April 17th, 2025
JC Clemas
The day is April 21st, 2024.
The Vancouver Canucks were preparing for Game 1 in their first round series against the Nashville Predators.
They were fresh off winning the Pacific Division title for the 2023-24 regular season, with an astounding record of 50-23-9. After so many years of misery, the pain finally resulted in a season of everything coming together.
J.T. Miller had 103 points.
Quinn Hughes had 92 points and won the Norris Trophy.
Elias Pettersson had 89 points despite a nagging injury.
Brock Boeser scored 40 goals.
Thatcher Demko was the Vezina Trophy runner-up.
The team always had the ability to get it done in the regular season. Quinn Hughes prefaced the year by noting his and his teammates’ increasing ages, saying they’re not little kids anymore and have to do what they were brought here to do.
And they did.
Vancouver won round 1 against Nashville, with their wins including an incredible game 4 comeback and an intense 1-0 series clincher.
They put up a great fight against Edmonton in round 2, despite injuries plaguing the roster. Unfortunately, they lost that series in 7 games, but it was a huge step towards being a legitimate contender. There was no looking back. This was a consistent playoff team now.
Today is April 17th, 2025.
The Vancouver Canucks faced off against Vegas last night to close out the regular season. Check that.
They closed out the season, period.
In a season where they never managed to quite find their footing as a group, the Canucks finished the year with a 38-29-14 record.
At its best, the season provided a few sparkling glimmers of hope and positivity that made you think they could still sneak into the playoffs.
At its worst, it was unwatchable.
The team started off a little slow. In the season opener, they blew a 4-1 lead to the Flames in the 3rd period. They eventually lost that game 6-5 in overtime. Looking back, it was probably an omen for how the season was about to go.
The season progressed from there. They weren’t at the top of the league or anything, but they weren’t in a very big hole. By November 19th, they had a record of 9-5-3, good for a .618 points percentage. That was 2nd best in the Pacific Division.
That’s where the first hiccup came in.
Prior to the November 19th game against the New York Rangers, J.T. Miller announced that he would be taking a leave of absence from the team for personal reasons. This announcement came out of nowhere for the fans, who were subsequently left without their previous season’s highest scorer for the next 10 games.
Shockingly, the Canucks didn’t fare too bad in that time. They went 5-3-2. Not exactly inspiring, but a solid record to keep themselves afloat in the time without Miller. They kept pace with Edmonton and LA. If they could play well without him, imagine how many wins will start pouring in when Miller returns to the lineup!
Everything went wrong pretty much as soon as he got back.
They won their first game upon Miller’s return with a convincing 4-0 win against Florida on December 12th. From that moment to January 23rd, the Canucks went 5-9-5. It doesn’t help that Quinn Hughes, who was pretty much single-handedly carrying the Canucks, got injured before their December 28th game against Seattle.
During the December-January stretch, some of the games were atrocious. They blew a 3 goal lead with under 5 minutes left in the game against Seattle and went on to lose in overtime. They got shut out on home ice by a failing Nashville team. They blew a 3-1 lead to Montreal and lost in overtime in Quinn Hughes’ return. They played one of the most boring games in franchise history against Carolina, which ended in a 2-0 loss. They were trounced by each of Winnipeg, LA, and Edmonton in just over the span of a week.
During this time, Miller and Elias Pettersson were being held off the same power play unit. It was clear that they had some sort of a feud that was affecting not only their on-ice play, but also the play and morale of the team around them. Luckily, after that stretch, the Canucks went on a nice 3 game win streak in late January. They beat Washington in one of the more scrappy wins of the season, got an important 5-2 win over St. Louis, and finally managed to defeat Nashville. The Canucks front office had toyed with the idea of trading Miller and/or Pettersson to solve their locker room problem, but also said that winning fixes everything. Finally, the Canucks were winning.
