Canucks Live: starting the year with a hangover and a bleak outlook

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One year ago today Canucks fans were confused, angry and frustrated. The promise of 2024 that had seen Vancouver take the eventual Western Conference Champions to seven games in the second round of the playoffs was on the rocks.

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There was a feud between two of the team’s core players that seemed unfixable. And the players who left the team in the summer of 2024 hadn’t been replaced on the ice or in the locker room.

Well, 12 months later the team has moved on from their iconic captain, a top-four player in team history, and they are one point above last place in the NHL having played two games more than the equally disappointing Winnipeg Jets. That’s one hell of a hangover. What will the next year hold?

After a disappointing loss to the Flyers at Rogers Arena on Tuesday, the Canucks have Friday and Saturday home dates with Seattle and Boston before heading out on an epic six-game road trip. The players retrieved in the Quinn Hughes trade show promise, but this team is still lacking in talent. Maybe this is the year the Canucks win the lottery and get the first-overall pick in the draft for the first time in their flaccid history.

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The loss to the Flyers, their second to the Philly squad the last four games, saw the Canucks play physically, but fall short. The Philly perspective saw the game as tight, man so tight, almost like a playoff game.

The Flyers showed a ton of grit in their bounce-back effort. It was a tough and physical game. In all honesty, the game had the look of a playoff game, not a regular-season matchup. It seemed like more hits were being thrown, and it was a more aggressive game.
Instead of backing down and dancing around the perimeter, the Flyers were getting inside of the Canucks’ defence and going to the tough areas.
The action started early with a tilt between Nick Seeler and Evander Kane. Seeler won the battle, but it was the Canucks who started early. In fact, it took the Flyers over 10 minutes into the game to get their first shot on goal.

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The Canucks took the early 1-0 lead and had 10 shots before Philadelphia had its first.

However, the Flyers really settled in after that. In fact, their second goal evened the game at 1. From that moment on, it felt like it was all Flyers. The Canucks did not register another shot in the first, while the Flyers just kept getting better.

Dan Vladar was forced to have his A-game early on. He was phenomenal once again. He allowed the first goal of the game and got tested frequently. However, he kept his team in position to win, holding the Canucks to just one more goal for the remainder of the game. Vladar is a big reason the Flyers were able to bounce back for the win, especially down the stretch. Without Vladar, it could have been a very different game.

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While this season might be predictable, one strange element is how bad the Canucks are at home. Tuesday’s loss saw them drop to 4-12-1 at Rogers Arena. It’s the NHL’s worst record, and for an arena once known to have an electric atmosphere, think back to those 2010-2012 games when going to the Rog’ was an event, it’s now a mausoleum of losing.

With 10 home matchups in January, the Canucks (16-20-3) are searching for solutions.

“I don’t know. I wish I had an answer,” winger Drew O’Connor said after Tuesday’s defeat. ”We want to come in here and play well in front of our fans, and it’s frustrating for them, it’s frustrating for us when we don’t. So it’s something that we’re working on.

“We want to be better, because it’s important to have good home ice advantage. And we haven’t had that.” 

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As you might expect, the outlook for the Canucks the rest of the way isn’t exactly hopeful from inside or outside the market. ESPN looks at all teams’ hopes of getting into the playoffs and their take is what you might expect.

Vancouver Canucks
Record: 16-20-3, 35 points
Playoff chances: 1.8 per cent (Stathletes); 10.5 per cent (Money Puck)

Rebuild, reboot, retool, reconfiguration, regurgitation … whatever word the Canucks are using this week to describe their post-Quinn Hughes era is probably applicable. Vancouver’s 6-4-0 record in the past 10 games was a nice little uptick, but the franchise is better off with this being a lost season -— and with more trades to be made, it likely will be.

MVP: Kiefer Sherwood. What a time to be alive when Sherwood was scoring at will earlier this season. He has 16 goals in 38 games, without question the most on Vancouver, but the real value he has given the Canucks is increasing the return when they eventually trade the pending UFA.

