EP Rinkside 2021-22 Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 21-ranked Vancouver Canucks

Not all is well within the Vancouver Canucks prospect pool. This is a team that has ranked among the bottom ten clubs in five of the last six seasons. The one season they weren't, they ended up 17th out of 31 clubs. And yet they find themselves as just the 21st-ranked club for this exercise.

Now, we can appreciate that over that span they have graduated several top prospects in Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes and Nils Höglander. They're about to graduate Vasili Podkolzin and Jack Rathbone, and when they do, the pipeline will be virtually devoid of impact pieces.

This is what happens when a club deals picks and prospects in an attempt to fast-forward a rebuild. 

The Canucks have not selected in the first round of the last two drafts. They didn't have a second-rounder in 2020. Unless they make a trade, they won't have one in 2022 either. They are mortgaging everything they can in order to make a run while their core remains viably young. It's a move that will either look extremely smart or exceptionally foolish. Only time will tell. 

Regardless of their big club's future, the current iteration of the organization's top-15 prospects has been much deeper in recent years but still houses some intriguing players at the top and a handful of projects with some upside.