They flew into Dallas on January 31st, looking to continue their winning ways. Just a short while until game time, who else walks out of the Canucks’ dressing room but J.T. Miller.
He had been traded back to his first NHL team, the New York Rangers. Joining him were Jackson Dorrington and Erik Brännström. Coming the other way were Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, and a 1st round pick. The winning did not save the group from breaking apart. The issue had seemingly persisted for years. The front office found a deal they were interested in and pulled the trigger. Out goes the man with 437 career points as a Canuck and the 2nd highest PPG in franchise history. Just like that.
The team lost that game against Dallas. Somehow, the game was only the 3rd biggest story for the Canucks that day.
Roughly 5 hours after Miller was traded to New York, the Canucks flipped the Rangers’ 1st round pick along with Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais and Melvin Fernstrom to Pittsburgh in exchange for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor.
The team had their eye on Marcus Pettersson for a while. Icing a defensive pair of Carson Soucy and Noah Juulsen in the top 4 was an unsustainable practice. Pettersson was the bona fide top-4 defenseman that the team has needed for so long. January 31st, 2025 will go down as one of the biggest emotional rollercoasters in franchise history.
With the new guys slotting in, the team dropped their next game in overtime against Detroit, despite heavily outplaying the Red Wings. They went on to win their next 3 games before the 4 Nations break, which was especially impressive because it was done without Quinn Hughes. The team was 26-18-11 going into the break. That put them in the 2nd Wild Card spot by 3 points. They had a lead in the race and momentum leading into their vacation.
The 4 Nations Face-Off was supposed to feature 4 Canucks, but with the Miller trade and the Hughes injury, it was down to 2: Elias Pettersson and Kevin Lankinen. Elias Pettersson was still struggling to provide offense even after the Miller trade, making this a big moment for him. He was on a big stage, under the bright lights, with everyone watching. Time to make a statement.
0 points in 3 games.
It wasn’t so much that Pettersson played badly, but he was playing how we’d come to expect him to: great defensively, miserable offensively. That would be all fine and dandy if he were a Pius Suter making $1.6m. We all know what Pettersson’s contract is. I don’t have to repeat it.
The Canucks came out of the 4 Nations break in a bad way, losing 4 of their first 5 games and surrendering the Wild Card spot instantly.
Pettersson went on a goalless drought of 15 games, 18 if you include the games he played for Team Sweden. He finally managed to score a rip from the point on March 7th against Minnesota. Pettersson carried that energy forward, scoring 9 points in 6 games from March 11th to March 20th.
March 12th was the Canucks’ biggest game of the season. They played Calgary, who they trailed in the Wild Card standings. A loss would likely mean the realistic end of their playoff hopes. Pettersson managed to tie the game late and the Canucks would win in a shootout to keep themselves in it.
The following game was against Chicago, which was an easy 6-2 win. The primary thing to note from this game is the injury Filip Chytil faced. Chytil, who has dealt with so many concussions already in his young career, was hit into the boards by Jason Dickinson. The game was already lost by that point. Chytil would once again face a concussion and miss the rest of the season, and the Canucks would wait in anticipation to see when they get to face the Blackhawks next season. Oh yeah, did I mention Dickinson hid on the bench for the rest of the game? And received no punishment from the league? Whatever he gets in their next matchup, he earned on March 15th.
Starting March 20th, Vancouver embarked on a pivotal 6 game road trip that would eventually become the stuff of nightmares. The first game was against St. Louis, a team that came out of the break absolutely flying. A regulation loss would pretty much end their dreams. It looked like that was what the game was trending towards. That was until Brock Boeser tied the game with 4 seconds remaining in regulation. One of the best goals of the Canucks season, which was immediately almost nullified by the team losing in overtime like always.
