Vancouver Canucks

A quarter of a century before the NHL

The club was founded in 1945 as a Pacific Coast Hockey League side and spent 1952 to 1970 in the Western Hockey League before the NHL admitted it for the 1970-71 season, alongside the Buffalo Sabres. Home for the first 25 years of NHL play was the Pacific Coliseum, used from 1968 to 1995.

The team then moved downtown to General Motors Place, renamed Rogers Arena in 2010, where listed capacity is 19,700. The building is owned and run by Canucks Sports & Entertainment, chaired by Francesco Aquilini, which also has Michael Doyle as club president.

Three finals, no Cup

Vancouver has reached the Stanley Cup Final three times and lost all three: to the New York Islanders in 1982, the New York Rangers in 1994 and the Boston Bruins in 2011. The 1994 and 2011 defeats were both followed by rioting and looting in the downtown core, which is still part of how the city's relationship with the team gets written about.

The only two seasons in which the Canucks finished top of the league standings were 2010-11 and 2011-12, back-to-back Presidents' Trophies. Six numbers have been retired: Pavel Bure's 10, Stan Smyl's 12, Trevor Linden's 16, Markus Näslund's 19, and the twins who now run the hockey department, Daniel Sedin's 22 and Henrik Sedin's 33.

The 2025-26 collapse

Quinn Hughes was named captain on 9 October 2025 and traded on 12 December to the Minnesota Wild for Marco Rossi, Liam Öhgren, Zeev Buium and a 2026 first-round pick. The captaincy was left vacant for the rest of the season. Then-general manager Patrik Allvin called it "definitely not an easy day for the franchise", while president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford framed the incoming players as "a key part of the rebuild that we are currently in".

The selling continued to the trade deadline, with Tyler Myers, Conor Garland, Kiefer Sherwood and David Kämpf all moved for picks. On 22 March 2026 Vancouver became the first team in the league eliminated from playoff contention, a second consecutive season out of the postseason.

The final record was 25-49-8 for 58 points: eighth in the Pacific Division, 16th in the Western Conference and last in the NHL, the first time the franchise had finished bottom of the league since 1971-72. The home mark of 9-27-5 is the worst in club history. Vancouver also finished last in goals allowed and last on the penalty kill at 71.5 per cent, and tied 30th in goals scored.

The lottery on 5 May 2026 did not rescue any of it. Vancouver held the best odds in the draw at 18.5 per cent; Toronto won it and took Gavin McKenna first overall. San Jose took Ivar Stenberg second. Vancouver picked third and chose centre Caleb Malhotra, who had 84 points in 67 games for the OHL's Brantford Bulldogs and 26 more in 15 playoff games.

Everyone who ran the team is gone

Allvin was fired on 17 April 2026. Rutherford announced on 6 May that he would step down after the June draft. On 14 May the club named Daniel and Henrik Sedin co-presidents of hockey operations, and their first act was to hire Ryan Johnson, who had been running the AHL affiliate in Abbotsford, as general manager. Daniel set out the terms in three words: "connected, committed and purpose." Johnson declined to date the rebuild, saying that to put any type of timeline on it would be unfair.

Five days later, on 19 May, Johnson fired head coach Adam Foote and assistants Scott Young, Kevin Dean and Brett McLean after a single season. Manny Malhotra was appointed on 2 June. Malhotra, 46, was the seventh overall pick in 1998, played 991 NHL regular-season games across 16 seasons including three in Vancouver from 2010 to 2013, and won a Calder Cup with Abbotsford in his first year as a head coach in 2024-25.

Johnson has said he raised the obvious conflict with Malhotra before hiring him — that the top-ranked centre available in the 2026 draft was Malhotra's son — because "I felt I owed him that to have that conversation". Three weeks later the club drafted Caleb Malhotra third overall. Johnson's framing of the whole reset: "This is more of a mission, something that we see an amazing opportunity to change a franchise, to build it the right way, to get it sustainable."

The roster that opened the season

Johnson's summer additions were about floor rather than ceiling: defencemen Jamie Oleksiak and Luke Schenn, and forwards Paul Cotter and Brendan Gallagher, the last acquired in a trade with Montreal on 29 June. Gallagher, 34 and a Vancouver native, arrives off 23 points in 77 games and a rebuild in Montreal, and is expected in a third-line role with younger forwards around him. On the eve of the season the club used its top waiver priority to claim goaltender Leevi Meriläinen from Ottawa.

The 23-player opening roster was announced on 28 September: 13 forwards including Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Marco Rossi, Öhgren, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Aatu Räty and Gallagher; eight defencemen including Filip Hronek, Oleksiak, Schenn, Buium and Tom Willander; and Kevin Lankinen and Meriläinen in goal. Thatcher Demko, still working back from hip surgery in January and not yet in camp, and Filip Chytil both started on injured reserve.

Malhotra has drawn the line he wants the season measured against: "There's a very big difference between losing games, which is inevitable, every team is going to do it, and playing losing hockey." Outside projections put Vancouver back in the lottery hunt, with Lekkerimäki, 22, and Buium, 20, the two most likely to change that reading.

Eighty-four dates and what they are being sold as

The 2026-27 season is the first run to 84 games, and Vancouver's is bookended by Edmonton: the road opener at Rogers Place on 29 September at 7pm, one of two games on the league's opening night, then the home opener the following night, 1 October, also at 7pm, before the schedule runs to a finale in Calgary on 10 April. Opening against the same opponent home and away is unusual.

The build-up was heavier than normal. Training camp ran in Penticton from 17 to 20 September with a blue-versus-white scrimmage on the 19th; a two-game prospect series against Seattle's prospects was played at Abbotsford Centre on 12 and 13 September; and four pre-season games ran from 19 to 26 September. The club also staged its first Fan Fest at Rogers Arena from 24 to 26 September, with blue-carpet player arrivals, an open practice, a career networking session, two pre-season games and a $5-ticket charity match featuring Henrik Sedin, Kirk McLean, Mason Raymond, Geoff Courtnall, Cliff Ronning and Olympic medallist Jenn Gardiner.