1) Farm - Lekkerimaki, Rathbone, and Karlsson are all legit assets in my opinion. Rathbone will have a reasonable shot of making the team this year on the 3rd pairing, while I can definitely see Karlsson making the 4th line once the Canucks are ready to move on from Pearson (Hoglander takes Pearson's spot while Karlsson moves onto the 4th line). I'll explain Lekkerimaki in my 3rd point.
2) Even with future extensions to Pettersson and Podkolzin, we will still have enough money to improve our team once Pearson, Dickinson, and Myers come off the books and replace those contracts with better value. A year later, the same thing can happen with Poolman off the books.
3) If Lekkerimaki pans out, he can step into line up either next season or the year after, and replace one of Boeser or Garland (who can then be moved for picks and/or prospects)......which would give us even more cap space to make our team more well rounded.
4) 1st and 2nd rounds picks over these next few years. If the Canucks can retain all/most of their picks over these coming years (unlike the Benning regime), then we should have plenty of enough time to build up our farm over these next 3-4 seasons (I say 3-4 seasons because some of our core players such as Boeser and Demko will become UFA's over this time).
So with respect PuckMunchkin, I'm not sure if I share your decidedly 'half-glass empty' outlook of the Canucks.