Canucks prospects tracker: Abbotsford cooking, Lekkerimaki on the rise
Article content
It’s the latest edition of the weekly tracker, where we tally up the efforts of the Vancouver Canucks’ highest profile prospects:
Advertisement 2
Article content
Article content
Abbotsford Canucks
Let them boil.
That’s the newfound philosophy of the Fraser Valley farm team β and it’s led to a lot of wins of late.
The Abbotsford Canucks went 9-2 in the month of December, when the organization pulled its prospects from the NHL pressure cooker and let them marinate together in the minors.
Consider the lineup for Saturday’s 5-2 win over the Manitoba Moose, a game the Canucks looked quick from the start, outscoring their opponent 33-15.
Vasily Podkolzin, snakebitten in 16 games in Vancouver, played on the top line, again, where he has two goals, seven assists and a plus-8 rating in 13 games.
Podkolzin, still only 21, gets time on the power play and penalty kill and plays in all the key situations.
Advertisement 3
Article content
The Swedish line … er, the second line – with recent additions Nils Hoglander and Nils Aman joining standout rookie Linus Karlsson – was dangerous early. Aman just missed a breakaway pass after a few minutes, then was stopped on a 2-on-0 breakaway deke on the next shift.
Hoglander and Karlsson would set up captain Chase Wouters for the team’s first goal later in the period.
Advertisement 4
Article content
Karlsson, 23, has looked particularly comfortable in his debut campaign. The 6-foot-1, 179-pound right-shot winger plays a smart game with the puck and can handle himself physically.
Karlsson was the other star in Friday’s 4-2 win over the Moose, sliding into the slot and scoring on the power play midway through the second period.
Advertisement 5
Article content
He has 24 points (9G, 15A) in 29 games and is tied for first in AHL rookie points.
In Friday’s game, Danila Klimovich also scored his fifth goal of the season, as the talented 19-year-old continues to develop in the right direction.
Klimovich, the Canucks’ second-round pick in 2021, made a quick move to the inside past a Moose defender and beat the goalie cleanly to the short side.
Advertisement 6
Article content
Klimovich has played with Wouters and summer signing Arshdeep Bains (24GP, 2G, 10A), the 21-year-old Surrey product whose playmaking ability has been his calling card.
The trio connected on the Canucks’ second goal in Saturday’s game. Klimovich later fed defenseman Jett Woo (2018, Rd. 2) on a 2-on-1 rush for the game-winner midway through the third.
Advertisement 7
Article content
Klimovich, seeing the ice better as a second-year pro with nine assists in 24 games, is also on pace to score 15 times this season. He is among the more productive of the dozen U20 players in the AHL this season β all of whom are NHL first-round picks.
On the blue line, Jack Rathbone is out of press box purgatory and back on the ice, getting his shifts and quarterbacking the first power play unit. The 23-year-old has five points (1G, 4A) and a plus-4 rating in 10 games.
Where he fits into the organization’s plans remains to be seen. Expected to step up this season, Rathbone, who continues to work on his defensive game, may not mesh with a Vancouver D-core that already has another undersized, offensive-minded defenseman in Quinn Hughes.
Advertisement 8
Article content
All in all, line by line, Abbotsford is clicking as a team and creating a winning environment as it goes along.
“You want to improve as the year goes on – you want to build, as the year goes on – and we’re seeing individual development in a lot of our guys,” head coach Jeremy Colliton told the media before the Christmas break.
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to show that we can be winners so we can be winners at the next level.”
Advertisement 9
Article content
This organizational shift in allowing their prospects to penetrate the minors makes sense with the current iteration of the Vancouver roster, where a deeper forward group left some youngsters β namely Podkolzin and Hoglander β on the outside looking in. It’s better for them to get reps. in the AHL, and the franchise finally realized it.
The Canucks are 18-9-1-1 and are in third place in the 10-team Pacific Division.
![FILE PHOTO: Sweden's Jonathan Lekkerimaki (24) handles the puck as the referee jumps out of the way during the second period of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship semifinal in Edmonton, Friday, Aug. 19, 2022.](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/theprovince/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/hko-world-jr-sweden-finland-20220819-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288)
Jonathan Lekkerimaki
This World Junior tournament could go either way for Jonathan Lekkerimaki.
The Canucks’ top prospect could either continue his illness after the draft, where he went scoreless in seven WJC games in August and followed that up with a goal in 20 games in Sweden’s second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan.
Advertisement 10
Article content
Or the 18-year-old can step up his game and show the hockey world why he was expected to be a top-10 pick and why the Canucks selected him 15th overall in July’s NHL draft.
With the group stage now finished, Lekkerimaki has not been a disappointment this time.
With the help of effective offensive displays in his first three games, Lekkerimaki was elevated to second-line status against the powerhouse Canadians on Saturday night, reuniting with his Djurgardens IF teammates Liam Ohgren and Noah Ostlund.
The game didn’t go well for the Swedes β they lost 5-1 β but the Lekkerimaki line was solid defensively as each forward took two shots on goal.
The 5-foot-11, 176-pound right-shot forward is skating well, handling the puck with patience and getting his shots on goal so far in the tournament. His fearsome wrist looks to be back – as we saw with his long-range snipe against the Austrians – and he has also tallied two assists in a bottom-six role.
Advertisement 11
Article content
Advertisement 12
Article content
The other Canucks prospect on Team Sweden β sophomore Elias Pettersson β was back on the blue line Saturday after suffering what looked like a head injury late in Thursday’s 3-2 overtime win against the Czech Republic.
Pettersson has played a lot this tournament, skating for over 17 minutes against Canada. The 2022 third-round pick went even in the loss and had one shot on goal.
It was Sweden’s first defensive pair of shoulder Sandin Pellikka and Calle Odelius who were hit by the Canadians, with respectable minus-3 and minus-4.
While Pettersson, 18, can be an adventure on the ice at times, he has provided Sweden with some physicality on the back end. The 6-foot-3, 196-pound left-shot D-man has been relied on on the penalty kill and is often involved in the rough after the game. He also skates well and can move the puck.
Advertisement 13
Article content
Pettersson has one assist and a plus-2 rating so far in the tournament.
Sweden will meet next rival Finland in the quarter-final round on Monday.
Elsewhere: Finnish goaltender Aku Koskenvuo (2021, Rd. 5) got the start against Team USA, giving up six goals en route to a 6-2 loss. The 6-foot-4, 194-pound Canucks prospect stopped 24 of 30 shots and went 0-2 in group play. He will return to continue his freshman season at Harvard once the tournament is over.
-
World Juniors: Canucks prospects Lekkerimaki up, Pettersson down on day 4
-
The Skate: JT Miller is a passionate player, but is that the end of the story?