Vancouver Canucks Rebuild Finds Its Faces: Cootes and Malhotra Get the Team Canada Call

For once, the most encouraging Vancouver Canucks news of the week had nothing to do with the salary cap. On July 24, Hockey Canada named two Canucks prospects — 2025 first-rounder Braeden Cootes and brand-new third-overall pick Caleb Malhotra — to its 32-player roster for the World Junior Summer Showcase. When your NHL team just finished dead last, this is what a good week looks like: the kids you're betting the future on getting picked for the national team's summer audition, a new AHL coach settling in, and a freshly released schedule that finally puts dates on the rebuild.

Two Canucks at the World Junior Summer Showcase

The showcase runs July 26 through Aug. 1, opening with practice days before exhibition games against Sweden on July 29, Finland on July 30 and the United States on Aug. 1. For Cootes, taken 15th overall in 2025, it's familiar territory — he played for Canada at the 2026 World Juniors, putting up four points in seven games on a bronze-medal team, and he'll be expected to carry a bigger load this time around. For Malhotra, drafted exactly a month before the roster announcement, it's the first checkpoint of his pro-track summer and an early chance to measure himself against the best of his age group.

The summer roster also doubles as an early audition for December's World Junior team, which makes the invitation more than ceremonial for both players. And both project as exactly what Vancouver's system has lacked for years: legitimate NHL centers. If the two of them anchor Canada's lineup this week and again at the World Juniors this winter, the Canucks' timeline stops being theoretical.

How the Canucks Got Here

None of this happens without the season nobody in Vancouver wants to relive. The Canucks went 25-49-8 for 58 points, last in the league, with a .354 points percentage that sits among the worst marks in franchise history and a home record — 9-27-5 — that was the worst Rogers Arena crowds have ever been asked to sit through. They were formally eliminated from playoff contention on March 22, their second straight spring without a postseason game.

Management publicly backed Adam Foote through the worst of it, but patience ran out once the season did. The pivot point on the ice came in mid-December, when captain Quinn Hughes was traded to Minnesota in the deal that now defines this rebuild: Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren, Zeev Buium and a 2026 first-round pick came back. With Hughes a year and a half from unrestricted free agency and the team buried in the standings at 11-17-3, president Jim Rutherford framed it as respecting reality: "He was getting closer to free agency and he'd have a choice." The captaincy has sat vacant ever since — a job opening that says as much about this roster's transition as any stat line. On the ice, Elias Pettersson led the team with just 51 points, Filip Hronek added 49 with a team-high 41 assists, and Jake DeBrusk's 23 goals paced the forwards. Nobody hit 60 points. That's the baseline the new regime inherits.

A Front Office Rebuilt From the Top

The losing cost people their jobs. GM Patrik Allvin was fired on April 17, head coach Adam Foote followed in the spring housecleaning, and on May 14 the Canucks handed the operation to people who have grown up inside it: Ryan Johnson, promoted to general manager after two seasons as assistant GM and more than a decade in the organization; Daniel and Henrik Sedin, elevated to co-presidents of hockey operations; and Rutherford, stepping back into an adviser and alternate governor role after the June draft.

Behind the bench, the club promoted Manny Malhotra from AHL Abbotsford in June to become the 23rd head coach in franchise history. That created a vacancy on the farm, filled on July 17 when Abbotsford hired Ryan Papaioannou — the final rung of the coaching ladder slotting into place just before the prospects it exists to develop start arriving in September.

Draft Luck, and the Malhotra Pick

Finishing last earned Vancouver the best lottery odds and none of the luck: Toronto jumped the queue in May and took Gavin McKenna first overall, dropping the Canucks to third. The consolation prize might age well anyway. Caleb Malhotra — yes, the new head coach's son — put up 84 points in 67 games for Brantford in the OHL, second on his team, and profiles as a smart, relentless two-way center who reads the game a beat ahead of everyone else. Both Malhotras have been disarmingly matter-of-fact about the family dynamic; as Caleb put it, "Usually when I hop on the ice with him, he's coach, and he'll treat me like any other player." Vancouver added Czech forward Adam Novotny at No. 24 on the same night, giving the system two first-round talents from a single draft.

Free Agency: Deliberately Modest

July 1 was quiet by design. The signings were about insulation, not headlines:

• Jamie Oleksiak, two years at $5 million per season, brought in after five years in Seattle to add size and stability to a defense that traded Marcus Pettersson to the Rangers the same day.
• Paul Cotter on a one-year deal and veteran Luke Schenn returning on a one-year contract, plus two-way depth in Trey Fix-Wolansky, Akil Thomas and Matthew Stienburg.

The heavier lifting on depth actually happened in June, when the club quietly extended Jack Thompson, Cole Clayton, Chase Wouters and Guillaume Brisebois before the market even opened. Departures were equally low-stakes: Teddy Blueger signed in Toronto, Danila Klimovich in Philadelphia, Curtis Douglas in Seattle, and the club declined to qualify five of its restricted free agents at the end of June. The strategy reads clearly enough — keep the cap sheet clean, surround the kids with professionals on short terms, and let Rossi, Ohgren, Buium and eventually Cootes and Malhotra determine how fast this goes. Buium in particular is the swing piece: a former first-round pick acquired in the Hughes deal who now projects as the centerpiece of Vancouver's future blue line.

Schedule Notes: An Early Start and a Circled Date

The 84-game schedule, released July 17, opens with a home-and-home against Edmonton: Sept. 29 in Alberta — the earliest season opener in franchise history — and the home opener Oct. 1 at Rogers Arena. October is road-heavy with an early Eastern swing, there's a Midwest trip in January, and with British Columbia done changing its clocks, fans can expect more 8 p.m. Pacific starts on the road than they're used to. And then there's the date every Canucks fan found first: Oct. 25, when Quinn Hughes and the Wild visit Vancouver for the first time since the trade. Expect a video tribute, a long ovation and a very complicated evening.

Stack it all up and this week's Vancouver Canucks news captures a franchise that has stopped pretending. The old core is dispersed, the new management group is homegrown, and the organization's most valuable assets are teenagers wearing Team Canada colors this weekend. The rebuild won't be judged in July — but between the showcase, September's training camp and that early opener in Edmonton, the evidence starts arriving quickly from here.