Then, they played the Rangers. It was their first dance against J.T. Miller in roughly 7 years. The Canucks decimated the Rangers everywhere besides the scoreboard. Expected goals, tracked by MoneyPuck, were 5.25-1.38 in favour of Vancouver. Shots were 39-12. They lost 5-3. To put the icing on the cake, Miller scored the empty-netter from almost 200 feet down the ice. It was the most brutal game to watch in the Canucks season… an opinion that lasted 6 games.
In the game against the Rangers, both Elias Pettersson and Nils Höglander sustained injuries that would hold them out of the lineup. Pettersson would not return for the season. Fortunately, the Canucks soldiered on, muscling out wins against New Jersey and the other New York.
Then, there was the Columbus game.
I mean, what even happened here? They had a 3-0 lead after 1 period, blew it in the first 9 minutes of the 2nd, gained a 5-3 lead, blew THAT, gave up the 6-5 goal with under 3 minutes left in the game, scored a game-tying goal 23 seconds later, and then lost in a shootout. I think my life expectancy was halved by the viewing experience.
Their next game was against Winnipeg, where they lost 3-1. That was pretty much the season-ender. But just to be sure, they lost to Seattle in their next game for their third loss against the Kraken this season.
On April 8th, they played Dallas with their season on life support. A regulation loss would mean their elimination from playoff contention, which would inevitably happen soon enough, one way or another. They got off to an early 3-0 deficit, but fought back to make it 3-2. After applying tons of pressure in the 3rd period stemming from their desperation, they conceded the 4-2 goal and then an empty netter. The season was finished. Aatu Räty scored a goal with 1:00 left to make it 5-3, but all hope was lost. Okay wait, Pius Suter made it a 5-4 game with 30 seconds left. Oh my goodness, they tied it. We’d seen this one before, though. They play a chaotic game just to ruin it by losing in overtime anyway. Nevermind. KIEFER SHERWOOD!
The season was essentially over anyway, and indeed, the Canucks would be eliminated on the very next day following a Minnesota overtime victory. They at least wouldn’t go down without a fight, though.
Their game against Vegas last night wrapped up the season in a fitting way: terribly. We had to look on as a sad Brock Boeser threw gifts into the crowd and then skated off for likely his final time in a Canucks jersey. Quinn Hughes didn’t break the all-time defenseman franchise points record, and Kiefer Sherwood didn’t get 20 goals. Just a couple more let downs to end a season full of them.
With the story out of the way, it’s time to bring in some expert analysis that you just simply won’t find anywhere else: this year sucked.
First and foremost, the person to feel bad for above anyone else is Quinn Hughes. He had to deal with injury, questionable management decisions, locker room fights between guys he’s close with, and the Vancouver media. Being the captain of this team seems to be an impossible task, but he does it well. He played the best hockey of his life in the early parts of the season. The team just was not able to pull their own weight.
Elias Pettersson still has the potential to be a franchise-level talent, but we didn’t really see any part of that this season. Granted, he’d likely been playing through some sort of injury problem even before the Rangers game, but it’s still not even close to good enough. He is taking up so much of the cap just to be on similar production levels as $1.6m Pius Suter and $1.5m Kiefer Sherwood.
J.T. Miller was disappointing. We don’t know what was truly happening behind the scenes, so it’s hard to comment on this, but a lot of our issues this year boiled down to the energy that he was creating in the locker room. I’m happy that he was able to get out and start a new-ish path in New York, but he didn’t have to take us down before his departure. I’ll still be cheering for him. Let it be known, though, the Canucks did trade the right guy in the end. That trade was as much for Miller as it was for the team.
Rick Tocchet followed up his Jack Adams season with a, for lack of better terms, stinkfest. He was unable to control the room and refused to adjust when things weren’t working for the team. His lineups were often questionable (why in the world did the pairing of Soucy-Juulsen ever get that many games together?), and his game plans were too easy to stop. Dump and chase. Dump and chase. Dump and chase. The offense was absolutely broken under that system. From January 3rd to March 11th, they only managed to score 4+ goals in 2 out of 27 games. One of those was a loss. Boring hockey can work (see Carolina), but it just didn’t, and nothing changed for so long. Assuming he returns as Canucks head coach, he needs to do better. He can do better.
