How Canucks approached 2025 NHL Draft: Centres, sneaky upside and volume

New York Times

8 hours ago

The 2025 NHL Draft was an unusual one for the Vancouver Canucks.
It was unusual in that the Canucks actually used their drafts picks to select prospects.
This is a franchise that has long preferred to spend its draft capital on the trade market, as opposed to using it at the draft table. In fact, that preference was still an active one this weekend.
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Canucks hockey operations leadership would've preferred to package the 15th selection for win-now help down the middle of their forward group. On Saturday, they continued to be aggressive in exploring trade market options for potential reinforcements to upgrade the lineup at centre and sharpen the attack in the short term.
Ultimately, those deals didn't come to fruition. This is a very challenging trade marketplace right now.
NHL teams have the flexibility in the cap growth era to hold onto their players. The correlation of forces that limited the flexibility of the NHL's 32 clubs and stimulated creative problem solving on the trade market during the flat cap era has been fundamentally altered. There has been a flip, effectively, as teams work through the ramifications of valuing talent more highly than they value cap flexibility in a hard cap league.
Seemingly every team is motivated to hold onto whatever NHL-level players they can, which has devalued draft picks, long the coin of the realm, on the trade market. No team wants to lean into a long-view, scorched-earth rebuild like San Jose or Chicago have recently.
Walled in by these unusual market forces, the Canucks stayed put in the first round on Friday night and selected Braeden Cootes.
Then, on Saturday, the Canucks picked five more times, including in the second round and early in the third round.
That outcome may not be aligned with what hockey operations leadership had hoped to achieve this weekend.
However, it's an outcome that's precisely aligned with what's best for the long-term health of a team that has long needed to lean into high-variance assets, like drafted prospects, with a greater level of discipline.
This was the first Canucks class, after all, that included a player selected in the second-round since 2019.
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It's the first class which Vancouver selected in all of the first, second and third rounds of the draft since 2018. That draft was headlined by Quinn Hughes, who has since appeared in nearly 450 NHL games!
One can fairly quibble with some of the picks that Vancouver made from a value perspective, although there's perhaps more sneaky upside in this draft class than first meets the eye, as we'll get into in this notebook.
One can, likewise, reasonably second-guess the seemingly reactive approach in which the club seemed primarily focused on drafting centre depth, which is rather conveniently their biggest need at the NHL level.
However, projecting the future development of teenage hockey players is a wildly tricky exercise. A crapshoot of the truest sort, with a rate of success and a far higher rate of attrition that's virtually indistinguishable over large samples from pure randomness.
If the Canucks, or any organization for that matter, is going to mine meaningful talent from the draft process, their best approach isn't to exclusively bet on prospect scoring profiles. It isn't to bet on athletic traits, above all else, either. And it isn't exclusive to focus on players who had playoff success, or tournament success, and were able to come through in the biggest games.
No, the cheat code is simply to make picks at high volume. The more picks you have, and the earlier those picks are made, the higher the probability is of returning meaningful NHL value down the line.
At the 2025 NHL Draft, Vancouver made two selections in the top 50 and three selections in the top 70. They had a pick in every round of the draft, save for the fourth.
For the first time in a long time the Canucks will emerge from the draft with a proper class. That's something worth being bullish on.
With the 47th pick, the Canucks selected Aleksei Medvedev from the London Knights.
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Medvedev wasn't extremely high on the public's radar as a high-upside goaltending prospect, but the league itself very much was. I spoke to representatives from multiple teams picking within 10 picks of No. 47 that rated Medvedev highly, and had him pushed high up their lists.
The 6-foot-3 netminder served as the Knights' backup last season, and despite garnering serious interest from some of the top NCAA programs, will remain with London next year, where he'll be expected to be the starting netminder.
'I want to be the guy, and I want to play a lot of games,' Medvedev told the media on Saturday. 'I want to win next year, so I'm really, really excited. Lot of work to do next summer.'
Medvedev has lived in North America for the last four years, while his parents — who weren't able to get their visas in time to attend the draft, although Medvedev's sister goes to school in Los Angeles and was able to be there — have remained back home in Russia. He's lived with billet families over the years, and Medvedev has pursued his dream of being a professional goaltender with an incredible level of independence and maturity at a precocious age.
