Published Sep 22, 2026 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read
Quick: Who could be the Canucks’ seventh defenceman?
If you are thinking one of Victor Mancini, Kirill Kudryavtsev or Guillaume Brisebois, you’re almost certainly right.
In past NHL pre-seasons, we would almost certainly see a lot of each since they are the kinds of players that NHL teams used to lean heavily on during exhibition play — guys who are on the bubble of an NHL roster, who are adept minor leaguers, and can manage minutes in the NHL in a pinch but are also ready to sit in the press box for much of the time.
In this new era, there is just not much time for guys like this. Head coach Manny Malhotra and general manager Ryan Johnson have some leeway in setting their opening roster, but so much of their planning happened beforehand, the few decisions in front of them are inevitably ruthless. There’s just so little time to gather final evidence.
So when you see them suiting up in the first two games of a four-game pre-season, you can’t help but think, “Hmm, so this is it for these guys?”
For his part, Brisebois knows the reality: He’s in a battle to make the big club and he has to take his chances as they come. The NHL’s new rules cap pre-seasons at just two games for players who have played 100 or more NHL games, or 400 professional games in total. Brisebois has been in the Canucks’ organization for a decade, but because of his long history of injury and bad luck, he hasn’t hit either limit, so he could yet play another pre-season game.
It also seems likely the Canucks’ expected top six of Zeev Buium, Filip Hronek, Jamie Oleksiak, Tom Willander, Luke Schenn and Elias Pettersson will suit up in the final two games, although Willander was playing Tuesday and Pettersson played last Saturday, suggesting there may yet be two games left for the Canucks’ seventh-man hopefuls to suit up for.
That’s what Brisebois is keying on. So too is Victor Mancini.
“I think there are some things I want to improve on, but I’m just trying to focus on myself right now and take things one day at a time, one shift at a time, and just have some fun too,” Mancini said Tuesday, not long before he and the other 19 selected for the Calgary game jetted off.
Like Brisebois, he is focused on what he can control. How he plays in these first two games are what they can control. When they get picked to show their stuff isn’t up to them.
“I don’t really think about it too much,” he said. “You know, I show up every day, try to stick to what my job is, what I’m good at, being a good teammate and having fun as well.”
For both, the fact they know Malhotra so well from playing for him the past two seasons, as well as Johnson’s familiarity with them both from being GM in Abbotsford, helps them. How can they believe otherwise?
“Just in the conversations with Vic, he’s hungry,” Malhotra said Tuesday when asked about the reality in front of Brisebois and Mancini in particular, that they have suited up twice and that there’s not a lot of ice time likely left for them to show their stuff.
“It’s such a delicate balance of trying to get guys games, trying to put them in positions where they can succeed and show us their best,” he acknowledged.
In the end, it all goes back to what Malhotra said at the outset of camp: In the few roster battles that are there, it will be the players who dictate how the roster gets set.
“My expectation of those guys in that role is not to overcook it and do too much,” he said of the more experienced hands he has suited up so far.
“It’s to play your game at the best of your ability … you only have two games to get your game up and running. There’s not a situation where you can just ease into these games. It’s about getting to your game right away.”
There’s just no margin for error.
pjohnston@postmedia.com