Vancouver Canucks’ AHL team: Utica Comets roster, lineup, projections

Dive deep into the Vancouver Canucks farm system with this projection of the 2019-20 Utica Comets opening-night lineup, season point totals, and emerging opportunities, plus breakdowns for the top-20 candidates to make the team.

With NHL preseason behind us, and the AHL season opener just ahead, here’s a look at who’s available to lace ’em up for the Vancouver Canucks‘ farm team, the Utica Comets and head coach Trent Cull in their opening night, October-5th road game against the Binghamton Devils.

Countless last-minute question marks made this process challenging, to say the least. Vancouver Canucks‘ preseason-breakout prospect, Adam Gaudette, did enough in the to earn an NHL spot. This sent veteran left-winger Sven Baertschi onto the waiver wire, who looked good himself in the Canucks preseason with four points in five games. Baertschi was joined on the wire by Nikolay Goldobin, though this was more of Goldobin’s own doing, having also played in five games but only managing one assist.

The Canucks broke form and went with a roster made up of 14 forwards and seven defencemen, rather than head coach Travis Green’s typical 13 forwards and eight defencemen, which meant Alex Biega was sent packing. According to Canucks GM Jim Benning, there was some interest in Biega. Ultimately, the Bulldog made it through waivers and joins the Canucks’ collection of NHL-worthy depth accumulating in Utica.

If all of the young guys take at least a little step forward this season, and things go well for the farm team – i.e. the Canucks stay healthy and keep player movement to a minimum – then the following lineup and point projections seem reasonable for the coming season.

The Comets could load all of their most dangerous offensive talents onto the top line, and the solid two-way players onto a second line to take the toughest defensive assignments and respond with their own offence. The next-best talents could be put onto a third line to hopefully benefit from the projected space to overachieve offensively, while dad and the kids go onto the fourth line to add some energy, complement special teams and grow their pro game.

The story on defence could be a top pairing that transitions the puck out of the zone and threatens offence on every rush, alongside a second pairing that plays hard, veteran, shutdown hockey, logging all the big minutes against opposing AHL stars. Ideally, the third pairing benefits from that created space, enabling the all-important secondary scoring that every real contender needs.

For the Canucks faithful this season, the goaltending is taking shape and could be the most interesting storyline in Utica, where two vets and a prized prospect jockey for position. Expect that Benning will want to eventually balance out his minor league rosters (AHL Comets/ECHL Kalamazoo Wings) with each one mentor and one prospect, as it goes with the Canucks.

With that in mind, Richard Bachman seems to have put in the best NHL-preseason performance of all the Canucks’ farm-system goaltenders.