the orcas are jumping the sun is shining the mountains are calling the brooks are burbling the birds are singing the hills are alive with the sound of head coach manny mal-goat-tra
what’s up with the canucks? where they are as a team, and how they got there.
people have been asking this question for approximately 55 years!
i know that the canucks fandom is comprised of people who have followed the team for a long time, but also people who may be new to the team or new to hockey in general (or new to the intricacies of building a team), so i decided to make a post discussing where the canucks are at, how we got here, and what we should expect moving forwards :)
i entered this with the goal of making it a quick primer but, if you know me, you already know that that wasn’t going to happen. so instead of a quick post, i have a table of contents:
why did the team regress so much after the 2023-24 run?
why made the 2025-26 season so bad?
are the canucks rebuilding? (what is a rebuild?)
what should we expect from the new management and coaches?
what will next season look like?
in conclusion
here we go!
1. why did the team regress so much after the 2023-24 run?
in the 2023-24 season the canucks won their division, went to game 7 of round 2, had a norris-winning defenceman and a vezina runner-up goalie, and looked primed to finally contend for a few years. why have they missed the playoffs ever since, and dropped to last in the league?
the answer is complicated, and we actually have to start pre-2023. the canucks underachieved for years after the 2020 bubble playoffs, and this was due to a few things:
poor roster construction and management (for example — trading louis eriksson at the end of contract and adding OEL, who they had to buy out later)
health — led to poor goaltending, for one, like in the 2022-23 season where demko played through injury (thus not as well ad he could) and then missed time due to injury (thus we didn’t have our starting goalie). we also had covid outbreaks, other injuries, etc.
coaching — bruce boudreau was treated terribly by the canucks, but at the end of the day we definitely had some significant defensive issues under him.
all this is to say that the 2023-24 canucks weren’t a carefully and painstakingly constructed team. they had big pieces, but they largely succeeded that season due to a mixture of strong coaching systems, over-performances by players, and general luck. so, when they got worse the next season, it wasn’t as dramatic of a fall-off as it appeared. they were playing more like the team they should have been all along. then, add in a terrible year of injuries, underperformances, and a locker room Rift™️, and the 2024-25 season was a disappointing step back.
2025-26? that’s another thing entirely.
2. what made the 2025-26 season so bad?
i know we’d all like to forget this past season, or at least the things that went wrong, and since it’s still recent history we’ll just go over the greatest hits.
coaching:
adam foote was a first-time coach (and his only other experience as head coach wasn’t great). while there were reasons to be optimistic when he was hired, his defensive system especially required a lot of in-the-moment decision-making. if the wrong decision was made, you leave the back door of the net open and a team scores on you in the same way for the 500th time. not that i’m naming names or anything.. anyway, this was difficult for veterans and young players alike, and once we started needing to call up players from the AHL i think that his systems didn’t suit the team as much as we’d hoped.
this wasn’t the only coaching issue, but certainly a major one!
the quinn hughes elephant:
from the start of training camp, the question of whether quinn hughes would want to stay here on a new contract loomed. the answer was no!!!
before the trade, there was months of uncertainty and probably tension for the players in the locker room. after the trade, many of them seemed much more free and the vibes were better, but they still lost one of the best players in the league and naturally that made them worse.
injuries:
always injuries. they felt like a death sentence early on in the season when we still thought we had a chance, because our centre depth basically became elias pettersson and a dream (aka whoever adam foote deigned worthy of a defensive-zone faceoff). we also once again had a thatcher demko-sized hole in the lineup in the second half of the season.
that being said, the team would have been bad without the injuries — so they aren’t an excuse nor even an explanation, so much as one piece of the puzzle.
underperformances:
there’s only so much that talent can compensate for poor depth and coaching, but we did have quite a few of our key contributors have lacklustre seasons, or at least lacklustre stretches. you can’t scroll more than twice on canucks reddit or twitter without seeing somebody mention elias pettersson, some key goal scorers in boeser and debrusk had periods of time where they couldn’t buy a goal, the evander kane experiment did NOT work, and quinn hughes himself had a lot off about him Before The Trade. the team as a whole wasn’t built to bring the most out of their best players, so it’s not as simple as saying that better performances would have = playoffs, but it certainly played its part.
healthy thatcher demko was a treat while he lasted, though :)
youth:
this is a bit of a segue into our next section whilst also touching on things like coaching, but real quickly — we had a lot of young players in the lineup, many of whom really started to establish themselves as NHL-ready and/or as players who could contribute to the canucks moving forward. players new to the league will always have learning experiences, though, and mistakes are a normal part of that process. i don’t want to say that our prospects caused the team to be bad, because they didn’t. however, once it became clear that the team wasn’t going to be good, we did start elevating young players (at times — we still could have done it more) even though we knew there would be mistakes that veterans might not make.
and that’s what happens in a rebuild! speaking of…
3. are the canucks rebuilding? (what is a rebuild?)
a rebuild in the NHL is essentially what it sounds like — it means a franchise is trying to build a new team. this includes trading current players to 1. acquire draft picks or prospects to help their future or 2. remove talent from the team that might limit how high of a lottery pick the team could have. sometimes teams tear things down completely due to necessity, while sometimes they keep some key pieces.
