There are precious few guarantees in the world of sports. But we can very nearly guarantee that the forward corps of the Vancouver Canucks are going to look different in a couple weeks’ time.
As it stands, the Canucks’ centre depth consists of Elias Pettersson, Filip Chytil, Aatu Räty, and Teddy Blueger, and in roughly that order. However, most believe that the number one item on GM Patrik Allvin and Co.’s summer shopping list is a number two centre.
If a new 2C enters the fold, it raises an obvious question about what happens with the rest of those centres – and, primarily, what happens to Chytil.
The 25-year-old had an interesting debut with the Canucks after being acquired in the JT Miller trade, to say the least. Vancouver fans heard that Chytil was ‘one hit away’ from retirement, but they didn’t hear quite as much about his remarkable puck-carrying ability and drive. Chytil scored in his Canucks’ debut and continued to look like a difference-maker out there, even if he only managed six points in 15 games. Then, he took that ‘one more hit,’ in the form of a cheapshot from behind delivered by Jason Dickinson. Another concussion ensued – at least the fourth of Chytil’s career, if not a higher number – and his season was effectively ended.
All indications are that Chytil has fully recovered from this concussion and was indeed ready to return to play right as the 2024/25 season reached a conclusion. Apprehensions about his head health continue to linger, but there’s currently no reason to believe Chytil won’t be ready to play a role in the Canucks’ forward corps as of the start of the 2025/26 campaign.
But if the Canucks add a clear-cut 2C through trade or free agency, what exact role does that leave Chytil with?
The conventional answer is probably to keep Chytil at centre and just slide him down to 3C. One can imagine Chytil slotting in between Conor Garland and Dakota Joshua, as he did at times last season, or perhaps flanked by the large, active bodies of Kiefer Sherwood and Drew O’Connor.
There are a couple of issues with this setup, however. One is that it leaves a singular 4C role for Räty and Blueger to share/fight over, and ideally, Räty would be given a bit more room to grow on the roster.
Another is that it still leaves the Canucks a little shorthanded on top-six wings.
As it stands, Jake DeBrusk is the only absolute, clear-cut, set-in-stone top-six winger on the roster. Garland probably deserves the distinction on talent and production, but it’s also entirely possible that he lines up in the middle-six instead to continue his long-running partnership with Joshua.
Beyond them, we’ve got options of Nils Höglander, or Abbotsford call-ups like Jonathan Lekkerimäki or Linus Karlsson. They’ll be shorthanded if everyone already on hand proves up to the task, and even more so if they don’t.
So, what about Chytil as an option?
If we’re talking pure skill, he’s way up the forward ranks, trailing perhaps only Elias Pettersson. And many of those skills read as the type that would translate very directly to success on the wing. Chytil can carry the puck and make plays, maintain possession, and fire off quick shots. He can drive the puck up the centre lane, so it stands to reason that he could also drive it from the outside-in. Contrary to his concussion history, Chytil almost plays a bit of a modern power forward-style game. Most power forwards apply their trade from the wing.
A top-six consisting of Pettersson and a new 2C at centre, and then a collection of DeBrusk, Chytil, Garland, and Höglander on the wing certainly sounds more complete than what the Canucks have down on paper right now.
But there are some issues with this solution, too, with the most obvious one being that Chytil doesn’t exactly have an abundance of experience on the wing as of yet.
Many young NHL centres get placed on the wing before they’re trusted down the middle, but that really hasn’t been the case with Chytil. Maybe that’s due to his player profile, which does lend itself nicely to centre duties, or maybe it’s because of a long-term lack of centre depth on the Rangers. Either way, Chytil has mostly played the pivot position in his NHL career thus far, and so he would have to learn how to be a wing a bit on the fly.
Chytil has played with a large number of good wingers in recent seasons, with his most frequent linemates being names like Kaapo Kakko, Will Cuylle, Alexis Lafrenière, and, at times, Artemi Panarin. But Chytil’s only real time at wing has come when some of the aforementioned names have briefly tried out centre, but none of those experiments have lasted very long. Get this: Chytil rarely even lined up on the wing for the power play, only occasionally joining the unit of a Mika Zibanejad or Vincent Trocheck, and almost always centring a second unit of his own instead.
It is typically, they say, easier to transition from centre to wing than vice versa. Some go as far as to say that nearly every NHL centre could be a fine winger if they put their mind to it. Does that apply to Chytil?
On the one hand, we’ve got no real past precedent to say that it will. Draft profiles of Chytil list him as a ‘LW/C,’ so once upon a time, he was thought to potentially be going down that path, but it hasn’t happened yet at the NHL level.
On the other hand, there are plenty of other reasons to believe that Chytil could succeed at wing if given enough time and space to figure it out. Should the Canucks be successful in their search for a 2C, then placing Chytil on the wing of either that player or Pettersson would both balance their lineup a little better and avoid them having to go out and find a potentially expensive replacement for Brock Boeser.
Chytil on the wing is something that fits the Canucks’ current plans and needs so well that we’d bet good money on it being tried out, at the very least, at some point early on in 2025/26. Where that goes depends on Chytil’s performance past that point, but we definitely don’t mind the odds of a positive outcome.
