Local News
Canucks firmly in rebuild after winless, pointless six-game road trip
Despite the dark, discouraging ineptitude of the pointless six-game road trip the Vancouver Canucks completed with Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, this was not a once-in-a-lifetime failure for the franchise.
It is merely once in 47 years. The last time the Canucks lost an entire six-game excursion in regulation time was December, 1978. They finished with 63 points in that 80-game season.
Now at 16-26-5, the only team in the National Hockey League below .400, they are on pace for 65 points in 82 games.
The good news, surely jaw-dropping to those too young to remember the NHL’s Original 16, the Canucks somehow made the Stanley Cup playoffs that spring of 1979.
The bad news is they’re on pace to miss by about 30 points in the Year 2026.
The team has lost nine straight games (0-7-2) for the first time since 2016.
Canucks coach Adam Foote has said often this season that “we were right there” — and actually meant it, given the number of games Vancouver was tied or trailed by one in the third period and had their goalie out for an extra attacker at the end.
But they weren’t anywhere on this road trip, not remotely close to equally competing over the six games against teams that included none of the top-five in the NHL standings.
The Canucks were outscored 27-9, held the lead twice (in the same game versus Montreal on Monday) and trailed 4-0 in Buffalo, 2-0 in Detroit, 5-0 in Toronto, 2-0 in Ottawa and 3-0 in Columbus.
Injuries to all of their NHL centres except Elias Pettersson pushed the fragile Canucks past a tipping point before the road trip even began, but the return of injury to starting goalie Thatcher Demko and the return of glaring defensive mistakes by a team playing in fear has given them little chance to compete against anyone.
No wonder Canucks president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin reiterated and starkly emphasized during this road trip that the organization is officially in a rebuild. Full stop. It may not be the complete, tear-down, years-long rebuild that some clamor for, but a rebuild it is.
Sometimes things get so bad you lose the luxury of actually choosing which direction you go. Sometimes the direction chooses you, and that became especially obvious in Vancouver over the last 10 days.
Some good news
Longest-serving Canuck Brock Boeser broke an unfathomable 21-game goal-less slump when he pounded in Vancouver’s only goal in Columbus from Pettersson’s cross-ice pass during a second-period power play. Boeser, an alternate captain and the longest-serving Canuck, had been in agony over his inability to score while his team’s losses piled into the stratosphere.
He looked shattered after Tuesday’s 2-1 loss in Ottawa when he told us: “Honestly, it’s just crazy. I just get frustrated when I think about it because, you know, I haven’t scored. I haven’t been leading in that regard, putting the puck in the net. And it’s really, it’s eating at me a lot, and so I don’t even know. I don’t have the words to describe it right now.”
Maybe ending the longest slump he has endured since he started in hockey will free Boeser from his mental shackles and allow the winger to begin finishing more like he did during his 40-goal campaign just two years ago.
Bad news
The Canucks have been practising for life without winger Kiefer Sherwood, the free-agency-eligible player being auctioned around the NHL, who missed the final three games of the road trip with an undisclosed injury.
It’s natural to wonder, of course, if the Canucks are being extra cautious with Sherwood — maybe even keeping him out of the lineup — to protect their most valuable and moveable trade asset. In any case, without Sherwood’s relentless motor and direct, physical play, the Canucks have looked like an easier team to play against.
They were outhit 19-11 in Columbus, and the only Canucks who recorded as many as two hits were Boeser, Zeev Buium and Aatu Raty.
Toughness and physicality will be issues management must deal with during the rebuild.
Astounding news
With Quinn Hughes gone and no experienced NHL centres to support him, except penalty-killing and faceoff specialist David Kampf, Pettersson has actually been reasonably effective trying to drive the offence solo. He had four goals in six games before Tuesday and his assist on Boeser’s goal gave him six points in eight games, which is like Art Ross Trophy pace on the Canucks.
But it is staggering that Tuesday’s game in Columbus marked the two-year anniversary since Pettersson’s last power-play goal on the road. A first-unit staple, a player who not long ago boasted one of the most feared five-on-four one-timers in hockey, has gone 233 minutes and 43 seconds of road power-play time since he scored against the Blue Jackets during a 4-3 shootout loss in Ohio on Jan. 15, 2024.
And the most incredible part of this unbelievable stat: Pettersson has registered only 30 shots on net during nearly four hours of road power-play time over the last two years.
What losing does
During his morning media availability in Columbus, Foote offered fascinating, first-hand insight into the relationship between trusting teammates and winning or losing hockey games.
After 13 seasons as a defenceman on a tight, confident Colorado Avalanche team that won a pair of Stanley Cups, Foote joined the floundering Blue Jackets as a free agent in 2005 after the longest NHL lockout ended with the introduction of a hard salary cap.
One of the best and fiercest shutdown defencemen of his era, Foote struggled as captain of the Blue Jackets, who finished 25th, 24th and 25th during his three seasons in Columbus.
“I came to a team that was developing a young core and trying to figure out where they were going, what direction,” Foote said in response to a question from Sportsnet’s John Shorthouse. “I was just talking to a couple of (Canuck) defencemen yesterday. . . about how I was either early on plays, too early in plays because I didn’t trust my teammates, or I was too slow into plays because I didn’t trust what was going on.
“That happens when you get in a little bit of a slump. It’s happened to our team a little bit, where some of our D are early. . . or they’re backing off. It’s a thing, it’s true, it happens. You have to trust it (and) just worry about your own game and play to. . . your job at that moment, and this will all work out. I was lost for the first 20 games here. I was spoiled (with the Avalanche) and it took me way too long to figure it out, maybe over a year-and-a-half before I had my game back. So it was tough.”
