 2025-26 season.

When we ran this concept over the Abbotsford roster, Klimovich’s name stood out. He’s the youngest player mentioned in this article, and won’t turn 24 until 2027, but he is also on his fifth AHL season already. That means that Klimovich is newly waiver-eligible as of next season.

But Klimovich might hit a make-or-break moment even before then. He’s still yet to really break out at the AHL level, and he’s yet to receive even a single NHL game. He’s also at the end of his extended entry-level contract, and is a restricted free agent after this year.

If Klimovich does receive a call-up at some point between now and the end of the year, we’ll get to find out if he’s one of those players who is able to transfer some of his skill directly into the NHL without ever having broken the “skill ceiling” of the AHL. It does happen sometimes, and Klimovich has always had a fairly intriguing toolkit.

But if not, Klimovich probably takes that as a sign to seek his future elsewhere, and either asks for a trade out of town or simply signs somewhere overseas to continue his career there as of this summer.