Oct. 6th: According to commentator John Shannon, Cootes has indeed cracked Vancouver’s opening night roster. In a somewhat wacky comparison, Cootes will become the first 18-year-old to play for the Canucks since Petr Nedvěd in 1990, who was also selected in the first round and played in the WHL for the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Sep. 30th: 2025 15th-overall pick Braeden Cootes is “in the driver’s seat” to make the Vancouver Canucks’ season-opening roster, reports The Athletic’s Thomas Drance. Per Drance, Cootes’ performance this preseason and training camp has been so impressive that internally, the “conversation around him is beginning to shift materially” amongst Canucks decision-makers.
According to Drance, the team’s “internal discussion” around Cootes has shifted from whether Cootes should get early-season NHL games (a prospect Drance called “increasingly likely”) to whether he can sustain this high level all year or is best served returning to the WHL.
For those not paying close attention to Canucks training camp, this is likely to be a surprising development, as most 18-year-olds who make it onto NHL rosters are players who were one of the draft’s top handful of picks.
But keeping Cootes on their opening-night roster would not be a move without precedent. The Philadelphia Flyers played 2024 13th overall pick Jett Luchanko in four NHL games to start their 2024-25 season, and 2023 13th pick Zach Benson ended up making the Buffalo Sabres roster on a full-time basis.
There are actually quite a few parallels between Luchanko’s situation and Cootes’.
Similar to Cootes, Luchanko entered his first professional training camp as a long-shot possibility to make it onto the NHL roster, but his complete play and pro-ready qualities left the Philadelphia Flyers coaching staff extremely impressed. Rocky Thompson, then a member of the Flyers’ coaching staff, said at the time that Luchanko’s performance “opened [the] eyes” of the organization.
Cootes has generated similar sentiments in Vancouver. Although the Canucks have not been as public with their praise for Cootes as the Flyers were with Luchanko, Drance reports that the Canucks have been pleasantly surprised by just how “complete” and “mature” Cootes is – “down to his positioning and work in the faceoff circle.”
Beyond receiving similar-sounding praise at the same stage of camp one year apart, Luchanko is also a player who had a similar overall profile to Cootes. They both stand around six feet tall and 180 pounds, both registered just above point-per-game scoring rates in their draft-year CHL campaigns, and both are widely credited with having clear pro-ready qualities that are at the center of each player’s game.
As a result, it appears that Cootes is following Luchanko’s path and is likely to see NHL action despite being just 18 years old and not one of the draft’s top picks. The Canucks recently learned that forward Nils Hoglander will miss significant time due to injury, a development that only makes it likelier that the Canucks have room on their season-opening roster to keep Cootes.
Despite all of this, it remains the likeliest possibility that in a few months’ time, Cootes is back playing with his junior team. Playing in the NHL at 18 is such a difficult task, it’s only the best of the best who typically manage to hold onto a lineup spot for a full season.
While Cootes is undoubtedly an impressive, promising young player, his résumé is not at the level of the recent players who have been full-time NHL players at 18. Benson was one of the WHL’s most complete players with a lethal offensive arsenal, and Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini, Leo Carlsson, and Adam Fantilli were each top picks who had overwhelmingly proven themselves to be beyond their previous levels of competition. For as impressive as Cootes has been this preseason, most evaluators don’t place him at that level.
Even so, forcing his way into the roster conversation at 18 is a significant positive for both Cootes and Vancouver, and it reinforces projections of him developing into the kind of do-it-all middle-six center NHL teams routinely covet.
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