In London, he was a popular teammate. He was dialled in, involved and worked hard to prepare his teammates at practices, even though he wasn't utilized as the Knights went on an incredible winning streak in the playoffs. He's described by those close to him as having the sort of personality where he rarely has a bad day.
Medvedev was a favourite of Ian Clark. The well-regarded former goalie coach has a complicated relationship with the organization following his demotion from serving as the goalie coach and director of goaltending last summer, but his role as a goaltending scout isn't simply an honorific. His finger prints are all over the Medvedev pick, which Canucks director of amateur scouting Todd Harvey noted after the draft.
'Obviously, Ian has a lot to say on that, and we look at the draft, and he wanted this pick, and we thought it was the right time,' Harvey said.
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The Canucks are obviously flush in net at the moment, in fact, they probably have a trade to make in order to manage their risk of losing Calder Cup playoff MVP Artūrs Šilovs on waivers next fall. Goaltenders take years to develop into NHL-level puck stoppers, however, and Vancouver needed to add some volume at this position given that their last drafted goaltender was selected back in 2022.
The Medvedev selection has no impact on what's next in contract extension talks with Thatcher Demko, which are proceeding positively, or with Šilovs on the trade market. This is about maintaining a consistent flow of talent through the organization.
Technically speaking, Medvedev was viewed by some teams — even those that would've strongly considered selecting him in the second round — as talented and raw. Despite him being one of the youngest netminders in this draft class the Canucks, however, seem to view Medvedev as being a little bit more refined technically.
Canucks evaluators viewed him as having an already evolved skill set, with efficient movement skills that help him read the game proactively. He's also viewed as a well-balanced technical goaltender, which is a rare attribute for an athletic teenager who underwent a late growth spurt.
Or as Medvedev himself put it, more elegantly, 'How simple I play really defines me.'
With an early third-round selection, the Canucks picked Kieren Dervin out of St. Andrew's College in Aurora, Ont., an elite prep school with a lengthy track record of producing NHL draft picks.
Dervin looks superficially like something of a low upside reach early in the third round, in that, usually when a team is picking in the top 70, you'd expect them to land a prospect who produced more than six points in 21 CHL games in their draft year.
This was a very odd year for junior-aged hockey players, however, given the shifting dynamic in the relationship between the CHL and the NCAA. And Dervin was very much caught up in that.
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Selected as a 14-year-old by the Kingston Frontenacs in the OHL priority selection draft, Dervin eschewed the CHL path in order to preserve his eligibility to play in the NCAA. Instead, he went to St. Andrew's College and was heavily recruited, committing to Penn State.
Midway through his first draft-eligible season, however, the eligibility rules changed. Suddenly, Dervin was able to play in the CHL and still be eligible to pursue his NCAA dream down the line.
'When he came to Kingston, we had an older team with a lot of depth; he didn't have the same role,' Frontenacs general manager Kory Cooper said. 'At St. Andrew's, he's on the first unit power play and playing as a top player in every situation. In Kingston, he was only with us periodically or down the stretch, and we had an established older team, so he just didn't get the touches in as many situations.
'You'll see it this year because he's going to get the opportunity.'
Dervin spent his senior year shuttling between Kingston and Aurora, joining Kingston for a few days that didn't conflict with his school and high school team's schedule. He'd go up for a week over spring break, for example, and then be back, lighting it up for his high school team when school resumed.
Purely from a scoring profile perspective, Dervin's OHL scoring stats look completely uninteresting. Especially in the third round.
Looking at his prep school production, however, his production pops. It's just about peerless, which is very exciting, especially given that he's coming out of a powerhouse St. Andrew's program that has had a player drafted from it in nine consecutive NHL drafts.
There are also the standout athletic traits. Dervin absolutely crushed the combine, scoring top-10 in the Wingate fatigue test, second in the class in the vertical jump, sixth in the bench press and top-five in the pull-up tests.
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'He's a beautiful skater,' St. Andrew's College coach David Manning told The Athletic on Saturday. 'One of those guys with a gear that no one else on the ice can get to.
