Welcome back to WWYDW, the only hockey column on the internet that’s been waiting years for a promotion.

Speaking of promotions, they’ve been frequent and steady for the Abbotsford Canucks in 2024/25. Rarely has their ever been such a constant shuffling of players between Vancouver and their AHL affiliate within a season, and that certainly wasn’t the plan heading in, but that’s the result that we got.

By our count, some 16 different players played for both Vancouver and Abbotsford this year – in descending order of points, that was Aatu Räty, Erik Brännström, Max Sasson, Nils Åman, Phil di Giuseppe, Linus Karlsson, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Victor Mancini, Elias Pettersson, Arshdeep Bains, Kirill Kudryavtsev, Ty Mueller, Guillaume Brisebois, Mark Friedman, Nikita Tolopilo, and Arturs Silovs.

Actually, it’s 17, if we count Ty Young’s brief call-up to serve as backup goalie.

That’s practically an entire roster. And while in the early-going of 2024/25, many of these call-ups were only for spot duty and salary cap manipulation purposes, the stretch-run of the season has made for some truly extended auditions.

And some of the players in question have really stepped up to the plate. The Abbotsford Contingent have been some of the Big Canucks’ most consistent players over the past month of action, and that can’t help but to have an impact on their chances of continuing in NHL minutes for the 2025/26 season.

This week, we’re not asking you to zero in on one specific player, but rather to generate a full list of everyone who has impressed you enough to consider keeping around next year.

This week, we’re asking:

Let it be known in the comment section.

You answered below!

Lankinen, Huggy, and Sherwood did great work this season, and a few other guys like Forbort had good seasons but beyond that I’m taking a pass on providing a detailed submission to WDYTT this week. This is a league where 16 of 32 teams make the playoffs and a franchise that missed the playoffs nine times in the past decade shouldn’t be giving out team awards, it’s disrespectful to fans.

Most exciting: CG57 blazing down the wing! Never gonna know what’s going to happen with Myers. Sherwood for showing he can score as well as hit everything. He’s the only player to have a career season this year (who isn’t named Pioose), and seems like he’s been underrated all this time.

Unsung Hero: Höggy, for enduring Tocchet’s banishment without griping about it, and living to score a few on the other side. Sucks he got hurt last little while. Also EP25, for quietly becoming reliable like a seasoned player. No one could have seen this coming so smoothly for him. If we get an Ohlund out of him, wow.

Unsung Hero: Kevin Lankinen. All three other awards: Quinn Hughes.

Yeah, not going to get any argument here about Quinn Hughes being the undisputed Top Defender and Team MVP. The phrase ‘and it’s not even close/AINEC’ gets used too much in hockey circles nowadays, but come on – it’s not even close.

It’s so not-close that I feel compelled to list runner’s up. In this case, Filip Hronek takes the cake as Second-Best Defender, and maybe Pius Suter earns Second-Most Valuable. Honestly, that last one is a pretty tough call.

Most Exciting should really go to Kiefer Sherwood. Sure, Hughes has a very valid case for it, but how often does someone arrive on a cheap UFA deal and literally break an NHL record? An NHL record for throwing the body around, at that? Even when the Canucks were down, Sherwood was there to pull them into the fight on a nightly basis. Combine that with all the snipes, and he deserves recognition here.

Unsung Hero is always tricky, because the player who wins it usually spends the season being sung about all the same. For this, let’s go with Derek Forbort, who only gained real recognition for his veteran contributions down the stretch-run, and did a far more valiant job of sticking up for his teammates this season than did most other Canucks.

And since the responses were extremely limited this week, let’s drum up that word count by suggesting some all-new Canucks team awards for next season.

I’ve always wanted to see a Most Improved sort of award come to hockey, though I realize the inherent pride of hockey players might make that difficult. Nobody wants the ‘used to stink’ award. This year, it would probably have to go to Suter.

And since we’ve talked so much about fighting lately, could there be an award for Toughest Canuck? Might be a tough one to select in some seasons, but this year you’d probably have to hand it to Forbort for a few different reasons.

Now, an NHL team is never going to hand out an award that refers to salary. But if they were, a Best Bang-for-Buck Award would be a lot of fun. This award would have some stiff competition this year, with Suter, Sherwood, Forbort, and Kevin Lankinen all deserving of some buzz.

Then again, maybe the fact that we’re really just listing the same names over and over again here is evidence enough that we don’t actually need any new team awards.