Canucks Live: How bad will it get for NHL’s worst squad?

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Welcome to Canucks Live. Here, we’ll highlight some of the news that drops daily about the Canucks. Come back throughout the day as we update with all the news you need to know. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for our Canucks Report to get our stories delivered to your inbox every day.

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Vancouver is a great NHL market. The city loves the Canucks and have for decades, without much reward. They’re desperate for a Cup. And while this season has shocked everyone with the depths of awfulness it has reached, fans still seem somewhat engaged and hopeful for the future. There is a young core and promise from upcoming draft picks.

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The next two days could test your patience.

Fans long ago gave up on the idea of the Canucks winning games. Wins, losses don’t even matter at this point they’re so deep in the basement they’d incur roaming charges calling up to the next-worst team, the Blackhawks a whopping 18 points before the Canucks. Chew on that for a second. The Blackhawks could lose eight in a row and the Canucks could win eight in a row (lol) and Vancouver would still be the worst team in the league.

GAME DAY

Bracing for worst against the best

No matter the hype or the hope — worst team beating the best — tonight is beyond a litmus test for the Canucks.

Go ahead and pick a category. Colorado is first overall with the top-rated offence and has a 49-goal gunner in the intimidating Nathan MacKinnon, who will once again garner consideration for the Hart Trophy as the game’s most-complete player. Colorado is also an NHL best 24-7-5 on home ice, so odds for victory are immense.

The Canucks will counter with a lineup that won’t include Evander Kane. The veteran winger, who played his 1,000th career game on Monday in Las Vegas, will sit out with a nagging ailment the last 20 games and Max Sasson will draw back in. At best, the Canucks can hope to replicate their push and pace before falling 4-2 to the Golden Knights.

“We have to be better defensively because they (Avalanche) activate their defence and be disciplined in our routes and stay calm and patient,” Canucks head coach Adam Foote said following the game-day skate. “We were getting on guys quicker (Monday) and making better decisions in our end.

“We want to press up ice and not back off. We still want to go, but we have to control our emotions. Games have got away from us and we have to stay in our structure and believe.”

Projected lineup versus Avalanche

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On Thursday, the Canucks get the seventh-best team and Quinn Hughes in Minnesota against the Wild. Will you watch? Do you care? Sure, you’d like to see more consistent quality from Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren and Zeev Buium. Maybe tomorrow night’s reunion with Hughes sparks some interest, or maybe it invites disgust at how that whole situation evolved.

But I’m guessing the ratings aren’t great at all for Sportsnet these days.

The Avalanche are 58 points ahead of the Canucks. The Wild 44 points. The gulf in goal differential between Vancouver and Colorado is 182 goals. The numbers are shocking and make you wonder how anyone involved in this Canucks mess could keep their job. They’re not even icing an AHL team at this point and instead of pondering refunds for giving you all a Temu NHL product, they’re raising ticket prices.

Canucks must clean up messes

If you do want to amuse yourself and watch them tonight, Ben Kuzma has some storylines you should pay attention to.

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The domino effect of second-period disasters is one of the lasting sagas of a season gone sideways.
It’s the byproduct of roster rebuild pain and tossing young blueliners into the deep end of a development pool. They are taxed to gain position, box out, avoid stick-checking, and getting caught up ice. And when opposition defencemen pinch down low to create matchup problems, you get Monday in Las Vegas.

A 2-1 Canucks lead late in the second period turned into a 3-2 deficit as the Golden Knights struck twice in a span of 1:17. First, Victor Mancini was caught on a pinch, blueliner Elias Pettersson delivered a sideboards hit on Ivan Barbashev in retreat, and Shea Theodore was left all alone to score. Then nobody picked up Reilly Smith open at the back door for another easy tally.

The Canucks have allowed a league-high 106 goals in the second period and scored just 59, a league low. 

Gavin McKenna won’t be ready for NHL next season

Fans thinking if the Canucks draft Gavin McKenna he will be a star for us next season are wrong, says NHL insider Craig Button. Button was on the Donnie and Dhali show when he let this drop:

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I think Gavin will be like Jack Hughes if he’s in the NHL next year or Michael Misa. They’re not ready to excel at the level that you’re going to expect them to excel at. It’ll take them some time; the physical maturity that comes with it. I mean, Jack was the first overall draft pick, he had a tough time playing in the National Hockey League. He had a very tough time playing in his first year. He wasn’t physically ready. And I think that Gavin is in a similar spot.

This is not Macklin Celebrini. It’s not Matthew Schaefer. And every player is different. And I think that Gavin, maybe you want to come to the NHL and do what Michael Misa did, what Jack Hughes did, but you know, there’s something to be considered here. He he is not, and I think he’s been an excellent performer at Penn State in the NCAA, but I still think there’s a lot of benefits to him perhaps going back to Penn State next year for another season.

Is Gillis right GM choice for Leafs?

