The Vancouver Canucks have new management in place, but the Canucks are almost certainly going to be just as bad, if not worse than their 2025-26 season. Does Vancouver have the stones to see through a full rebuild, or have they not learned their lesson from the San Jose Sharks and Calgary Flames?
The Vancouver Canucks enter the 2026-27 season with eyes wide open. The Canucks understand that this coming season is going to be necessarily painful.
There will almost certainly be no Stanley Cup playoff hockey in B.C. There will be agonizingly lengthy stretches when they stink out whatever joint they’re appearing in. They’re going to lose, and lose often.
But the last thing any Canucks fan should want is a retool-on-the-fly. The worst thing possible would be for the Canucks to be a ‘mushy middle’ team – too good to be in a place where they earn a top spot in the 2027 draft, and too bad to be in the post-season.
Vancouver GM Ryan Johnson has the mandate to rebuild, and that’s going to require extraordinary patience from Canucks fans.
To see how long a full rebuild takes, look no further than two other teams in the Pacific Division – the San Jose Sharks and Calgary Flames.
The Sharks have been rebuilding in earnest since GM Mike Grier took the job in July of 2022. In the first three years of Grier’s tenure as GM, the Sharks finished either in seventh or eighth place in their division.
It wasn’t until this past season that San Jose truly turned the corner, improving their win total by a stunning 19 wins in 2025-26 – and even then, it still wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs.
Now, the Sharks may not get into the post-season this year, but San Jose is still a ways away from rising to the top of the Pacific and going far in the playoffs.
Meanwhile, the Flames haven’t made the playoffs in the past four seasons, and since GM Craig Conroy took the reins of the organization in May of 2023, Calgary has shown why it doesn’t make sense to only make some tweaks.
The Flames finished fifth in the division in Conroy’s first year, then they improved to fourth in the division in Conroy’s second year – and in both those seasons, Calgary still missed the playoffs. And that’s why the Flames’ rebuild has not been as fruitful as San Jose’s rebuild.
Indeed, it was only last season – when Conroy more or less finished stripping down his roster by removing a slew of veteran players – that Calgary was truly moving in the right direction.
The Flames finished in seventh place in the Pacific last season, and although they didn’t have great luck in the draft lottery – falling two spots to land the sixth-overall pick despite having the NHL’s fourth-worst record – it’s incumbent on Conroy to grit his teeth, stay the course, and allow Calgary to endure more pain as the Flames try to build a core that can rival their Pacific opponents.
All things considered, it’s clear that the Canucks have to do what Grier and the Sharks are doing – and what Conroy and the Flames are finally doing – to build a long-term winner for long-suffering Vancouver fans.
You do need some luck in the draft lottery to do what San Jose has done of late, but the alternative – always chasing your tail, never getting anywhere – is not an option at all for Johnson and Vancouver's front office. Eventually, the pain will be worth it.
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