By: Brayden Fengler / April 4, 2025 The Canucks have seven games left on their regular season schedule and have failed to perform leaps and bounds better than their wild card competition within recent weeks.
Since the end of the 4 Nations Face-Off the Canucks needed to play consistently above .500 hockey to put them self in a wild card position and yet the St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild and Calgary Flames all remain above them in the wild card race.
Not only do the Canucks need to win from here on out, they need to hope that their immediate opponents falter. Something which Vancouver has very little control over during the remaining games.
Recent Performance
With 16 games left to go in the season, I wrote an article outlining what the Canucks needed to do to set themselves up for a good chance at a playoff appearance. At the time of that article, the Canucks were still on the outside looking in, as they are now.
With a match-up calendar consisting of a number of heavy hitters. Since that article, the Canucks have played nine games and have lost five of them, making their climb to the playoffs almost vertical from this point on.
The Canucks did steal a win from Winnipeg on March 18th, beating the leagues best team 6-2, but have since lost to Utah, who is right behind them in the wild card hunt, and St. Louis, who currently sits narrowly in the first wild card spot. Those two contests where critical for the Canucks, and their loses set them back.
Playoff chances after the Eastern games tonight. Canadiens above 50% and the Isles basically finished. pic.twitter.com/KrqrI7KZgQ
— MoneyPuck.com (@MoneyPuckdotcom) April 2, 2025
Remaining Contests
Over the next few weeks, the Canucks play the Anaheim Ducks, Las Vegas Golden Knights, Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Minnesota Wild, San Jose Sharks and Vegas once more to end out the year.
On the surface the Canucks are the better team when matched up against Anaheim and San Jose, but that still leaves five out of the Canucks’ last seven games where they will play against teams that rank higher than them in the standings, and some significantly higher.
To make matters worse for the Canucks, and to take more power away from them, the only game that in and of itself matters, where Canucks can effect a team in the wildcard hunt with them, is the Minnesota game.
Minnesota is in the second wild card spot right now and if the Canucks can earn four more points to sneak past Calgary, then Minnesota may be what stands in their way.
The Canucks and the Wild will face off on April 12th, the second to last game for the Wild and third to last for Vancouver. The die may be cast by then, but if it’s not, this could be a do-or-die match-up.
When the Canucks Might Be Done
With the odds being what they are, the Canucks will need essentially every single game before the end of the season to go their way, and even then it would come down to the wire. But if things do not go well over recent games, then the Canucks will know much sooner if they will be playing beyond April or not.
The Canucks only have the ability to earn 95 total points on the season from here on out, if they win every game. If the Wild, with 89 points win their next four games and the Blues with 91 points win their next three games, that would be the shortest path to knowing that Vancouver’s season is over.
Vancouver would lose the tiebreaker for regulation wins with both current wild card teams teams and as mentioned could not surpass a 95-point season no matter what they did.
The Canucks essentially need no less than five wins, or four wins and an overtime loss for a chance to over take either of the two current wild card teams, and in securing these five wins in seven games they need either St. Louis to lose all but one of their remaining five contents, the Wild would have to lose four of their last six games to the Canucks a window into the last wild card spot.
The worst part about all of this for the Canucks, is that Calgary still stands as next in line for the last wild card spot with three more points on the year.
The Canucks need to be exceptional, at the same time, they need to hope that 2-3 other teams massively drops the ball. Needless to say the odds are long, and not at all what they were last year.