VANCOUVER -- The hardest thing about making the National Hockey League at age 19, besides, you know, making the NHL at 19, is understanding the difference between being on the roster and playing in the league.

“That’s probably the toughest part,” centre Bo Horvat said Saturday after the Vancouver Canucks finished their pre-season with a 3-2 overtime win against the Edmonton Oilers. “You work so hard in the pre-season, and it’s an honour to make the opening-day roster. But there’s still only nine games for you and you have to perform or you’ll be right back down in junior.”

Horvat knows because he made the Canucks a year ago at age 19, then passed the nine-game trial period the NHL allows junior players, then became a lineup regular and, in the second half of the season, one of Vancouver’s best players.

He was the first 19-year-old in a decade to play regularly for the Canucks.

This season, this week, the team is expected to start with two of them. Teenage forwards Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann did everything asked of them in the pre-season and have earned spots in the NHL, although the Canucks don’t have to declare their 23-man roster until the day before Wednesday’s season-opener in Calgary against the Flames.

We think the last time the Canucks had two teenagers in their lineup was 1988-89, when Rob Murphy played eight games on the same team as some rookie named Trevor Linden.

And as if Virtanen and McCann making the Canucks isn’t extraordinary enough, the defence is expected to include another pure rookie, Ben Hutton. Hutton is 22, but may as well be 19. He spent the last three seasons at the University of Maine. Winger Sven Baertschi, who turns 23 today, will also have a key role in his first full NHL season.

Horvat, who played his way to the Canucks’ second line as the best forward in the pre-season, turned 20 in April.

“Nobody could actually (relate to) my situation last year; I was kind of all by myself,” Horvat recalled. “To have three guys in the same situation this year definitely helps them. They have each other to lean on, and they know what each other is thinking. And if they want to talk to me about it, I just went through it all last year. I think they’re going to be fine.”

Virtanen always had a spot to claim, which he did. McCann, who thrived as the pre-season competition intensified, looks NHL-ready at least a year ahead of schedule. They were first-round picks — Virtanen sixth, McCann 24th — in 2014, Jim Benning’s first draft as Canuck general manager.

So determined is the staff to find a place for McCann on the top three lines, marquee off-season acquisition Brandon Sutter was shifted Saturday from centre to right wing and played with Daniel and Henrik Sedin.

Coach Willie Desjardins liked the combination so much, he may go with it again on Wednesday.

“Honestly, I really liked it,” he said. “I thought it was good. I thought they had some good chances. I’ll talk to them to see how they rated it and what they thought of it, but I thought there were some pretty good things out of it.”