The Vancouver Canucks should be featuring a lot of young talent this season, especially if a few more veterans get traded. They don’t have the deepest prospect pool yet, but 2026-27 should still see some NHL debuts. Let’s take a look at five that could be added to Hockey Reference in the near future with their first game in the NHL.
Adam Novotny
This might be a long shot, but with the way Adam Novotny looked at development camp, maybe not. One of the newest Canucks prospects shone in the three-on-three tournament, garnering praise from The Athletic’s Thomas Drance, who called him a dark horse to make the roster out of training camp.
His combination of puck control, width, skill and speed gave him an almost comical level of juice in this environment. Novotný was consistently able to weave around defenders through the neutral zone. When he arrived, he’d cycle in-zone, alternating between cutting inside on his check for a shot, or sometimes he’d just beat defenders out wide…
It’s difficult to know how ready he may be, and I wouldn’t pretend to draw anything substantive from the wildly fun display he put on in Abbotsford on Thursday, but given his physical maturity and makeup, I’m not sure we should sleep on him as a dark-horse candidate to push to play a small handful of NHL games this fall.
From ‘What I’m seeing at Canucks development camp: Braeden Cootes, Adam Novotný and more,’ The Athletic, 7/3/26
If Novotny doesn’t force the coaching staff’s hand, he will return to the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) with the Peterborough Petes. As of this writing, he has not committed to the NCAA, although Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwal said after he was drafted that there has been a lot of interest in him.
Sawyer Mynio
Sawyer Mynio made the transition to pro hockey last season with the Abbotsford Canucks after finishing his time in the Western Hockey League (WHL) with the Seattle Thunderbirds and Calgary Hitmen. He had a decent rookie campaign, finishing with three goals and 21 points in 58 games, but saw some hiccups defensively. Only Jimmy Schuldt (minus-21) had a worse plus/minus than him (minus-20) among defencemen; however, that could also be attributed to how bad the team was as a whole. The best belonged to Guillaume Brisebois at plus-4, and he only appeared in nine games.
When the Canucks drafted Mynio 89th overall in 2023, he was coming off a banner season with the Thunderbirds, notching a plus-50 in the plus/minus column. His strengths, according to his draft profile, were focused mostly on defence and how calm he was with the puck. With a better blue line and team around him, and hopefully fewer injuries both in Abbotsford and Vancouver, he will be able to showcase that a bit more in 2026-27.
Mynio was also forced into a bigger role and higher ice time than a defender usually gets in his first full AHL season. He handled it well, though, as plus/minus aside, he still flashed the two-way chops that have made him one of the Canucks’ top defensive prospects. While Victor Mancini and Kirill Kudryavtsev will be ahead of him in the pecking order when it comes to call-ups and the seventh defenceman spot out of training camp, he could still make his debut sometime this season. As we all know as Canucks fans, the blue line rarely goes through a campaign without injuries.
Riley Patterson
Arguably one of the most surprising and draft-steal-worthy prospects in the Canucks system right now is Riley Patterson. Now a pro coming off a career season with the Niagara IceDogs, where he scored 40 goals and 84 points in 60 games, he will be one of the biggest players to watch this season in Abbotsford. He has already turned heads in the AHL, too, notching his first two-point game on April 11 against the Calgary Wranglers.
With leading scorer Nils Aman heading overseas, Patterson will get the chance to compete for a top-six centre spot out of training camp. Judging by the small sample size we’ve seen so far, he should be able to take the ball and run with it, making him one of the top call-up options when the Canucks need a pivot in Vancouver.
Vilmer Alriksson
Like Mynio, Vilmer Alriksson also made the jump to the AHL last season, but struggled to find the offensive consistency he seemed to discover in the OHL. After two double-digit seasons in the goal column, he only found the back of the net six times in 43 games, alongside a team-worst minus-28. On the bright side, though, he was often one of the toughest customers on the ice for Manny Malhotra’s squad, standing up for teammates and using his 6-foot-6 frame to bang bodies along the boards. He also showed flashes of the power forward, net-front presence he was in junior with the Guelph Storm and Brampton Steelheads, occasionally seeing time on the top line and first power-play unit because of it.
With the Canucks wanting to be tougher to play against, Alriksson, even though he’s still developing his two-way game, could get some time in the bottom-six this season when injuries strike. Furthermore, their big body from last season, Curtis Douglas, is now in Seattle, so if Malhotra believes he needs more size and physicality in the lineup, he might turn to Alriksson to provide it.
Ty Young
The final possible NHL debut goes to goaltender Ty Young. Just like the blue line, the Canucks always deal with injuries in the crease every season, mostly because Thatcher Demko can’t stay healthy. Kevin Lankinen even dealt with a few things last season, keeping him away from the team for long stretches. Because of that, Nikita Tolopilo was forced into action 21 times.
This season, Tolopilo will be in Vancouver as the third goalie, traded or claimed off waivers. It would be a surprising turn of events to see him in Abbotsford, so Young will likely be the top call-up when it comes to goaltenders. Now entering his third season as a pro, he has had a rocky road since his time in the WHL with the Prince George Cougars. While his first 11 AHL games produced a decent 2.72 goals-against average (GAA) and .904 save percentage (SV%) alongside an 8-3-0 record, it took him eight tries to get his first win of 2025-26, allowing three or more goals seven times.
Young turned it around after that first win, though, and started showing why the Canucks drafted him in the first place. He notched his first two AHL shutouts in his final 10 starts, and only got blown out once, allowing six goals on 19 shots against the Henderson Silver Knights on March 15. He also won six of those starts and finished with a solid .918 SV%.
This season, Young will likely split duties with fellow prospect Aku Koskenvuo or AHL signing Mitchell Weeks, depending on how the Tolopilo situation plays out. If he continues where he left off on April 19 when he stopped 30 of 32 shots against the Coachella Valley Firebirds and shut out the Wranglers on April 11, he should be Malhotra’s first call when the inevitable injury bug strikes the Vancouver crease.
Training Camp Will Be the First Test
For these five prospects and other top call-ups like Kudryavtsev, Ty Mueller, Jack Thompson, Trey Fix-Wolansky, and Akil Thomas, training camp will be the first opportunity to put the bug in the ear of the coaching staff. If they start turning heads then and continue to do so throughout the preseason and regular season, a drive down the freeway will be in their future. We will see very soon who from this list will be donning the Orca for the first time in the regular season and adding a one in the NHL games column.
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