There are six games left in this most wicked of Vancouver Canucks seasons, and mercifully only two of those contests will be played in front of the paying customers at Rogers Arena.<\/p>\n
As difficult and miserable as this season has been to watch and endure, Canucks fans have continued to come to games. By the very unofficial eyeball test, at no Canucks game this season has the actual number of fans occupying seats in the Rogers Arena appeared to shrink below about 15,000 to 16,000.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a testament to the loyalty of Canucks fans. And of the floor level support that the NHL appears to enjoy in downtown Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Vancouverites, it seems, still enjoy a good night out at a hockey game, even when this version of the Canucks has managed to win just eight home games all season.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, the paying customers will get a good show against the Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings as this season winds down. They certainly deserve it.<\/p>\n
As the season enters the end-game stage ahead of a lengthy, critical offseason for the Canucks, let\u2019s open the notebook and discuss the frustrating Kevin Lankinen injury, Adam Foote\u2019s future, the suddenly red-hot power play and why this season has a real case to be the least successful in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Kevin Lankinen thing<\/p>\n
Toward the tail end of a tanking season in which 32nd place was effectively already locked up, the Canucks lost faith in Nikita Tolopilo.<\/p>\n
Tolopilo replaced Art\u016brs \u0160ilovs this season as the AHL Abbotsford starting goalie until Thatcher Demko sustained another season-ending injury. In limited action, Tolopilo had outperformed the two more expensive netminders on the Canucks.<\/p>\n
After Tolopilo struggled against the Seattle Kraken in mid-March, however, losing 5-1 in a game that the Canucks played fine in (but still had a characteristically impossible series of defensive breakdowns), starts for Tolopilo just stopped coming. Suddenly and for no logical reason, the starts all went to Kevin Lankinen.<\/p>\n
It was, without question, the most indefensible deployment decision from the Canucks coaching staff in a season chock-full of them.<\/p>\n
Across 16 days, Lankinen appeared in eight games. Seven of those were starts, and the other was an over-32-minute appearance that Lankinen made in Calgary after Tolopilo was chased in his first start after two weeks off.<\/p>\n
Beyond squandering a key developmental opportunity for a talented, inexperienced 25-year-old goaltender that the club may need to keep on its 23-man roster to avoid losing him on waivers next season, there was no reason for Vancouver to over-extend Lankinen down the stretch of this lost season. Especially because, while Lankinen is a reliable 1B-type netminder, we already saw during the 2024-25 campaign that there are diminishing returns when Lankinen is used too heavily.<\/p>\n
And now, after Lankinen was a late scratch from Vancouver\u2019s game on Saturday against the Utah Mammoth, the veteran netminder is day to day with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
All of which begs the question: Was the club\u2019s unfathomable decision to play Lankinen in eight straight games across 16 days a contributing factor leading to this injury?<\/p>\n
Jeff Paterson, in more polite terms, put that question to Foote at practice on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a buildup from games, maybe,\u201d Foote said. \u201cI don\u2019t know. We\u2019ll see. It\u2019s something that we hope can come around quick.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s just nothing else one can even say at this point.<\/p>\n
The Canucks not only managed to dilute the confidence of a promising young goaltender down the stretch of a lost season, but they also rode their highly paid veteran 1B netminder to the point where he sustained an injury. This is just an absurd and self-inflicted wound for a team that always should\u2019ve been prioritizing development and freshness in net down the stretch, especially given the low stakes of the games themselves.<\/p>\n
The coaching instability thing<\/p>\n
I understand the argument that the Canucks have had too much turnover behind the bench in the past few seasons.<\/p>\n
The club has run through Travis Green, Bruce Boudreau, Rick Tocchet and Foote since December 2022. Effectively, across a stretch of three and a half years, Vancouver has gone through four different head coaches. And that number would go to five in three and a half years if the club were to decide to move on from Foote after this season.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question that it\u2019s a bad look for the organization, but context has to be baked in here.<\/p>\n
Green was fired by Canucks ownership at the same time as general manager Jim Benning and prior to the club hiring Jim Rutherford. Then ownership acted to hire Green\u2019s replacement, Boudreau, prior to hiring Rutherford. It was later revealed that the full extent of Boudreau\u2019s contract wasn\u2019t even adequately disclosed to incoming hockey operations leadership when they took over in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
It took about a year for Rutherford to hire his first head coach, and when he did so, he settled on Tocchet. After a successful two and a half year run, Tocchet departed the organization of his own accord, despite the Canucks making him a significant offer to remain in place last offseason.<\/p>\n
Then the club hired Foote, largely because Rutherford and his lieutenants believed in Foote\u2019s leadership qualities, wanted a familiar voice to work with the players after a fractured 2024-25 campaign and thought Foote was the right coach to help them appeal to Quinn Hughes, given their close working relationship.<\/p>\n
It just hasn\u2019t worked out. That\u2019s not necessarily because Foote isn\u2019t a capable coach, but it should be clear that he wasn\u2019t the right person at the right moment for this team.<\/p>\n
Now, what\u2019s required out of the head coach of the Canucks is different from the club\u2019s original reasoning for bringing in Foote.<\/p>\n
What the Canucks need now is a more player-development-focused approach. They require a coach who, in the absence of on-ice success, is capable of selling a vision and a process to the ticket-buying public.<\/p>\n
