I think a big part of why they called Junior up and kept him on the roster, as well as not papering him down, is because they don't consider him a rookie. I wouldn't be surprised if they do roll with a rotation between Junior, Mancini, Willander, and a veteran. Or if someone doesn't perform in camp, send them to the AHL to start the season.
I think they try to re-sign Forbort, or perhaps a Forbort equivalent on the right side. They need someone who can dependably play the PK, and likely haven't forgotten how terrible our PK has been up until this year.
Hughes - Hronek
M. Pettersson - Myers
Forbort - Willander
D. Petey - Mancini
One of WIllander and Mancini probably gets sent down from time to time for exerpeince. Forbort and D. Petey go in and out depending on individual and team performance, and whether any of the left side defensemen switch to the right side as we have sometimes seen. I think the Canucks like having both Forbort and D. Petey in, as they can still lean on Forbort on the PK, but this requires one of the left side defensemen to play on the right side. Myers is the presumptive second pairing right defensemen, but if Willander (or to a lesser degree, Mancini) develops as we hope/expect, then you'd see him taking over this roll by end of season. But in any event, the third pairing should be much stronger than it was to start this year, so I'd expect it to get more ice time, and the second pairing to get less ice time, relative to the first half of this year.
It's extremely unlikely and mostly just fear mongering.
The emergence of D-Petey hasn't made Willander a trade piece. Having both of these guys develop and be mainstays on our blueline for the next 5+ years is one of the many things this organization needs. We need forward too, I get that; but you're not going to get the value back you need by trading one of these diamonds.
Ya, the time to trade D-Petey or Willander or Mancini, isn't, ideally, right now, its in a year or two when each of them has hopefully established himself as a quality NHLer thereby de-risking his bust potential and significantly increase his value. I get that there can be timing issues, but the biggest problem I see with current proposals for forwards is that we are trading an unestablished defensemen prospect, on the verge of, hopefully, becoming an established NHLer, for an established, good, young NHL centre....and that's just not going to work without us throwing in a significant additional asset(s).