rebuilding in the NHL is a long process, and for it to be a success you need a strong management group in charge to stay the course as well as a bit of luck (lottery odds, late-draft picks hitting, etc.). hockey prospects take quite awhile to develop, and you need to build out the roster well around them to create a team that can ultimately win 4 best-of-7 series, which is why teams take years to make the playoffs after a rebuild let alone go on a good run.
if you have luck and good management at the helm, you may get a quick and seemingly successful rebuild like the canadiens. if things don’t go as well, you might end up in purgatory like detroit. still, rebuilding is better for a franchise long-term than the alternative that the canucks have been doing for years — taking shortcuts to get back to the playoffs faster, which ultimately often means you don’t make the playoffs but also don’t get high draft picks.
and to answer the first question, allegedly the canucks are finally rebuilding! our ownership hasn’t been the most supportive of this in the past which is why you’ll see the fanbase still apprehensive at times, but both rutherford (before stepping back) and the sedins/ryan johnson have said that the canucks need to rebuild, and not take shortcuts.
4. what should we expect from the new management and coaches?
at the time of writing, adam foote and his coaching staff have been fired but we haven’t hired replacements. if our new head coach is anybody other than manny malholtra (canucks alumnus and current head coach of our AHL team) i’ll be very surprised, and daniel + henrik sedin have already been hired as co-presidents of hockey operations with ryan johnson as general manager.
this is a group comprised of former canucks players, and the sedins in particular are vancouver royalty. some might call it nostalgia-bait and that’s probably true to a degree, but i think that once the sedins came back to work for the organization we were always going to reach a point where they were in management.
assuming we have a competent front office (and, soon, coaching staff), we should, in general, expect them to successfully lead the team back to contention. that will include executing trades of veterans for draft picks or prospects, successfully keeping our development pipeline intact even though we’ve promoted our AHL affiliate’s GM (and likely their coach), and creating an environment where our young players will be adequately mentored and developed even at the NHL level (by coaching staff and teammates alike).
specifically for this team and city, and with these particular people in charge, we should also expect a targeted effort to reconnect the player with the community. this is something that the HSDSRJ (abbreviation that i’m testing bc i’m tired of typing all their names) group has explicitly said they’d like to do, has certainly been sorely missed as the team transitioned from the henrik sedin bo horvat captaincy eras (the latter of which was cut short bc ruthervin are jt miller fanboys) to the quinn era . it’s also something that is generally important for rebuilding teams, because if the on-ice product isn’t good you still want to give the fanbase reasons to care.
5. what will next season look like?
there are kind of 3 things we should expect to see. those are:
trades for younger assets (either prospects to develop or draft picks). we won’t trade all of our veteran players, because you still need guys who can help the young players carry the load as well as guys who can mentor the new group, but players willing to be moved (if they have trade protection) who will return you assets will be moved.
learning curves as young players continue to get bigger roles on the team
“bad” trades or signings — like, “isn’t that guy bad?? why did we get him???”
the last point is an interesting one. in recent years, we’ve seen rebuilding teams take on poor contracts to alleviate other teams’ salary cap issues, in exchange for extra draft picks or prospects. however, we’re entering a new cap era of the NHL. the cap is rising and will continue to rise, so we may not see as much cap strain with contending teams as there has been in the past. it’ll always be there to a degree, but the canucks’ rebuild isn’t going to follow the exact blueprint of recent rebuilds. in fact, if it goes well for us, we might be the blueprint in 5+ years!
6. in conclusion
if you’re still reading this, hi! this has been a lot of words, so i’ll keep this bit brief.
the canucks are entering a new phase, and that can be bittersweet. players we love are going to be moved, and while a changing of the guard is exciting to watch it’s also always a little sad.
that being said, we are lowkey entering unprecedented orca territory. a full tear-down rebuild is what fans have wanted since the sedin era ended, and it’s taken a new sedin era for it to finally happen lol. our team is going to lose a lot, but we have a crazy fanbase that will continue to support them both online and at games. it’s going to be fun! we’ll be able to have whimsy, we won’t have to cater every move to a captain who doesn’t even want to be here, and with any luck we’re going to come out on the other side with a really, really good team.
what’s coming up next for the canucks:
new coaching staff
the NHL entry draft (june 26th and 27th), where we’ll make our first 3rd-overall pick since henrik sedin
thanks to anyone who read this whole thing! i’m sorry i wrote so much lmao 😭 i definitely didn’t touch on everything, but we will have lots of time to discuss all things rebuild haha.
it’s really hitting me that we’re FREE from the ruthervin era aside from the fact that rutherford didn’t officially retire because his ego can’t handle the fact that he failed the franchise so who knows what he might do to us and we are in the sedin squared and johnson era
what if your team was one of the 2 oldest teams to have NEVER won a stanley cup despite having been to 3 cup finals and they were owned by a HORRIBLE man and their coach QUIT and their captain and best player QUIT and your goalie discovered a NEW INJURY and your president is OLD AND BALD BUT WON’T RETIRE and you LOST the draft lottery and you’ve NEVER had a first overall pick and you DONT HAVE A PRACTICE FACILITY and to make matters even worse your team’s twitter account got hacked last year
prguitarman
areudirty
snowghoul
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
