EDMONTON — Two years ago, the Vancouver Canucks won 50 games. Thursday, they finished the 2025-26 season with 25 wins — and 49 regulation losses.
No matter how accustomed we have become to the team’s historic retreat this season, the numbers are still halting.
How much has changed for Vancouver in the National Hockey League was reinforced by its final-game 6-1 humiliation against the Edmonton Oilers, the Stanley Cup contenders the Canucks forced to Game 7 in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs just 23 months ago.
The Canucks did not come close to competing Thursday in the same building where they nearly took down the Oilers in 2024.
“I was thinking about that,” longest-serving Canuck Brock Boeser said after the team’s funeral march finally ended. “It’s hard to imagine. I don’t even know what to say, really, right now. It sucks. I’ve still kind of got to get my thoughts together about everything that happened.
“But this is obviously a direction we had to go with the moves that were made. We’ve got to restart.”
Shots Thursday were 35-12 for the Oilers, who needed a point to guarantee themselves a home-ice start to this year’s playoffs. That urgency was exemplified by Connor McDavid, who seemed to make it his mission not to let the last-place Canucks steal a game that would make it harder for Edmonton to begin another journey towards a third straight Stanley Cup Final.
McDavid carved open the Canucks with four assists and sculpted a first-period hat trick for lucky linemate Matt Savoie. Edmonton’s dominant victory ended an improbable three-game Vancouver winning streak and the Canucks’ worst season this century — arguably, their most disappointing one ever.
“They came out ready to play. . . and we were not ready for it,” Canucks defenceman Filip Hronek said.
The Canucks’ final landing spot, last by a mile in the NHL for the first time in franchise history, is disillusioning but hardly a shock considering this ending could be glimpsed almost from the beginning of the season.
Their fall from a peak of 4-2-0 began in October when injuries to Filip Chytil and Teddy Blueger exposed the organization’s failure to bolster its centre depth last summer. Highest-paid player Elias Pettersson started slowly, again, and goalie Thatcher Demko got hurt, again. And everyone knew it was over for the Canucks on Dec. 12 when president Jim Rutherford, fearing he might be forced to sell Quinn Hughes at a severe loss if he didn’t act quickly, traded the best player in franchise history to the Minnesota Wild for some elite prospects and a first-round pick.
As the Canucks veered dramatically into a rebuild, everything that happened after that Friday night in December, except perhaps the four-game winning streak that immediately followed the trade, was predictable, albeit difficult to believe in real time.
Finishing at 25-49-8, the Canucks suffered their worst single-year regression since they entered the NHL 55 seasons ago.
Their 58 points were 32 less than the 90 scrounged last year amid the internal dysfunction and injury epidemic of Rick Tocchet’s final season, before the coach leapt into a life raft that carried him away to the Philadelphia Flyers.
It’s like Tocchet knew what was coming.
The previous record season-over-season freefall for the Canucks was 26 points in 2015-16.
Vancouver finishes with a goal-differential of minus-100, an almost unfathomable 83-goal disintegration since last season.
The team won only nine of 41 home games, and just 15 times in regulation. Only once has it lost more games in one season.
Again, these numbers are horrifying, but not shocking based on everything we’ve seen this last six months.
“You show up to work regardless,” veteran defenceman Marcus Pettersson said. “There’s so many games — 84 games next year — there’s going to be more highs and lows. Keep a steady mindset and learn from each day. You’ve just got to understand the situation we’re in and strive to get better every year. That’s all we can do. It’s easy to slip and it’s easy to kind of get ahead of yourselves. If you win a game … it’s like, yeah, if you don’t follow it up, it doesn’t mean anything, right? So have that mindset every day.”
The only positive thing about Game 82, other than that it temporarily ends the suffering in Canucks Nation, is that minor-league callup Ty Mueller scored a beautiful breakaway goal for his first in the NHL.
He was one of seven players under the age of 24 in Vancouver’s lineup, one of nine who has spent significant time this season or last in the American Hockey League.
“We have so many young guys,” Boeser said. “I think just their maturity and, you know, growing up and learning how to play the right way, it definitely takes time. And I thought they did a lot better job towards the end of the year. Everyone needs to have the right mindset coming to the rink every day. Guys can’t be satisfied. They’ve got to figure out a way to be better, work harder and play as a team.”
“Of course, it’s disappointing where we are,” goalie Kevin Lankinen said, the last player out of the visitors’ dressing room at Rogers Place. “Just looking at the standings, that’s not acceptable. But I want to believe that the future is bright. We’ve got some pieces that we can build on, and I trust that the coaching staff and the management are making the right decisions. And we’re going to be more competitive in the future.”