Some amusing news coming out of Toronto as rumours of former Canucks GM Mike Gillis being in the running for the vacant Maple Leafs general manager job.

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Patrick Johnston has some analysis on why Gillis might be a good fit, and why he hasn’t had a job running a team since leaving the Canucks in 2014.

He’s never gone away. He spent time at the NHLPA, at one point looking like he’d be Donald Fehr’s successor until the players chose to go with the politics-focused Marty Walsh.

So while he hasn’t landed in a conventional hockey position, he’s still kept busy. He’s gone around the world, literally, seeking out new ideas from just about any sport. He travelled to Australia to learn about the physical challenges of Australian rules football and how teams and athletes get through games that see the best players run 17.5 kilometres, sometimes in scorching heat.

He went to New Zealand to learn about how the All Blacks rugby team are world-leaders in building team culture. He went to Spain to learn about Barcelona’s famed soccer academy. He went to Switzerland to learn about the work the Biotech Institute has been doing in things like cognitive science. He met with business school professors to learn more about organizational behaviour.

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Quite simply, he’s a data head and always has been. The Leafs, by the way, still have a fully functional research and development department, which was well regarded but seemed to go underused by Treliving. That right there would be an easy thing to build up.

He’s also cast his net far and wide in the hockey community, seeking out younger, up-and-coming hockey thinkers to learn more about what the game misses about itself, about what is possible but has yet to be tried. For many agents in the game he’s still the guy most aspire to be. 

Gillis rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way toward the end of his Canucks tenure.

But the Canucks have never been closer to a Cup and they have never had a GM who was able to draw top talent to Vancouver the way he did. If this happens he’d continue the long pipeline of coaches and GMs who have worked in both Vancouver and Toronto.

Roger Neilson, Tom Watt, Pat Quinn, Brian Burke, Dave Nonis have represented the Canucks and the Leafs in various capacities. Of course, like Gillis, Neilson and Quinn got the Canucks to Stanley Cup Finals, far more than they achieved in Toronto.

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McKenna tops TSN prospect list

On the draft front, TSN’s Craig Button has released new prospect rankings and Canucks fan favourite Gavin McKenna is top of the list.

In the first half of the 2025-26 season, McKenna had four goals and 18 points in his first 16 games.

He then departed for the World Juniors, where the 18-year-old finished second in tournament scoring with four goals and 14 points in seven games as he helped Canada capture the bronze medal.

On the ice, McKenna has rediscovered the scoring touch that made him a scoring star the previous two seasons with the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers since returning from the World Juniors.

From January onward, McKenna had 11 goals and 33 points in 18 games, including an eight-point performance over Ohio State on Feb. 20.

He ended the regular season on a nine-game points streak and was named one of the 10 candidates for the Hobey Baker Award as the top player in men’s college hockey. McKenna and Penn State will face Minnesota-Duluth in the first round of the NCAA Division I playoffs on Friday.

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Interestingly, most other prospect rankings have McKenna and fellow winger Ivar Stenberg as the top two prospects. Button has Stenberg down in third with a pair of defencemen making the leap above him in his second and third spots.

Coming in at No. 2 on Button’s list is Prince George Cougars defenceman Carson Carels.

Carels, 17, had 20 goals and 73 points in 58 games this season and finished fourth in the WHL in defensive scoring.

He also made Canada’s World Junior roster as an underager, where he had one assist in five games.

Button draws some parallels, stylistically, between Carels and Detroit Red Wings legend Nicklas Lidstrom.

“Carson Carels, the way he commands and controls the game, there’s no way anybody’s ever going to be Nick Lidstrom, but the manner in which he plays, in every single regard, the big minutes, the hard minutes, the offensive and defensive play and the timely play, he’s got all those elements,” said Button.

At No. 3 is Soo Greyhounds defenceman Chase Reid, who recently returned from a 17-game absence after suffering an upper-body injury against Brantford on Feb. 1.

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The 18-year-old had 18 goals and 48 points in 45 games this season. He also had four points in five games at the World Juniors for Team USA.

The Athletic has an interesting look at John Tortorella’s first game coaching the Golden Knights in Vegas, which was of course a 4-2 win over the Canucks.

Overall, the debut was a success, but it also came against the team with the worst record in the NHL by a wide margin (Vancouver is 17 points behind the next closest team). The Golden Knights have made their hay beating up on this calibre of opposition this season, and even Monday’s game showed plenty of the warts that led to the coaching change in the first place. There’s still plenty of work to be done, without much time to do it, and Tortorella is well aware.

“I think we have some good clips that we can pull from the game, contrasting playing slow versus playing fast, because I thought it was quite a contrast between the first and the second (periods),” Tortorella said. “We’ll look at some tape and continue to teach and try to get the right mindset, an aggressive mindset of playing north and simple.” 

Check back for more Canucks news throughout the day.

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