The Vancouver Canucks have passed on signing two prospects: defenceman Jacob Truscott and goaltender Matthew Thiessen.
The two players will now become free agents and can sign with any team they please after the Canucks chose not to sign them by the August 15th deadline. Both prospects played this past season in the NCAA.
The name that probably stands out the most for Canucks fans is Truscott, as the left-shot defenceman showed some promise with the Michigan Wolverines in recent years, even being named captain of the prestigious program. A fifth-round pick of the Canucks in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, Truscott took a big step in 2022-23 by tallying 16 points in 23 games while being one of Michigan’s most trusted defencemen.
That production appears to have stalled out this past season, however, when Truscott put up the same number of points with two fewer goals in 18 more games. With names like Elias Pettersson, Sawyer Mynio, and Kirill Kudryatsev in the Canucks’ system on left defence, this management group simply chose not to extend a contract to a player they didn’t draft and that they (and us at CA) rate lower than the players mentioned above.
CHEK TV’s Rick Dhaliwal first reported in February that the Canucks were not expected to sign Truscott, so this certainly doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
It’s a bit of a different story for Thiessen, who always appeared like a longshot to sign with the Canucks based on his college career. Thiessen was taken in the Canucks’ final draft before Ian Clark joined the organization from Columbus and took responsibility for scouting goaltenders the Canucks should draft. Thiessen hasn’t been talked about much since being drafted in 2018.
Neither player ranked in the top 20 of CanucksArmy’s most recent list of Vancouver Canucks prospects, which you can read by clicking here.
