Disappointing Vancouver Canucks season comes to an end
Posted April 16, 2025 7:35 am.
Last Updated April 16, 2025 7:36 am.
There are a lot of questions swirling around the future of the Vancouver Canucks as the team prepares to play its final regular season game Wednesday night, putting behind it a year that was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
There was the on- and off-ice drama involving J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson that resulted in Miller’s trade at the end of January. There were, what felt like, non-stop injuries to a whole host of players, including Pettersson, who didn’t live up to his potential.
It’s also very likely star forward, and the longest tenured Canuck, Brock Boeser will not be back next season after recently telling reporters it’s unlikely as the two sides have yet to agree to a new contract. Boeser needs one, and he wants to sign for longer than the team appears willing to offer.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO 1130 NEWSRADIO VANCOUVER LIVE!“Given where they last reportedly left off at about $40 million, you know there’s a real case to be made that Boeser should be earning over $60 million, so it’s a huge gap to bridge. I do think there’s going to be another honest attempt by the Canucks to get to a certain number. This is not the traditional hometown discount. There is an opportunity for Boeser in free agency that every player can earn to get their biggest payday. If he’s still here next year, I think we’d be looking back and saying, ‘This guy is really committed to being a Vancouver Canuck,’ because he could be leaving a lot of money on the table,” explained Sportsnet 650 Host Bik Nizzar.
“We’ve seen contracts of guys that do not produce at the level of Brock Boeser get closer to $70 million. Again, for a lot of Canucks fans who’ve been watching him they’ll say, ‘He’s not fast, he doesn’t do this, he’s a bit of streaky scorer.’ Sure, but at the end of the season, he puts up 0.8 points per game and guys like that can get a lot of money.”
Boeser is looking for seven to eight years, and the Canucks seem to hover around the five-year range.
Derek Forbort and Pius Suter are two other players the Canucks need to consider re-signing this summer.
Will Rick Tocchet be back?
Questions are also swirling around about whether head coach Rick Tocchet will be back behind the bench next year.
“The language Rick Tocchet has been using recently is really interesting because he’s planting seeds about things he’s excited about working on next season. The Canucks do have a club option, so they hold all of the cards here to bring Tocchet back.”
Nizzar expects Tocchet to re-sign by as soon as the end of this week.
“There’s not really a scenario where they would make Tocchet coach on the option. We saw what they did with Bruce Boudreau and leaving him with one year left on his deal. It’s not an ideal scenario. It’s just a question of whether they can figure this out to get the finances right? Rick Tocchet, coming off a Jack Adams win, he deserves a pay raise, but he also hasn’t made the third round of the playoffs in his coaching career.”
Nizzar says traditionally the team hasn’t paid its coaches top dollar, so it’ll be interesting to see what Tocchet’s potential deal looks like.
“The blame pie this year, I would say, is mostly management and then the players. Injuries, as a coach, you can’t control that, and they’ve endured a lot. But given what’s happened this season, I don’t look at it and say, ‘It’s a Rick Tocchet problem.’ I think he’s earned the opportunity to come back. The other part is I don’t know what other options exist for the Vancouver Canucks.”
This comes after superstar captain Quinn Hughes recently said Tocchet is the best coach he’s ever had. A comment echoed by other players on the team.
“Once you get that endorsement, and Hughes is two years away from getting a contract, you kind of have to go with the guy you have. What is a couple of million dollars to sign his favourite coach? And that’s the weight on the franchise to bring the guy he wants back.”
The future of Quinn Hughes
Without a doubt, for many fans, this season must have felt like a waste of a year in the career of Hughes. Despite all the inconsistencies of the team, Hughes’ play has been the only constant. Showing up to play a 200-foot game despite battling numerous injuries throughout the season.
Some think the team should turn to Hughes to weigh in on big decisions as the leader of the group, but Nizzar cautions that could be a mistake.
“How many bullets do you want to give one player to run your organization? That feels like an inverse way to run a franchise to let your players dictate all your decisions. You have coaches to make these decisions. You have managers to make these decisions of what’s best for the culture of the organization, but Hughes has a lot of sway and a lot of power.”
Nizzar says Hughes led by example, but his efforts were essentially ignored by his teammates.
“He has sacrificed so much to get better, but he’s also playing through multiple injuries. And he’s come back to continue to play 30 minutes a night. The drama is bizarre when your leader is leading by example, and no one was able to put their feelings aside to do it for the cause.
“It became a season full of egos and that’s deeply, deeply disappointing.”
There are concerns if the team doesn’t turn things around in the next two years, Hughes could walk away from it all, however, you may hard-pressed to be believe that after his comments after Monday’s home ice win and tying Alex Edler for most points by a defenceman in team history.
“I’m very honoured and it’s been a blessing to play here.”
What happened to Elias Pettersson?
After signing the biggest contract in team history last season, this season has been a bit of a dud for star forward Pettersson. He was caught up in the aforementioned drama with Miller, sustained multiple injuries and simply hasn’t looked like himself since the end of January 2024.
Fans have even toyed with the idea of cutting the team’s losses and trading him.
“There is some fatigue over waiting for potential to be consistently realized. You’d be selling at a very, very low point, and fans don’t really like that, and they might be pushed into a spot where it’s not an endorsement that they bring him back, but they aren’t flush with options with what to do with him.”
Nizzar speculates there are a number of things that likely affected Pettersson’s play, but says at the end of the da,y he needs to show up to training camp in shape and ready to deliver — something that didn’t happen this year.
What the future holds for the Canucks
Last season was magical for a fanbase starving for a Stanley Cup, so was that really how good this squad can be, or was it just a one-off?
“That’s the $100 million question. I imagine those in the offices at Rogers Arena are asking themselves the same question,” said Nizzar. “We’re talking about a fraction of points that could have salvaged their season. The baseline to make the playoffs could have been met, despite everything going wrong, and it didn’t happen.”
Nizzar says that despite everything feeling like it went wrong, there are some things to be optimistic about. The team’s defence corps is stronger than before, they have a lot of young prospects and young guns in the hopper.
“This season wasn’t a big mistake. It’s something they can recover from and have recovered from in having built the defence. But looking back, the number one reason is the bets they made in the off-season, didn’t really pan out, but I have optimism for next season.”
The Canucks have about $14 million in cap space to play with this summer.
