Canucks season filled with upheaval ends quietly after loss
A year of turmoil and upheaval for the Vancouver Canucks ended with Wednesday’s 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.
VANCOUVER — Of the 53 National Hockey League seasons that the Vancouver Canucks played before this one, only 16 were better points-percentage-wise than the year of turmoil and upheaval that ended with Wednesday’s 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.
Nobody on the West Coast will call this a “fun fact.” But it is a reminder that there have been a lot of seasons with more misery and hopelessness than this one. Very few, however, have been more disappointing.
The Canucks finished 2024-25 at 38-30-14, eight games over NHL .500. But they were eliminated from the playoff race four games ago and will miss the Stanley Cup tournament for the eighth time in 10 years — and 11 months after coming within one win of the Western Conference Final.
There was actually some positivity: the emergence of goalie Kevin Lankinen as a capable NHL starter, elite penalty-killing and an upgrade of the defence, breakthrough seasons for Pius Suter and Kiefer Sherwood, and the unmistakable development of several key prospects, including defenceman Elias Pettersson.
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But this wasn’t enough to offset injuries to virtually all of the Canucks’ best players, exemplified by the season-long battle for fitness and form by goalie Thatcher Demko and three different injuries to Norris Trophy-winning captain Quinn Hughes. The older Elias Pettersson had a miserable campaign to start his franchise-record $92.8-million-US contract, and debilitating dysfunction in the dressing room led in January to the trade of core player and team leader J.T. Miller.
“I don’t want to really play the what-if game,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said after Game 82. “I think you’ve got to reflect on the year, like: What could you have done different? I’m not going to use excuses at all. I know that you guys know this year what’s happened, but you’ve got to deal with that stuff. Could we have dealt with it better? We talked about ’embracing the hard’ at the start of the year and, you know, maybe we weren’t ready for it.”
Hughes said Tocchet’s coaching work this season was even better than last year, when he won the Jack Adams Award after a 109-point season. It helped keep the Canucks in the playoff race until the second-to-last week of the regular season. But undermanned and constantly under pressure in the standings, the team never caught fire. The Canucks were unable to build the hot streaks and winning runs required to get separation from the wild-card race mosh pit.
Vancouver went 7-1-1 over nine games in the opening month, but couldn’t win more than three in a row after that. And when they finally looked ready to launch with an excellent week in the wake of the Miller trade, the Canucks came out of the February schedule break inexplicably cold.
They’d have climbed within seven points of the Golden Knights had they won in Las Vegas on Feb. 22. Vegas finished 20 points ahead of Vancouver on Wednesday.
Now the Canucks head into an off-season no one wanted with a handful of questions nobody expected:
What do they do with the original Pettersson, who needs to significantly upgrade his summer training?
Will Tocchet, publicly and privately lauded by his players, be back for the option year on his contract?
Is longest-serving Canuck Brock Boeser leaving in free agency? Is Suter?
And, related, with a thin free-agent class and rapidly-inflating salary cap, how will general manager Patrik Allvin make the forward upgrades necessary for the Canucks to rebound next season?
“There’s been a lot going on, obviously,” senior-ranking defenceman Tyler Myers said after Wednesday’s morning skate. “But, you know, at the same time, a lot of teams go through stuff throughout a season. You want to find a way to push through and overcome certain obstacles (and) we came up a bit short this year.
“But you know how quick it can change, too. Last year, when we won the division, we didn’t make the playoffs the year before. So, you know, things can change fast. You’ve just got to keep pushing and keep trying to come in every year in shape and bring your best game. We’ll do the same thing coming into next year.”
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Typical of the season, Lankinen left Wednesday’s game after straining something in the second period. Minor-league goalie Nikita Tolopilo replaced him in the third and was beaten by Knights Pavel Dorofeyev and Jack Eichel as Vegas scored the game’s final four goals.
Vancouver managed only nine shots in the last two periods against Vegas backup Akira Schmid.
Boeser drew extra cheers in the warmup and when his name was announced among the starters. But if his 554th game was his final one with the team that drafted him 23rd overall in 2015, it was a quiet exit for the 28-year-old Boeser, who has 204 goals for the franchise but registered only one shot on target against the Golden Knights.
Suter, however, scored his 25th goal of the season on a first-period rebound from Conor Garland, whose assist was his 50th point.
The other UFA-eligible Canuck, Derek Forbort, finished the season injured after a disgraceful punch by the Minnesota Wild’s Yakov Trenin on Saturday broke the defenceman’s orbital bone.
“You know, it’s tough knowing that this is our last game this year,” Myers said. “And then when you really think about it, how it could be your last game with some of the guys. It’s always tough, but it’s part of the game. You develop friendships that, you know, that you’ll keep for the rest of your life. Whatever turnover there is, you take it in stride.”
“We dealt with a lot of stuff this year,” Sherwood said. “I think when adversity hits, we learn a lot of lessons. I think our chip on our shoulder for next year grows even bigger. You know, we’ve got something to prove and something to work for. I saw a lot of personalities change down the stretch here once we got eliminated. We’ve got to channel (that disappointment) the right way. And like I said, we have something to prove and we have an edge now that we’re playing with.”
Canucks players will clean out their lockers and face the media for the final time on Friday.
Tocchet and Allvin, who is trying to negotiate an extension with his coach, are expected to hold a press conference on the weekend or early next week.
Golden Knights players lined up after the game to shake hands with Canucks equipment manager Pat O’Neill, who is stepping back from full-time duty after 45 years in the NHL.
Already one of the league’s flagship franchises, the Golden Knights succeeded the Canucks as Pacific Division champions and will open the playoffs against the Wild as Vegas tries to win its second Stanley Cup. The Canucks continue to look for their first.
