Here’s an odd thing: the Vancouver Canucks have gone two full seasons without a right-shot centre in their lineup, with one very brief exception.

Last season, all of the Canucks’ centres were sinister in the classic sense: they all shot left-handed. Elias Pettersson, Filip Chytil, Marco Rossi, Teddy Blueger, Max Sasson, Aatu Räty, and David Kämpf all shoot left. Centres who only played a few games like Lukas Reichel, Ty Mueller, and Nils Åman, shoot left. Even Drew O’Connor, who filled in at centre once in a while, shoots left.

The season before that, you can add J.T. Miller and Pius Suter to the left-shooting centre pile.

To find the last time the Canucks had a right-shot centre in the lineup, you have to go back to the 2023-24 season, when the Canucks had Sam Lafferty to start the year, then added Elias Lindholm later in the season to give the team a comparative plethora of right-shot centres.

That’s a bit unusual, as teams typically like to have a mix of left and right-shot centres in the lineup. There are debatable benefits to having that type of mix, but one benefit that is undeniable is on faceoffs, especially in the defensive zone and particularly on the penalty kill. That’s where strong-side and weak-side faceoffs can be crucial.

A right-shot centre has his strong side on the right side of the ice and vice versa for a left-shot centre. This is partly because a right-shot centre trying to win a defensive zone faceoff on his backhand on the right side is going to naturally pull the puck toward the boards, away from his own net.

It’s even been pointed out that the side of the faceoff dot from which a linesman drops the puck — nearest to the boards — gives a centre on his strong side more room to maneuver.

The nearest thing the Canucks have had to a right-shot centre the past two seasons is Aatu Räty, who flips over his stick to take faceoffs right-handed when he would otherwise be on his weak side. This actually proves the point that strong and weak-side faceoffs matter, because otherwise, why would he bother?

The trouble for Räty is that while his coaches have liked his ability to win key defensive zone and penalty kill faceoffs, they haven’t trusted him to then stay on the ice in those situations. There’s a reason why he was tied for the third-lowest shift length in the NHL last season among those who played at least 400 minutes: he frequently would take a faceoff, then immediately scamper to the bench to be replaced.

But the Canucks’ dearth of right-shot centres will be coming to an end soon, partly because of the “very brief exception” I mentioned earlier.

Braeden Cootes, the Canucks’ 15th-overall draft pick last year, shoots right and seems poised to stick at centre when he makes the jump to the NHL. That jump could very well happen this coming season, as it very nearly happened last season when he made the team out of camp and played three games with the Canucks.

For those three games, the Canucks finally had a right-shot centre. Sure, he went 5-for-13 on faceoffs, but those have a pretty steep learning curve in the NHL, and that’s something that should come with time and practice.

Something that might make the learning curve less steep is spending some time in the AHL, which seems a likely course for Cootes with the new rule allowing NHL teams to assign one 19-year-old CHL prospect to the AHL.

If Cootes does go to Abbotsford, he won’t be the odd man out as a right-shot centre. In fact, he’ll have plenty of company.

Riley Patterson, a right-shot centre selected in the fourth round in 2024, is coming off an excellent draft+2 campaign with the Niagara IceDogs in the OHL, where he scored 40 goals and 84 points in 60 games. He then played four games with the Abbotsford Canucks at the end of last season, tallying two points, and is now looking to make the jump to pro hockey.

Assuming that both Braeden Cootes and Riley Patterson play in the AHL this season, Abbotsford will have five right-shot centres on the roster: Cootes, Patterson, captain Chase Wouters, and new signings Akil Thomas and Matt Stienburg, though the latter two have also played on the wing.

Also potentially on the way is 2026 second-round pick Brooks Rogowski. The 6’7” centre also happens to be a right-hand shot, and looks like a solid bet to play in the Canucks’ bottom-six a few years down the line, with perhaps the upside to do more depending on how he develops.

That gives the Canucks at least a few right-shot centres in the pipeline, including one of their top prospects, as well as a couple of potential call-ups from the AHL. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the Canucks won’t be solely dependent on Räty flipping his stick around.

With some irony, the duo who will oversee the rightening of the Canucks’ centres is a pair of left-shot centres: Ryan Johnson and Manny Malhotra.