Jonathan Lekkerimaki is entering a put up or shut up season with the Vancouver Canucks, and everyone around the team knows it.
This week on Sekeres and Price, the hosts made it clear patience is thinning, even for a former first round pick.
Lekkerimaki is working back from shoulder surgery, and one host set a simple bar: stay healthy, and even 20 goals this year would count as real progress.
The other host pushed for something bigger, hoping for 15 to 20 goals with real top six minutes and power play time attached to it.
Either way, both agreed on one thing. This is the season the talent finally has to show up in an actual NHL box score.
The clip shows both hosts leaning forward mid sentence, practically pleading for the kid to just start scoring in real games.
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Lekkerimaki has played just 13 NHL games so far, managing 2 goals, 1 assist and 3 points at a minus-3 rating, on a $918,333 cap hit.
Why Vancouver still has every reason to be patient
None of that erases the pedigree. Vancouver had him in the middle of the first round for a reason, and the upside was obvious well before the draft.
The flip side is just as real. Plenty of prospects with that profile end up traded, or scoring well in Europe instead, the way Anton Rodin did a decade ago.
Vancouver finished last season dead last in the league at 25-49-8, which is exactly why burning a year developing him still makes sense.
There's nothing to lose here. In a full rebuild, giving a talented 22-year-old another full season and offseason to find his game costs the Canucks nothing real.
Whether Lekkerimaki actually breaks out this year, or turns into a cautionary tale about draft position, is a question nobody in Vancouver can answer yet.
Will Jonathan Lekkerimaki finally break out for the Canucks this season?
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