
By: Brayden Fengler / January 16, 2025
I don’t believe there is a sane Canucks fan alive that would say that their excitement for this team is higher than it was this time last year, or even at the start of the season.
Back in October, the Canucks were entering what looked to be their second consecutive season of being serious contenders, after coming off of what was their first meaningful playoff effort since the 2012-13 season.
With just over half of the season already behind us, the energy surrounding this team feels all too familiar to previous years beyond last season. But this season is not yet over. There are still reasons to be hopeful and players that are performing well. Yet on a more simplistic note, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that this season has been a real bummer for fans.
Injuries New and Old
In late November we published an article highlighting all the injuries and absences that had already befallen this team at that point in the season. Now in January, in a lot of ways the Canucks have still not overcome many of the situations highlighted in that article.
The most significant absence this season that is still relevant to discuss now would be that of Thatcher Demko. By the time the season rolled around Demko had been out since game one of the first round of the playoffs last year.
During the Canucks final days against the Edmonton Oilers there were rumblings that Demko may be factoring back in for future rounds. So then to learn at the start of this season that Demko wouldn’t even be starting with the team in October, really brought the vibes down.
Before the season the natural thought was that Artūrs Šilovs could do what he did in the playoffs and continue to carry Vancouver into the early days of the 2024-25 season. But ultimately the young goalie was not able to recapture the position that he held in the postseason.
Šilovs has played just 7 games for the Canucks this season, coming out with a win in only one contest with a save percentage of 0.847.
Kevin Lankenin has been great for this team, and is far from any of the reasons that the mood around the fan base has been so poor. But the whiplash of the goalie situation overall makes it hard to know what to feel.
Thatcher Demko did return to action but was then out again for a time due to a back issue, separate from the knee issue that took him out of the line-up last year. Demko remains healthy at this moment, but through 41 Canucks games this season, Demko has only dressed for eight.
Can’t Win at Home
For fans that don’t live in the Greater Vancouver area or can’t afford the astronomical ticket prices of an NHL game in a Canadian market, where exactly the Canucks perform their best is not a major concern. However, for fans that do live close to Rogers Arena, and can put some funds towards a Canucks home game or two, this season has been a major disappointment.
What was an interesting stat early in the season, of the Canucks struggling to win on home ice, has turned into a frustrating reality for fans attending Canucks games.
12 of Vancouver’s 19 wins this season have come away from home. That means only 37% of Canucks wins this season have been able to be experienced in person by their fans, in their home arena. The numbers get a little worse when comparing the number of home wins to home losses.
While the Canucks have only enjoyed seven wins at home they have been handed 14 losses, meaning that 67% of the time fans have walked through the doors at Rogers Arena this year, they have watched their team lose.
Not only has this performance at home disappointed fans, there is reason to think that it has made things more challenging for the Canucks as well. Teams can feed off of the energy generated from their home crowd. But when said crowd is receiving an underwhelming performance more often than not, that energy isn’t always going to be there from the fans.
Too Much Overtime
The Canucks have gone beyond 60 minutes far too much this year. Vancouver has won only four times when going into OT while losing a staggering 10 contests in overtime or shootout.
As exciting as overtime and an overtime win can be, when a team gets there it can often mean that something went wrong. In the Canucks’ case, something keeps going wrong a lot more than it should. The job could not be done in 60 minutes and when a team gets there as much as the Canucks, it means something is wrong with the team.
Some OT games like their most recent contest with Montreal and Seattle, are instances where the club has started strong, up 3-1 in either the second or third period, only to fall off the rails and allow the other team to push it into extra time. Alternatively, like the St. Louis game on December 10th, the Canucks have also been able to come back from a 3-1 deficit to force overtime themselves.
Both situations point to a complete lack of control that the Canucks have had over far too many games this season. In their recent contest against the Washington Capitals, that was simply a 1-1 game that needed more time to decide the results, which ultimately saw the Canucks lose.
In many cases, it would be a better indicator of the team’s health if they lost more games like that, as opposed to swinging back and winning games in overtime that they played poorly in for most of the contest.
The Elephants In the Room
The biggest deflating element that this team and its fans have been through this season has been without question the apparent rift between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. The hopes that this team could buckle down, work together and right the early wrongs of this season felt dashed when credible reports began to surface regarding tensions between the team’s two biggest stars.
Miller went on a leave of absence in November, missing a handful of games. While the exact reason he left the team has still not been spelled out exactly, and perhaps never will be, from an outside it seemed to be related to tensions in the locker room, specifically with Elias Pettersson.
The two stars do not share the ice together at even strength and played on two separate power plays during their recent loss to the Winnipeg Jets.
While Miller and Pettersson have not confirmed these rumours themselves, there has been a lot a smoke around the nature of their relationship, and their denials have not come across as particularly convincing.
In one of J.T. Miller’s first media appearances after returning to the team recently, he put the rumours of his poor relationship with Pettersson back on the media, stating that him and Petey could do a press conference together to clear everything up. It’s worth noting that no such conference has taken place.
Imagine being a fan who bought either one of their jerseys after last year’s run, wondering only months later if either superstar will even be around next year.
Whether it’s player personality issues, terrible injury luck or a mixed bag of performances home and away, by the halfway mark of this season, it’s hard not to wish it was already over, or at least to wish there was a reset button on the year.