Welcome to The Hockey News - Vancouver Canucks site’s player preview series for the 2025–26 season. In these articles, we’ll preview the players who are expected to play for the Canucks in the 2025–26 season. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the Abbotsford Canucks’ leading scorer during the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs, Linus Karlsson.  

Karlsson’s 2024–25 Season

Karlsson had a very successful 2024–25 season for both Vancouver and Abbotsford. In the NHL, the forward made his mark as a netfront presence, potting his first career NHL goal on January 29 against the Nashville Predators. He finished the NHL regular season with three goals and three assists in 23 games, putting up 28 total shots on goal. Karlsson is one of a few Abbotsford players who are expected to push for a roster spot come Vancouver’s training camp in the fall. 

In the AHL, Karlsson took his game to another level. He scored 23 goals and 16 assists in 32 games played, averaging over a point per game despite not being in the lineup for a full season. Once the playoffs rolled around, Karlsson flourished even more, finishing the postseason as the league’s points leader with 14 goals and 12 assists in 24 games played. He also broke an AHL record for goals scored by a Swedish player in a single postseason. 

Karlsson’s 2024–25 Letter Grade

For his growth in the 2024–25 season, Karlsson received a B- on the season, as he made some steps to becoming a full-time NHLer but will need to do more to stick in the lineup. With that being said, from how his play has developed over the past year, it’s clear that Karlsson has found a particular role to play and plans to stick with it going into 2025–26 — regardless of whether this is in the NHL or AHL.  

Karlsson’s 2025–26 Predictions

As a key member of Abbotsford and a solid depth option for Vancouver, Karlsson will likely improve on his performance from this season now that he has spent more time playing hockey at the NHL level. The 2025 Abbotsford MVP will look to make a bigger mark with the Canucks, potentially fitting into a third or fourth-line role while continuing to pot goals at the side of opponents’ nets. 

The Evolution Of Vancouver And Abbotsford Canucks Forward Linus KarlssonWhen the Vancouver Canucks acquired Linus Karlsson on February 25, 2019, fans had mixed feelings. The piece going back to the San Jose Sharks in exchange was Jonathan Dahlén, a player who had previously shown flashes of success alongside franchise cornerstone at the time Elias Pettersson. Some had even referred to the two as the second-coming of the Sedin twins. Still, the 19-year-old Karlsson had the belief of Canucks general manager at the time, Jim Benning, behind him. 

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The Manitoba Moose have come to terms with Jaydon Dureau on a one-year contract beginning this fall.

A product of White City, Saskatchewan, the 24-year-old will look to stick with his second American Hockey League team over the past six seasons, to which he has played parts of each of the past five years with the Syracuse Crunch.

Selected in the fifth round of the 2020 NHL Draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning, Dureau has bounced between the Crunch and Tampa Bay's ECHL affiliate, the Orlando Solar Bears ever year.

Standing six-foot and 176 pounds, the slight winger has yet to find his scoring touch at the AHL level, despite putting up 29 goals and 73 points in 103 ECHL games. In 36 AHL games, he has just three goals and seven points.

Dureau was a point-per-game player at the WHL level, to which he played out his career with the Portland Winterhawks, scoring 65 times and adding 131 assists for 196 points in 207 games. 

The contract is a standard one-year, AHL agreement, meaning he can bounce between the AHL and ECHL with no issue. He would need to sign an NHL deal should the Jets feel the need to recall him to the big league. 

The new CBA will bring numerous changes to the way the NHL currently operates. It will change salary structures, put an end to the playoffs' salary loophole, allow players more freedom about the way they dress, and the list goes on and on, but one crucial clause hasn’t received much coverage yet.

In Thursday’s edition of La Presse, Simon-Olivier Lorange reports that from the 2027 draft, teams will have four years to sign the 18-year-old players they draft. These days, they have four years to sign players who are plying their trade in the NCAA, but only two years for players who are competing in the CHL. If a team drafts an overeager player (a player who’s in his second year of eligibility and is 19), like the Montreal Canadiens have done a few times of late (like Florian Xhekaj, for instance), they’ll have three years to put pen to paper with them.

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Why could that mean more local players for the Canadiens? This will simply give the team more time to evaluate CHL draftees before deciding on those players. No matter how thorough a team is with their scouting, 18-year-old players are raw products. They have so much left to learn and so much more development to come. Projecting them in the future is a tall order, and having just two years to evaluate them isn’t much.

The two-year deadline on signing CHL products before losing their rights left very little room for late bloomers. While generational talents can be ready to jump right into the NHL action after being drafted, others need more time to come into their own. There’s no proof that this state of affairs prevented the Canadiens and other teams from drafting more CHLers, but there is no doubt this new development will make life a bit easier on teams.

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