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And if you’re wondering what lies ahead for Hughes and the Wild after the big trade, ESPN thinks this was a blockbuster that changed fortunes.

Minnesota Wild
Record: 24-10-6, 54 points
Playoff chances: 99.9 per cent (Stathletes); 99.2 per cent (Money Puck)

The Hughes trade changed everything. It gave Minnesota the elite-level defenceman that other Western Conference contenders boasted. It super-charged the Wild’s offence: In their first eight games with Hughes, they averaged 4.13 goals per game; in their previous 32 games, they averaged 2.81. He’s averaging 27:14 in ice time and impacting every facet of their game.

As the Canucks playoff hopes dwindle, the trade rumours will continue to float as long as players like Sherwood and Evander Kane are on the roster.

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Who gets moved next in Vancouver?
Who could have predicted the Canucks would be better without their captain? It’s a short sample size that likely won’t last, but the youth who came in the Hughes return package has given Vancouver some energy, and it’s shown in the results. Having Thatcher Demko healthy and shutting the door certainly hasn’t hurt either.

Mangiapane wasn’t the only notable name to be healthy scratched on Monday night, so was Jake DeBrusk, although reports suggest that any talk of a trade remains premature, as much as it makes sense to consider for a team starting a rebuild.

Meanwhile, Sherwood continues to draw interest from just about the entire league, though the Canucks seem comfortable waiting things out until closer to the deadline.  Elias Pettersson’s name has popped back up in trade rumours, and whether there’s any truth to them or not, the chatter continues to link the Carolina Hurricanes. 

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The Athletic looked at players each time might target before the trade deadline. One Canuck makes the list, yes, Mr. Popular, but their suggestion is the Canucks should be looking at only picks for themselves and not roster players.

Vegas Golden Knights
Kiefer Sherwood

I’m not expecting a blockbuster deal out of the Golden Knights this deadline, but Sherwood would be an excellent addition. He does a lot of things Vegas desperately needs out of its wingers at the moment. He’s big, strong, good on the forecheck and drives the front of the net. For all of the playmakers the Golden Knights have up front, they could use some brute force. Sherwood has all of that, plus the ability to score.

Vancouver Canucks
No one

The Canucks can’t overreact to an uptick in form and results since executing the Hughes trade. This is a team that’s years away from competing in any relevant fashion in the NHL and needs to fundamentally rebuild its forward group and reimagine its overall priorities and team-building approach. Vancouver, in other words, needs to sell. It needs to sell aggressively. And target draft picks and futures in return, not NHL players. If trading Hughes — and his reluctance to remain in Vancouver — isn’t a wake-up call for this franchise, nothing ever will be. 

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As the clock strikes midnight there’s always reflection on the past 12 months, and the Athletic looked at the biggest hockey storylines in 2025. You’ve already guessed the Canucks content.

Make it a blockbuster year
It’s always nice to get a reminder that, despite the world’s worst general manager cliché, trades aren’t always hard — and sometimes, they can be huge. It all started in January, when star winger Mikko Rantanen went from negotiating a new contract with the Colorado Avalanche to figuring out life with the Carolina Hurricanes, who seemed to have completed their search for another elite piece at the top of the lineup. Headed back to the Avs, in part, was the highly skilled, highly inconsistent Martin Nečas.

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Six weeks later, Carolina was forced to flip Rantanen to the Dallas Stars, and in the months since, he and Nečas have shown themselves to be crucial pieces for two of the league’s best teams. The jury is still out on the future-focused package Carolina received from Dallas.

That all felt like an appetizer for the Minnesota Wild’s acquisition of Hughes on Dec. 12. In Hughes, Minnesota got a true superstar piece capable of pushing them into the Stanley Cup conversation. They also assumed real risk, sending a top prospect (Zeev Buium), a top-six centre (Marco Rossi) and an intriguing young piece (Liam Öhgren) along with a first-round pick back to the Vancouver Canucks; great as Hughes is, he’s under contract only through the end of next season, and a potential reunion with his brothers Jack and Luke in New Jersey might loom. 

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Check back for more Canucks news throughout the day …

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