What comes next for Canucks after season of dysfunction and disappointment?

New York Times

17-04-2025

It was a meaningless game played at a sub-preseason pace in front of a sparse, discouraged and subdued Rogers Arena crowd.
On Wednesday night, the Vancouver Canucks season ended with a whimper in a decisive 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.
In a grim, unsatisfying sort of way, the loss was a fitting capstone to this most dismal Canucks season.
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What better summarizes this season, after all, than surrendering a lead in a regulation loss on home ice?
What better captures the experience of watching this team play than the club generating fewer than 20 shots on goal?
It wasn't supposed to go this way.
The Canucks entered the year with expectations of once again competing at the top of the Pacific Division. The organization hoped to take a real run at the Stanley Cup this spring.
The club swung big in unrestricted free agency last summer, aiming to significantly upgrade its offensive attack. The Canucks positioned themselves cap-wise to be aggressive trade deadline buyers. They entered this season prepared for the eventuality of success.
It was a reasonable expectation. Coming off a 109-point campaign and a playoff run in which the club got to within one game of the Western Conference final, this was supposed to be the year that a credible, consistent playoff-caliber team finally replaced the false starts and the fake hope.
This was supposed to be a team that represented the Canucks' best shot to meaningfully compete since Henrik and Daniel Sedin were in their prime.
Ultimately, it wasn't to be.
Slowly, but surely, those high expectations slipped away unmet. Slowly, but surely, this Canucks side emerged as one of the most disappointing, difficult-to-root-for squads in franchise history.
In drips and drabs that were apparent during training camp and right from the outset of the season, this Canucks campaign rather quickly became a slog.
This was a team that was too hobbled by injuries, too limited offensively and too beset by a galling form of inconsistency to even qualify for the playoffs.
This club failed, and it failed despite a 50-game run from Quinn Hughes — before he worked through a challenging run of injuries that began to crop up in late January — that had the Vancouver captain pacing toward one of the greatest individual seasons ever witnessed from any Canucks player.
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Perhaps most unfathomably, this team failed because of intrasquad infighting unbecoming of a serious team. Much less a serious team with championship aspirations.
Now that this team's story is written and immutable, what's left for Canucks management is to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward.
Which seems a daunting prospect at the outset of a critical offseason for the Canucks on a number of fronts.
Hanging over everything for the next 15 months will be Hughes' status, and we have to begin there.
Hughes has established himself beyond reproach as a unique two-way force. He has become, without any qualification required, one of the single most impactful skaters in the sport. Not just one of the best defenders, but one of the truly transcendent skaters in hockey.
On July 1, 2026, Hughes will become extension eligible, at which point, as we've repeatedly seen with players like Matthew Tkachuk, Alex DeBrincat, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mikko Rantanen, he'll gain significant leverage in terms of dictating his NHL future.
While the Canucks are still over a year away from crossing this particular Rubicon, this is a dynamic that will and must dictate the shape of this summer for Vancouver's hockey operations leadership.
Hughes, after all, has some unique considerations, given that both of his brothers, Jack and Luke Hughes, play for the same Eastern Conference team.
Hughes is a very family-oriented person. He lives with and trains with his brothers in Michigan every summer. He's their biggest fan and supporter.
No one would begrudge Hughes if he wanted to pursue a singular life experience like having the opportunity to compete at the highest level with both of your brothers in the NHL. It's a dream scenario and a powerful lure, one that Hughes doesn't hide from and one that Canucks management is both well aware of and have long anticipated contending with at the conclusion of Hughes' six-year contract.
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Which doesn't mean it's fated. Hughes wants to win above all else. He's an enormously competitive person and approaches his obligations, like the captain's 'C' on his chest, with due gravity. He wants to win in Vancouver.
That commitment also comes with its own set of expectations. The Canucks owe it to Hughes, given the weight that he's earned as a player and leader, to surround him with enough talent that he actually has a real chance to make the difference in the most important games on the biggest stage in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Canucks owes that to themselves, too, and to their long-suffering fan base.
Make no mistake, as challenging as this season has been and as far as Vancouver has fallen short, it's these considerations that will shape this upcoming summer for the Canucks.
Vancouver's hockey operations leadership is preparing to go 'all-in' to address the team's lack of scoring punch up front. To get back to the business of making the playoffs, and contending for more when they get there.
The first order of business will be to extend head coach Rick Tocchet. The Canucks hold a club option to retain Tocchet without an extension, and will exercise that right if necessary, but the best and fairest and least awkward solution will require Vancouver to work out an extension with the 2024 Jack Adams Award winner. It must be added, because it's crucial, that Tocchet has Hughes' full endorsement.
While a significant part of Tocchet's process will be coming to terms on compensation and years, there does appear to be more substance to this upcoming decision than money alone.
'You've got to go through the process,' Tocchet said when asked about his future following Wednesday night's game. 'There's negotiations, but there's a lot of different things. The season just ended, so you move along and see where it goes, right? But there's more stuff we've got to talk about.'
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Among the 'stuff' that the Canucks and their bench boss will have to discuss in the weeks ahead, one would assume that the composition of this roster will be a factor.
Outside of Hughes, public and organizational confidence in the other members of Vancouver's core group has materially waned over the past calendar year.
J.T. Miller has already been subtracted from the roster, a necessity brought about by dysfunctional team dynamics.
Elias Pettersson remains, and his mystifying struggles since the 2024 All-Star break are a subject of internal concern given his importance and talent level.
Pettersson, who has seven seasons remaining on an $11.6 million annual average value (AAV) contract, scored seven five-on-five goals in 64 games this season (that's the same number as Aatu Räty), accumulating 45 total points. His skating looked labored, and his shot velocity was down significantly.
