Even after cleaning house, Canucks have an uncertain path forward

Vancouver Canucks owner Franceso Aquilini

Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images

The Vancouver Canucks shattered all expectations — but not in a good way — with their performance in the 2025-26 NHL regular season.

After the Canucks finished with 90 points the previous season, and 109 the year before that, most pundits had them finishing right around the playoff bubble once again. Few expected them to challenge for the Pacific Division crown, but most saw them as having the horses to stick around in the race.

They, uh, didn’t. The Canucks put together one of the most catastrophically inept seasons in recent NHL history in 2025-26, winning just 25 out of 82 games and scoring 104 fewer goals than they allowed. Their dreadful performance resulted in a mass exodus of talent during the season, with Quinn Hughes, Kiefer Sherwood, Conor Garland and Tyler Myers heading out the door in succession; it also cost the jobs of most of their top off-ice decision-makers.

Vancouver entered the 2025-26 season with Adam Foote as its head coach, assisted by Scott Young, Kevin Dean, and Brett McLean. On Tuesday, all four coaches were fired, continuing the steady stream of significant front office shake-ups that began in mid-April when team president Jim Rutherford fired GM Patrik Allvin, shortly before stepping down from his own role.

The Canucks have seldom been a model of stability under the ownership of Francesco Aquilini, who took over the club in 2004. Whomever they hire to replace Foote behind the bench will be their seventh head coach since Alain Vigneault departed the organization in 2013. But they needed to make significant changes in the wake of a season that went from disappointing to embarrassing in what felt like the blink of an eye.

Last Thursday, Aquilini introduced Ryan Johnson and the Sedin twins as the new leadership figures in the Canucks’ hockey operations department. Johnson will serve as GM; Daniel and Henrik are now “Co-Presidents.” It’s a different-looking management group, much younger but also less experienced. Johnson, who played two seasons in Vancouver, has worked with the Canucks for 13 years and served as GM of their farm team from 2017 until his promotion; the Sedins are both in the Hockey Hall of Fame and have worked for the Canucks in player development capacities since 2022.

Under Johnson and the Sedins, the Canucks are practically starting over from square one. They don’t have a coaching staff. They’re less than a year removed from trading Hughes, their captain and best player, due to well-founded concerns that he wouldn’t sign a new contract with them. Their prospect pool is good, but not great, and in typical fashion, they fell two spots to No. 3 overall via the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery earlier this month.

The Canucks’ path forward would look a lot clearer if Elias Pettersson found his way back to his 30-goal, 100-point form. The 6’2″ center has scored 30 goals and 96 points over his last two seasons combined, along with a minus-40 rating over that span. Perhaps he just wasn’t a great fit under Foote or Rick Tocchet, but there are a lot of red flags with Pettersson, who costs $11.6 million against the salary cap through 2032.

Via Natural Stat Trick, the Canucks were out-chanced 500 to 340 with Pettersson on the ice at 5-on-5 in 2025-26. Sure, he was playing on the worst team in the league, but most of his teammates still fared better in terms of chances, expected goals, and the like. In fact, of all Canucks skaters with at least 30 games played in 2025-26, the only two who fared worse than Pettersson in 5-on-5 expected goals percentage were Marco Rossi and Liam Ohgren, both of whom came over from the Minnesota Wild in the Hughes trade — and therefore never had the opportunity to actually play part of the season with Hughes.

Meanwhile, the Canucks also have Brock Boeser, who finished the season with a league-worst minus-48 rating and is also signed through 2032. Prized UFA signing Jake DeBrusk, whose 23 goals led the Canucks in 2025-26, is under contract through 2031. Filip Hronek? Marcus Pettersson? Signed through 2032 and 2031, respectively. And then there’s the goaltending tandem of Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen, which is locked up for the next three years at a combined $13 million per season.

The Canucks need only look eastward at the Calgary Flames, one of their biggest Pacific Division rivals, to see how long it can take for a team to dismantle an old, expensive core group of players. Under GM Craig Conroy, the Flames started selling off assets at the 2023 NHL Draft and have continued to this day, with Nazem Kadri, Rasmus Andersson, and MacKenzie Weegar the latest to leave town in the lead-up to the 2026 trade deadline.

Calgary is a little further along on its pathway than Vancouver, with a stronger existing group of prospects and young players, as well as a larger stockpile of draft picks over the next three years. But the Canucks are far from being completely empty-handed. Zeev Buium, the centerpiece of the Hughes trade with Minnesota, is a promising young two-way defender who can really skate; Braeden Cootes, their 2025 first-rounder, is a sturdy center who led the Prince Albert Raiders to the WHL Final this year.

But the real prize for these Canucks will be whomever they take at No. 3. While it stung fans and management alike to see the Toronto Maple Leafs win the top pick, which they’ll almost certainly use on Gavin McKenna, it doesn’t mean Vancouver won’t be welcoming a top young player. Could it be Caleb Malhotra, whose dad, Manny, already works for the Canucks? Might it be another defenseman, like Chase Reid, Keaton Verhoeff, or Carson Carels? Or will we see Ivar Stenberg fall out of the top two — and into the Canucks’ lap?

One top prospect won’t be enough for the Canucks to get out of the basement. It’ll take many more years of incremental improvements for the Canucks to get back on their feet after a 58-point season. Moving forward, the onus will be on Aquilini to resist the urge to take shortcuts. The rebuilding process always takes as long as it needs to, and in the Canucks’ case, it’ll be measured in years.

_____

POST SPONSORED BY bet365

_____

Even after cleaning house, Canucks have an uncertain path forward

Recently by Mike Gould