“We’re all in this together right now, and we’re all learning every day from our mistakes. And I think we’re learning something new every day too, and I think that just comes with time and experience,” Canucks defenceman Zeev Buium says.
Jim Rutherford likes what he’s seeing from the Vancouver Canucks’ locker room. In fact, as the team’s President of Hockey Operations said on Friday during his end-of-season media availability, the shift has made this team’s culture “the best it’s been” since he was first hired on December 9, 2021.
“This group is tightly knit, good veterans left here, good mentors, very good young character players. Got a number of good young players coming. So this team’s going in the right direction.”
From the time the 2026 NHL Trade Deadline passed up until the end of the Canucks’ regular season, there was a noticeable difference in the energy around Vancouver’s locker room. Things felt lighter around the team’s locker room. Players, both younger and older, were more inclined to stand-up for one another. New leaders emerged.
Chalk the change up to different things. One thing, however, is for sure; the team seems much better off moving forward.
“I think since the trade deadline, I know the results might have not have been at the top, but I can tell you, and I’m sure every guy in here said this, how much closer of a team we were. Our group chat was buzzing every single day, we were going to dinners on the road — everyone — and I think there was a lot more buy-in and a lot more, I’d say energy, around the group and even on the bench,” Canucks forward Max Sasson said. “I think we’ve had that conversation before, just about what a winning bench feels like. And I think the last 15 games, that was the closest that I felt, at least in my time here, that everyone’s pulling the rope and everyone’s rooting for each other.”
“I think we just got tighter as a team,” Jake DeBrusk added on what shift has occurred in the Canucks’ locker room. “I think obviously there’s been a lot of changes that happened, the trade deadline, even getting a guy like [Curtis Douglas] [...] you see different guys in different roles, when the opportunity presents itself, go right after it. So I think there’s a lot of things that go with that. I think we just got closer. And I think guys just stepped up knowing that it could be anybody. Obviously having different personnel and things like that helps, for sure.”
As DeBrusk said, the addition of Douglas is only one of many moves the Canucks made leading up to the trade deadline. While the team moved on from both Quinn Hughes and Kiefer Sherwood earlier on, they also parted ways with Tyler Myers and Conor Garland in the days leading up to March 6. With leadership spots open for the taking and the looming stress of a potential trade taken off their shoulders, Vancouver set about making the changes needed to move forward as a new team in their new era.
Apr 14, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; Fin the mascot and the Vancouver Canucks celebrate their victory against the Los Angeles Kings at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images“When you lose Myesy, lose Gar, Huggy early in the year, guys have to step up. And I think the last couple weeks, you’ve seen guys take strides in that area and commit to kind of what the bigger picture looks like moving forward. We have a lot of young energy in the room, and I think that’s really exciting,” Thatcher Demko noted.
Just as some of Vancouver’s longer-tenured, more-experienced players have stepped up into leadership roles, their younger players have also made their mark on the team from a culture perspective despite their limited experience. From standing up for one-another by dropping the gloves to keeping things light — just watch their lip-sync battle from this year’s Dice & Ice Gala — Vancouver’s new wave of youth have inserted a new level of energy to the Canucks that can only provide more hope for the future.
“If they grow the way we want them to grow, we’ll become a really good team in the near future,” veteran defenceman Marcus Pettersson added about the team's young players. “The future that they have is promising. If we bear down and put those work habits in and the compete level, like these guys were talking about, and we help them along the way, they’re only going to get better. So very exciting for them, very exciting for us.”
This cohesion between veteran experience and youthful enthusiasm has, evidently, already started to pay off. Vancouver won three of their last four games of the 2025–26 season against the Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks, and Edmonton Oilers. Having said that, at the end of the day, success isn’t necessarily about wins or losses for a team like Vancouver. At this stage, success is about learning the hard lessons early, taking them to heart, and applying them towards a hopeful future.
That’s the kind of culture the Canucks need at their current point in time.
“We’re all in this together right now, and we’re all learning every day from our mistakes. And I think we’re learning something new every day too, and I think that just comes with time and experience,” Zeev Buium explained. “I think obviously losing sucked, but I think we gave it our all, I think every night we tried our best to win. Obviously it didn’t happen every night, but I think we tried, and sitting here right now and going through the year, you’re not gonna sit here and be like, ‘oh, everything was good. We won this game or that game.’ And I think for us, just not trying to focus on that and more focus on how do we limit the mistakes we’ve made, how do we get better as a team, and find ways to win games our own way. And I think toward the end there, we started to try to figure that out. I think the biggest thing is just trying to take the positives and negatives and use them next year.”
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