As the season progressed it became apparent that Pettersson just didn't have juice the way he usually has throughout his Canucks tenure.
How the Canucks opt to proceed with Pettersson this offseason is one of the biggest questions facing the franchise. The club still believes in his talent, but that belief is complicated by internal concerns about his winning habits and preparation.
If Pettersson can bounce back, he'd represent the most straightforward solution to the biggest roster construction problem, namely a lack of elite talent up front. Expecting him to bounce back is also a deeply risky proposition to weigh. If he can't find his form, then his contract could come to represent a millstone for years to come.
Pettersson's contract carries a full no-move clause (NMC) that will kick in on July 1, and that's a factor the club will have to weigh here as well. While our understanding is that Canucks brass doesn't view the NMC kicking in as representing some sort of drop dead date — the club did trade both Miller (on a full NMC) and Carson Soucy (on a full no-trade clause) in-season this year, after all — it's still a potential complication. And one to be mindful of given the stakes of the decision on Pettersson's future.
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Then there's goaltender Thatcher Demko, who had an extraordinarily difficult season health-wise, including missing extended stretches on three separate occasions following an unprecedented knee tear that he sustained during the playoffs last spring.
When he's on and when he's available, Demko is one of the most dominant puck stoppers on the planet. This season, however, Demko's performance was inconsistent when he was healthy. And he was only healthy for roughly a quarter of Vancouver's games.
Demko will become eligible for an extension on July 1, and Vancouver has already signed goaltender Kevin Lankinen to a long-term, $4.5 million AAV contract.
Moving forward with a potentially elite goaltending platoon would be a luxury, but is it one that the Canucks can realistically afford, given the magnitude of their needs up front?
That, of course, brings us to Vancouver's emergency-level need for more offensive production and pop among its forward group. It's this quandary and how Canucks management solves it that will ultimately define this offseason.
The Canucks were arguably already short a top-line caliber scoring forward before they sent Miller to the New York Rangers. In the wake of Miller's departure, the club will now need two — a top-end winger and a top-six center — to get to where it needs to go next season.
That's without even factoring in the pending free agency of 25-goal scoring, do-it-all forward Pius Suter and fan favorite winger Brock Boeser, who paced the team with 40 goals during the 2023-24 campaign.
Adding two productive scoring forwards is going to be a tall order for Canucks management to pull off this summer. Even if the club has meaningful cap flexibility to work with as the salary cap rises, Vancouver's relative purchasing power ranks below average in leaguewide terms going into this offseason.
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The scramble to add one of the top unrestricted free agent wingers, like Toronto Maple Leafs ace Mitch Marner or Winnipeg Jets sniper Nikolaj Ehlers, could prove prohibitively expensive. It might be too difficult a path to count on.
Not that the club won't try to get a seat at the table, but a big trade is the more likely route for Vancouver in addressing its need for more wing scoring.
As for adding a top-six center, the club will certainly explore the market in unrestricted free agency, but those options are severely limited beyond hard-nosed Florida Panthers pivot Sam Bennett.
The Canucks probably underperformed their true talent level this season, something the club will count on in seeking to bounce back and pitching the market on the vision for the team next season. There's some realistic hope of internal reinforcements on the horizon, too, with players like Räty, Elias Pettersson (the defenseman), Jonathan Lekkerimäki and even winger Linus Karlsson making strides this season.
Boston University defender Tom Willander, who's currently locked in a bizarre stalemate with the club over the bonus structure of his entry-level deal, should also factor into the club's plans for next season — provided the club is able to get him in the door.
While there are genuine grounds for optimism about the Canucks' ability to rebound after a tumultuous campaign, it still feels like there are storm clouds gathering on the horizon for this franchise. And there have been for a while.
A few years ago, Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin inherited a mediocre roster with some extremely talented core pieces, but also, a roster with limited surplus assets, many contractual inefficiencies and a critical lack of blue-line talent.
It took real discipline, ingenuity and a smattering of accurate dart throws in the free-agent bargain bin, but Canucks management did reasonably well to execute a shockingly quick turnaround. Their execution of a plan to win in the short term was nothing short of exceptional.
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The problem, however, is that it was accomplished on a knife's edge. Even if you're sharp at identifying bargains, for example, it's difficult to hit on every single bet you place. Last summer, for example, even as the Canucks brought on Jake DeBrusk, Kiefer Sherwood and Lankinen — who were all excellent contributors at a reasonable price point — they also missed on Danton Heinen, Daniel Sprong and Vincent Desharnais. Those misses weren't too costly on the surface, but for an asset-poor club with such a narrow path to success, it still hollowed out the depth and quality of this roster relative to the previous campaign.
Of course, Vancouver also pushed significant future assets into the center of the table to achieve that turnaround. And it largely doubled down over the course of this season, spending nearly a full draft class worth of picks — either in trades or in opportunity cost incurred — in the service of fleshing out the blue line and forward depth, and icing this non-playoff team.
Then the Canucks missed an opportunity to recoup some of those assets at the trade deadline, holding onto Suter and Boeser for the purpose of winning just six of their final 20 games in regulation.
Those are assets that the club now won't have at its disposal as it seeks to graft new players of the rarest and most expensive variety onto the roster this summer. Instead, the club enters this offseason in a far more brittle position.
In attempting to execute their 'all-in' plan and get back on the road to contending, the Canucks will face a series of gut-wrenching decisions, including, perhaps, trading even more players that were previously viewed as core pieces.
Those are the stakes, though, and that's the reminder. At some point, the bill comes due.
(Photo of Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser: Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)