Why the Vancouver Canucks could have a late-round ‘steal’ in Wilson Bjorck

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The first time Kris Mayotte saw Wilson Bjorck play live was actually after he and his staff at Colorado College had already recruited him.

Bjorck was playing at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis with Team Sweden as part of the World Junior Summer Showcase at the end of July. Mayotte made the trip out to catch him in action in his first real taste on North American ice following his first NHL development camp with the Vancouver Canucks, who’d drafted him in the fifth round of the 2025 NHL Draft a month earlier.

Bjorck finished second on the Swedes in scoring, registering six points in five games against Canada, USA and Finland, and Mayotte “came away from there — and not to be too dramatic — somewhat blown away by how well he handled it.”

A couple of months later, after a weeks-long training camp with the Tigers, that feeling hasn’t changed. Bjorck hasn’t yet played his first NCAA game. That’ll come Friday night on home ice at Ed Robson Arena against UConn. But Mayotte and his lieutenants are already sold.

“I think Vancouver has a steal in the fifth round if I’m being honest,” Mayotte told The Athletic.

From the outside, Bjorck is a 19-year-old picked 143rd who was passed over in his first year of eligibility — the second-best NHL prospect in his family to his little brother Viggo, a projected first-rounder in 2026. Leading into the 2025 draft, Bjorck wasn’t sure he would get drafted in his second crack at it and had no idea the Canucks wanted to pick him. The day of the draft, he and his dad were on a plane flying home from a family vacation in Spain when he landed to “like 60 messages” congratulating him on being selected by Vancouver — including one from Viggo and his mom, who’d stayed behind with their cousins and got to celebrate before he did.

To those who know him and his game best, he’s a legit NHL prospect who’s now right there with the best in his age group.

Last season, the 6-foot, 165-pound winger finished second in scoring in J20 (Sweden’s top junior level) with 67 points in 43 games, and tied for third with a plus-31 rating. He describes himself as a heads-up player who likes to find lanes for his teammates, win pucks and play with energy.

Magnus Havelid, Sweden’s World Junior team head coach, talks about him as if he’s already on the team in December. He was impressed by Bjorck’s tournament with the national team last April in Finland, and impressed again by his play this summer in Minneapolis.

“He took a huge step (last year) and it was big for us to see his game jump,” Havelid said. “He’s a smart player, he’s strong with the puck, he can play defensively, he can play the penalty kill, and what happened last year is he got stronger in his legs. But what happened last year is you could really see it on the ice. He can protect the puck, he’s got quick feet coming out of tight situations, and he’s going in the right direction and has a lot of confidence right now.”

In Minneapolis, Mayotte came away particularly impressed by how well he handled the physicality, lack of time and space on the smaller sheet, and the play on the wall.

“The thing that stood out to me most was he was never rushed,” Mayotte said. “And even when he had pressure, he was able to make the plays that he wanted through the pressure at an incredibly efficient level. It wasn’t a high-risk, high-reward type of game, but he made some big-time plays at the same time.”

In skates, practices and scrimmages in Colorado Springs, that has translated against his older, bigger college teammates, too.

“We can’t put him in a situation that he doesn’t acclimate to quickly,” Mayotte said. “(And) his head doesn’t go down. His head is always up. He can make plays on his forehand, on his backhand, on his off-wing. He can drive you wide, but he can also change speeds. I’ve been really impressed.”

Despite his slight frame, Mayotte has also seen a stronger-than-he-looks player who doesn’t shy away from contact.

“It’s an incredible strength of his how strong his edges are. He can just get into that A-frame and really separate from you,” Mayotte said. “He’s really smart with the spots he puts himself in, but he doesn’t shy away from anything, either. And what we’ve seen from him is that he can handle that, he’s comfortable in those situations.”

Mayotte said Bjorck told him that he considers himself to have a little Brad Marchand in him “in terms of his willingness and ability to compete and play on an edge.”

That was evident in his 98 penalty minutes with Djurgarden’s junior team, third-most among J20 forwards last year. But Mayotte has seen it in practice, too.

With the added time in the gym afforded by the college hockey schedule, they think that’ll make a big difference for the type of game he plays as well.

“When you look long-term at what he’s going to bring to us and with the Canucks, the body being able to do it is going to be important, and I think that’s what he has gravitated towards. We’ve only been doing it for a few weeks, but he’s not slowing down, and he hasn’t hit a wall or anything like that, which has been really impressive,” Mayotte said. “He’s a rink rat. He loves being on the ice and in the gym.”