Given how Foote has over-utilized veteran players like Evander Kane, Lankinen and Teddy Blueger \u2014 even down the stretch of a lost season \u2014 it\u2019s putting it too kindly to say that his player-development track record this season has been mixed.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Foote\u2019s ability to sell hope to the Vancouver market is fundamentally compromised by the club\u2019s dreadful performance this season.<\/p>\n
Without even getting into the persistent sense of on-ice disorganization that has underpinned too many Canucks performances, it should be noted that, despite the many coaches Vancouver has churned through over the past 40 months, in the Rutherford era, Canucks hockey operations leadership has never fired a coach they themselves selected.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve learned about what Rutherford expects from a head coach during his Vancouver tenure, it\u2019s that he cannot stand when his teams aren\u2019t structurally sound. If there\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve learned about how Rutherford operates more generally, it\u2019s that he\u2019s generally quick to recognize and fix his mistakes.<\/p>\n
This is critical to keep in mind as we attempt to handicap what\u2019s next behind the Canucks bench.<\/p>\n
Canucks power play and overall end-of-season momentum<\/p>\n
Vancouver\u2019s power-play is ticking along at a heady 40.7 percent conversion rate across the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Jake DeBrusk has caught fire from the net-front, Brock Boeser has found his finishing touch, Elias Pettersson is finding seams as a passer, Filip Hronek has upgraded Vancouver\u2019s play at the top of the 1-3-1 umbrella significantly and Marco Rossi is operating exceptionally on his downhill side at the left flank. This PP1 group is snapping the puck around and appears to be finding a groove and some meaningful chemistry.<\/p>\n
Across this last 10-game segment, in fact, Vancouver has scored 11 goals, meaning it has manufactured more power-play goals than any other NHL team except the Carolina Hurricanes, who have scored 13.<\/p>\n
Now, some of this is a shooting percentage binge \u2014 Vancouver is converting on over 30 percent of its power-play shots over the last 10 games \u2014 but there\u2019s more going on than just raw finishing luck. While the rate at which the Canucks are generating shot attempts and scoring chances isn\u2019t ticking up as dramatically as the results are of late, there\u2019s better process underpinning the power-play success. This improvement in Vancouver\u2019s five-on-four form does appear to be real and substantive.<\/p>\n
And yet, for all that the Canucks are doing well with the man advantage, Vancouver continues to give it all back (and more) at five-on-five.<\/p>\n
Even as the power play has run hot over the last 10 games, Vancouver has also surrendered an astounding 38 five-on-five goals during this time frame. As a point of reference for how remarkable that is, the Chicago Blackhawks have surrendered the second-most five-on-five goals over their past 10 games, with 28. That\u2019s a full goal per game separating the Canucks \u2014 the worst defensive team at five-on-five over the last 10 games \u2014 from the second-worst defensive team at five-on-five.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the sort of result you need to go 2-8-0 with a 40.7 percent power-play conversion rate across a 10-game stretch.<\/p>\n
The worst Canucks season ever?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s virtually assured that, regardless of what occurs in the final six games, this Canucks season is going to go down as the worst for the franchise this century.<\/p>\n
Exactly how poorly this version of the club finishes in comparison with some of the most feeble Canucks teams this city has ever seen, however, is still to be precisely determined.<\/p>\n
By points percentage, with 52 points in 76 games, the 2025-26 Canucks rank ahead of just two entries in franchise history, and both are from the expansion era \u2014 the 1971-72 Canucks (20-50-8), which had 48 points in 78 games, and the 1972-73 Canucks (22-47-9), which had 53 points in 78 games.<\/p>\n
The current Canucks will also need wins in at least half of their remaining games to surpass the 1998-99 team (23-47-12). That futile iteration of the Canucks finished the miserable season that resulted in the franchise selecting the Sedin twins with 58 points in 82 games.<\/p>\n
The thing about all of this accounting, however, is that it\u2019s roughly superficial. Back in the 1970s and late 1990s, after all, teams didn\u2019t pick up a point when they lost in overtime, nor were they able to collect some additional points from shootout victories and the like.<\/p>\n
Given that, it\u2019s probably wise to adjust those other figures upward by giving those teams an additional point for half of their tied results (and adding on an additional point for any overtime losses) to make a cross-era comparison more accurate.<\/p>\n
With this adjustment done, on the back of an envelope of course, it\u2019s probably worth considering that the 1971-72 Canucks team was probably good for something more like 55 points across an 82-game schedule, the 1972-73 Canucks was more like a 58-point team, while the 1998-99 team was more like a 65-point team given that, in addition to tying 12 games, it also had an additional overtime loss that season.<\/p>\n
Or, in other words, the Canucks are basically locked in to having had the least successful season in franchise history since the expansion era. And if they don\u2019t win at least two of their next six games, we should probably consider it the least successful season from an on-ice results perspective that the Canucks have ever put together in the NHL in 56 years of franchise history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are six games left in this most wicked of Vancouver Canucks seasons, and mercifully only two of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,37,96,5263,5,4,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-546128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-blackhawks","8":"tag-blackhawks","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-chicagoblackhawks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-vancouver-canucks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116365174251782620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}