NHL Sour Rankings: Vancouver Canucks Lead The Worst At Olympic Break

NHL teams have resumed practising as the Olympic men's hockey tournament gets through the quarterfinals.

An extended break just past the halfway point of the season gives us the chance to check in on the standings around the league. That means it's time for some NHL Sour Rankings.

While most teams are looking at how they can lock themselves into a playoff spot, there are six teams with a points percentage below the .500 mark. 

Those six squads are the NHL's basement dwellers, and even their most optimistic fans have to admit they are likely going to be hoping for some luck in the NHL draft lottery.

Let's look at the six teams at the bottom of the standings and what sinister stat has them there, as well as a reason for hope moving forward. 

One of the most disheartening stats that helps define the Canucks' 2025-26 season is the fact that their leading scorer, Elias Pettersson, has just 34 points in 49 games. No other team's leading scorer has fewer points.

The Canucks also have just two players above 30 points on the year, fewer than any team in the league. On top of their lack of offense, Vancouver has allowed the most goals in the league.

It's been a trying season, to say the least. Canucks fans looking for some hope need to be reading NHL draft rankings and getting familiar with players like Ivar Stenberg and Gavin McKenna, among others.

The most frustrating stat for the Blues this season has been their team save percentage, currently at .873, which is the third-lowest in the NHL. They also sit second-to-last in goals against above expected, allowing 27.34 more goals than expected, according to moneypuck.com. 

No matter how you slice it, the goalies in St. Louis seem to be a big reason for the struggles this season, but the team in front of them hasn't been pulling its weight either.

The Blues have a good pipeline, and they've already given many of their prospects a taste of NHL action. Dalibor Dvorsky is looking pretty good at the Olympics. There is also the thought that they could unite Otto Stenberg with his brother, Ivar, at the NHL draft this summer. 

The Rangers are hitting the reset button, and the stat that immediately stands out is that they were winless in the four games they scratched Artemi Panarin before trading him to the Los Angeles Kings.

Panarin had control over where he was traded, which limited the trade return, but the Rangers have officially waved the white flag on the season.

Rangers fans can at least take some solace in the fact that their team has chosen a direction. The team is set to build back up and get younger and more exciting once again.

Last month, the Rangers wrote a letter to their fans signalling a retool. It is a move that showed some excellent transparency to their fans and the rest of the hockey world. That said, if I had a dollar for every time the Rangers sent a letter to fans to tell them about how they are looking to the future, I would only have two dollars, but it's weird that it's happened twice. 

The Winnipeg Jets seem to be having an off-year, where everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

They were without their MVP-level netminder, Connor Hellebuyck, for an extended period of time due to injury. That was when the wheels really fell off, and they plummeted to the bottom of the standings.

Among the non-playoff teams in the Western Conference, their minus-15 goal differential is tied for the best outside of the playoffs. They were minus-8 for the four weeks that Hellebuyck was out of the lineup.

It's not like this team, if fully healthy, would have been a bottom dweller. A slow start to the season and a struggling netminder before his injury derailed their year.

Take the high pick and add a top prospect, and then rebound next year. That's where their hope lies. 

The Calgary Flames have had exactly the kind of season that was expected of them. They have been near the bottom of the standings for most of the season, relying on their goaltending.

By any metric, they have been one of the worst offensive teams in the league. They have the fewest goals-for (167) and goals-for per game (2.50).

The Flames are still in the teardown portion of their rebuild. With a few notable potential trade chips still on the roster, they could add to their draft pick cupboard and continue to build their prospect pool.

The hope for the Flames is that with Dustin Wolf, Zayne Parekh and Cullen Potter, among others, the future looks quite bright, and they are still adding to that future in the draft. 

The Hawks' season has been much more positive than last year's.

Connor Bedard looks like a budding superstar, showing more explosiveness and a confidence that wasn't always evident last year.

He was near the league lead in scoring until he was hurt earlier this year. His 53 points through 44 games are quite impressive, especially on a Hawks team that is still rebuilding.

The stat that really stands out for the Hawks isn't their third-worst goal differential in the NHL; it's the spread between their starter's and backup's save percentages.

Spencer Knight has a .908 save percentage, which is solid and puts him in the top half of the league among starters despite his team's defensive deficiencies. The backup, Arvid Soderblom, is boasting a .874 save percentage.

Simply put, they get very good goaltending when Knight is in net and sub-NHL level play when he's not. That's a reason for some of their struggles and a reason for hope moving forward.

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