The front office had its worst showing since taking over late in 2021. The only glaring mistake they had made in their first 2 and a half years was the Ilya Mikheyev contract, and in all fairness, who could have seen a torn ACL coming? There were many foreseeable mistakes this year. Moving Vasily Podkolzin to make space for Daniel Sprong was maybe the silliest blunder of all of them. When you have a coach like Rick Tocchet, who prioritizes defense and hates scoring-only forwards, why would you move out a young guy to bring in the worst defensive forward in the league? Sprong was out in 9 games, and Podkolzin put up a great analytic season for the Oilers. On that note, why trade him to a division rival? Podkolzin could have been a big piece for this current youthful direction, and Allvin failed heavily there.
There was also the Miller trade, with an underwhelming return. Though I understand that any trade involving Miller was likely to be a loss for the Canucks, it was the front office who made it that way. Jim Rutherford specifically spoke to the media about how out-of-hand the situation was, losing any leverage that the Canucks may have had in a deal. Nothing against the players the Canucks received, but for a 100 point player, you want more. They could have gotten more if the situation had been dealt with differently.
The Boeser situation was the most foreseeable of them all. With Boeser set to be a free agent this summer, the Canucks were not close on an extension with him and shopped him around at the trade deadline. Reports came out that Carolina offered a 1st for him just before the deadline, but here we are, with Boeser closing out the season as a Canuck. They didn’t even make the playoffs. They held onto Boeser for no reason and will lose him for nothing in the offseason. Why is this front office so hesitant to pull the trigger on deadline day?
Finally, to offer up some positivity for a move the Canucks made, the Marcus Pettersson trade was a success. Heinen and Desharnais were both extremely replaceable players for the Canucks. Heinen was replaced by a younger O’Connor, who wasn’t great, but added more to the team than Heinen with his speed and comparatively better defensive ability. As for the 1st round pick, I’d send it away for Marcus Pettersson any day, especially with a 1st still in the bank for this year’s draft. Pettersson has been huge for the Canucks, stabilizing both the defense and the locker room.
This season was ridiculous. The team didn’t play hard enough, or even like each other. They failed so many times to string multiple wins together. The only time they gained momentum at any point this season was in February, which was immediately destroyed by the 4 Nations break. Maybe some of them committed to their vacation a little too hard. The team as a whole wasted some of the best play we have ever seen from a defenseman in history. We faced injuries all throughout the season, with every single significant player on the team (besides DeBrusk and Garland) missing extended periods of time. This season was a tough watch after such a fun year prior.
The Canucks showcased an inability to win games on home ice that was almost unbelievable. They went 17-16-8 in Vancouver, which was 10 whole wins less than what they accomplished the year before. It was the least amount of wins they had on home ice in a full season since 2017-18, a year that they ended with 73 points. The culprit of this terrible home record is whoever decided that they should change the centre ice logo. Why would you tempt the voodoo magic of the centre ice logo after coming off one of your best seasons in franchise history? Please change it back. Either way, the Canucks need to have stronger performances on home ice next season. Especially if they’re gonna charge that much for tickets.
On the bright side, we have a fresh slate for next season. The front office has its work cut out for it this offseason. The players need to make sure they are healthy and ready to go for the season opener. Elias Pettersson (the forward) needs to be better. Rick Tocchet needs to be better. Everybody needs to kick it up a gear besides Quinn Hughes and Kiefer Sherwood. Even Garland, DeBrusk, and Lankinen could have done more. The good thing is that it’s not impossible for all this to happen. The team has great depth forwards, defense, goalies, and young talent coming up and already making an impact. If they can just fix the holes in the top 6 and GET ALONG, 2026 could see the Canucks back in the postseason. Who knows? Maybe they could even contend.
There’s truly always next year.