38-30-14, 90
points (5th Pacific, 18th overall)
2.84 GF/GP, 23rd; 3.06 GA/GP, 18th
22.5 PP%, 15th; 82.6 PK%, 3rd
Key losses: C/LW Pius Suter
Key additions: LW Evander Kane
Expected lineup:
Jake
DeBrusk – Elias Pettersson – Brock Boeser
Evander Kane – Filip Chytil – Jonathan Lekkerimaki
Nils Hoglander – Teddy Blueger – Conor Garland
Drew O’Connor – Aatu Raty – Kiefer Sherwood
Quinn
Hughes – Filip Hronek
Marcus Pettersson – Tyler Myers
Derek Forbort – Elias Pettersson
Thatcher Demko – Kevin Lankinen
5-on-5:
Long story short, it was a disastrous season for the Canucks on nearly all fronts. A season after pushing the rival Oilers to seven games in the playoffs, the Canucks earned 12 fewer wins, 19 fewer points and scored 43 fewer goals.
Locker room strife cast a dark cloud over the once-promising franchise all season, which saw top center J.T. Miller get traded to the Rangers and head coach Rick Tocchet leave for the Flyers, one season after winning the Jack Adams as the league’s top coach.
The numbers were stark; the Canucks went from 10th in percentage share of shot attempts, 16th in expected goals and 7th in high-danger shot attempts in 2023-24 to 19th, 30th and 29th in 2024-25, respectively.
Brock Boeser went from 40 goals to 25 and shots from 204 to 145. Nils Hoglander went from 24 goals to eight. Dakota Joshua went from 18 to seven. Miller’s play noticeably dipped when things weren’t going his way, which included a mid-season 10-game banishment by the team. Filip Hronek missed 21 games, and Thatcher Demko went from 51 starts and 35 wins to 23 starts and 10 wins due to injury.
The Canucks were poised for a big breakout season in 2024-25, with a chance to join the Pacific’s elite along with the Knights and Oilers, but instead suffered a meteoric crash so inexplicably hard it makes Michael Bay’s Armageddon easy to watch.
Quinn Hughes missed 14 games due to injury, and no player has a bigger impact on the team. He finished third in Norris voting and outpaced the next higher Canuck by 26 points and 21 shots. Hughes is a fantasy stud and an elite superstar, but when no one else on the team comes close to his production, especially a forward, there are very few paths for them to be a competitive team. With Hughes on the ice, the Canucks controlled 54.8 percent of the shot attempts, but when he was off the ice, the Canucks were caved in, controlling just 44.8 percent of the shot attempts.
The other key cog of the Canucks offense is top center Elias Pettersson, whose season was riddled with injuries and inconsistency, and the once highly-regarded center suddenly became a topic of trade bait after reaching career lows. It goes without saying that whenever a top center has a bad season, he can drag the whole team down with him, too. Pettersson finished with just 45 points in 64 games and the Canucks were often outshot when he was on the ice, and his 2.22 expected goals per 60 minutes ranked 244th (!) out of 280 forwards with at least 800 minutes played at 5-on-5.
It didn’t matter that Jake DeBrusk, the Canucks’ biggest addition during the 2024 off-season, set a career high with 28 goals. His even-strength goals dropped from 15 to 14, shots from 183 to 171, and needed a career-high 14 power-play goals just to stay fantasy-relevant. Bad play from center ice nearly shattered all value for the Canucks’ wingers, save for Kiefer Sherwood, who posted average possession metrics but set a new NHL record with 462 hits in a season.
Filip Chytil joined from the Rangers and he provided valuable depth when healthy, but his injury history is a significant concern. He already missed time after joining the Canucks, and the quality of depth at center drops off a cliff after him. His underlying numbers with the Canucks were far better compared to the Rangers’ though it’s worth noting the sample size is just 15 games.
Power Play:
If your even-strength play is bad and your offensive stars were inconsistent from game to game, there’s little chance your power play will be good. It remained respectable at 15th because Hughes was so good, but it was far less dangerous than it used to be when Miller and Pettersson were firing at will from the half-wall and Bo Horvat was cleaning up the short-distance scoring chances in front of the net.
The Canucks ranked 23rd in expected goals and 27th in shot attempts per 60 minutes on the power play. The team clearly had enough talent to put together a formidable unit, but injuries, poor luck and inconsistent play plagued them.
Pettersson’s shot all but disappeared with speculation that a knee ailment was affecting his speed, balance and confidence, and Miller was either fantastic or prone to bad turnovers. Boeser finished with just nine power-play goals, and as a group the Canucks never found a proper unit that really worked. Until Pettersson gets back on track, Hughes can only do so much.
All stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.com, moneypuck.com, hockeyviz.com, allthreezones.com, hockey-reference.com, eliteprospects.com unless otherwise noted.