'He's able to beat guys into areas because of that extra gear that he has, and that's what sets him apart. He returned and came back as a senior this year and put it upon himself to make the difference every single game and he did that. He was dynamic, and bent to the game to him and carried us offensively. He was a top player at this level.'
There were evaluators with questions about Dervin's motor and inconsistency in this process, which is likely why he fell to the third round. His game will certainly need to mature in the OHL next season, before he moves onto Penn State, but there's more upside in Dervin than it might seem on first glance.
Like with Dervin, there's a more interesting profile to Vancouver's fifth-round pick Wilson Björck than it might initially seem.
The profile of a re-entry player in his second draft-eligible season who played the majority of his season in the Swedish junior league seems inauspicious on the surface.
However, Björck's scoring rate at that level — he produced 67 points in 43 games while playing on a line with his higher-scoring younger brother Viggo Björck, a top prospect for the 2026 NHL Draft — is significant enough to represent value in the fifth round.
Looking through the history of J20 scoring rates, there are a variety of players who went on to have lengthy NHL careers or became top prospects, who produced similarly to Björck in their age-19 season. It's a list of players that includes Edmonton Oilers forward Mattias Janmark and former Pittsburgh Penguins forwards Emil Bemstrom and Carl Hagelin.
Björck is bound for the NCAA next season, and the Canucks view him as a centre. It's not a perfect profile necessarily, but in the fifth round, Björck qualifies as the sort of home-run cut on a player with a meaningful scoring profile that we've typically advocated for in this space. That he also plays a premium position is a bonus.
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As Day 2 wound down, the Canucks landed their centre on the trade market.
OK, that's tongue in cheek. Nonetheless the Canucks executed a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday afternoon in which Vancouver sent future considerations, which are really just a fill in for 'paid nothing, but you have to include something in the paperwork for NHL central registry,' to Chicago for 6-foot-4, 225 pound, 24-year-old KHL centre Ilya Safonov.
Safonov, according to CHEK TV and The Athletic's Rick Dhaliwal, will attend development camp next week. He's under contract in the KHL for another year, so he might not factor into Vancouver's short-term plans, but this is a worthwhile bet for Vancouver for two reasons.
The first is that it's essentially free. Even if Safonov turns out to be nothing but AHL depth, Vancouver will have paid appropriately to find out. There is zero risk to executing this trade.
The second reason is that Safonov is a legitimately good KHL centre who is still young enough that he could have some NHL-level ceiling.
In particular, Safonov is interesting because he's an absolute beast in the faceoff circle; he had a draw win rate north of 55 percent in the KHL this season. He has the size that all teams want in a bottom-six centre, and if he can also win draws at a high rate and produce just a little bit, his barrier for entry as an NHL-level player won't be altogether that high.
It's worth noting, too, that his KHL production as a defensively oriented centre this season — seven goals and 22 points in 51 games — may not be much to write home about, but it's not disqualifying in terms of him potentially having some level of NHL potential. His age-23 KHL production, in fact, compares somewhat neatly to players like Mikhail Grigorenko in his first KHL season after departing the NHL, underrated former Edmonton Oilers fourth-liner Teemu Hartikainen in his first KHL season after departing the NHL, and Valeri Nichushkin during his two-year exile at a similar age in the KHL.
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Basically, Safonov has a unique physical profile and has produced at a rate consistent with that of fringe NHL-level players who played in the KHL at a similar age. That's worth a roll of the dice, especially when the cost of placing the bet is zero.
In the sixth and seventh rounds, the Canucks selected a pair of forwards with more common profiles in OHL winger Gabriel Chiarot and USHL centre Matthew Lansing, who broke out offensively in the latter half of the season and in the USHL playoffs with the Fargo Force.
Chiarot is seen as a hardworking winger with limited offensive upside. He's really an energy player and grinder even at the OHL level, but he's highly regarded by the talent evaluators I spoke with for his motor.
Overall, the Canucks' draft class, in addition to Cootes, includes a small handful of genuinely interesting bets and some project players that Vancouver's amateur scouting staff clearly loved for character and intangible reasons.
There are real reasons to view the bets that Vancouver placed in the 2025 draft favourably, and the biggest among them is that the club actually had an average level of draft capital this weekend and used it.