Paul Pooley, the Tigers’ new associate head coach, has found two things that stand out about Bjorck’s game.

The first is that he has a knack for being around the puck. “The puck seems to find him in scoring areas or down low in the O-zone,” said Pooley, who also runs their power play (which Bjorck will feature prominently on).

The second is his puck protection skills. Said Pooley: “He’s really hard to get off the puck. And that’s one of the things that you normally think you really have to teach players coming to the new level with bigger, stronger, faster kids. He has no problem with body positioning or spinning off guys. He’s a strong, fit kid. Swedes are always in good shape. It’s part of their DNA growing up. They train hard. It has been impressive.”

Bjorck’s emergence as a hockey player only tells part of his story, too.

Standing on the concrete of an iceless 3M Arena on a sunny late July afternoon while his teammates cooled down and stretched following a game at the World Junior Summer Showcase, Bjorck asked a reporter from The Athletic if he could step away from the murmur of his teammates and the gathered media to a quieter corner of the rink.

He asked because he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids.

Bjorck, who was born with hearing loss in both ears, doesn’t wear them on the ice because of the sweat and the impact. He joked that he should be wearing them off it, but he likes to be hard on himself.

“I think I’ve got better hearing than I do,” he said. “I wear them in school, and I used to lipread and use sign language, but I’ve forgotten all of it.”

After 19 years of dealing with it, it’s something he’s now quite comfortable talking about. If he doesn’t hear you in a conversation, he’s quick to stop you and say, “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

Viggo has always admired that in his big brother.

“He’s really good at dealing with it. I would struggle with it, but he’s a super positive guy and he handles it really well,” he said.

As a freshman in college in a different country, his coaches said you can rarely even tell, though both Mayotte and Pooley said they’ve made extra effort in practices and places like the video room to make sure he’s catching everything.

“You want to make sure that you’re locking eyes with him and connecting with him. And he’s comfortable, so if he doesn’t understand something or doesn’t hear something, he’ll raise his hand and say it, which I think is the most important aspect — your willingness to be vulnerable and say ‘Hey, I didn’t hear what you said,’” Mayotte said. “But there haven’t been many of those moments. Now, we haven’t been in a game or on a bench together where your back is to me and I’m trying to communicate with him.”

On the ice, Pooley has found that he actually picks things up quickly because he’s paying closer attention. When Pooley added a little wrinkle to the power play recently, he was the first to pick it up. When Mayotte showed him a clip of something he wasn’t executing after a recent practice, it didn’t just become a point of emphasis; it was done.

“I think he’s one of those kids that’s a quick learner and has a high IQ, so I’m excited to see his development,” Pooley said.

It hasn’t impacted him in the classroom, either. At Colorado College, the student-athletes take one course at a time over three-and-a-half-week blocks. Bjorck has just completed his first class, and he finished with a grade in the 90s.

“He had a tough class and just excelled in it,” Pooley said. “He’s a driven young man that is really intelligent and fun to be around. He loves to be at the rink; you can tell he’s a great teammate.”

The rink has always been his easy, happy place. His dad, Jesper, played pro hockey in Sweden for two decades as a 6-foot-2 right-shot defenceman and was a European scout with the Vegas Golden Knights. Viggo is his only sibling, and they grew up at the rinks a little north of Stockholm.

Last year, they shared an apartment and played as teammates for the first time in their young careers, often together on Djurgarden’s first line and top power play.

Off the ice, Viggo said he and his brother created a schedule where Viggo handled the chores like the dishes, and Wilson did the cooking.

On it, Viggo describes his brother as a “really skilled player” who is “really easy to play with because he gets the pucks and creates the scoring chances for everyone else.”

Together, they led Djurgarden to a league gold medal. This winter, they hope to capture a World Juniors gold medal as teammates, too.

“It was absolutely amazing,” Viggo said of playing with his brother. “We do everything together and soccer as well. We’re always trying to team up. It’s an awesome bond.”

Wilson could have stayed with Djurgarden to continue to play with his brother and vie for ice time with the pro team, but he elected to go to Colorado College because he wanted to stay at one level, with one team, for an extended period, and so that he could focus more on building strength.

Mayotte and Pooley can’t wait to officially get started.

“Wilson’s a player, man,” Mayotte said. “And he’s going to continue to be better.”

(Photo courtesy of Colorado College Athletics)

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