By: Trent Leith / September 26, 2025 Welcome to Trent’s Train of Thought, a series that, instead of diving deep into one topic, touches on several. This edition has thoughts on Mancini, the Quinn Hughes Situation and some hot takes.
The Hughes Thing
Man, that sucked. The Canucks had such a boring summer. I am starved. It wasn’t even just the Canucks, the whole league is boring. The cap went up dramatically, keeping GMs from being forced to make trades; no one is selling (except the Penguins). There is nothing to do except for irrationally panicking about this Quinn Hughes BS.
Yeah, I said it, the Quinn Hughes speculation and panic is BS. Rutherford had an old man moment and said what we all already kinda worried about. It wasn’t anything new, but now, since we have so little going on, we fans are freaking out, saying we should trade Hughes now to try and salvage some morsel of value. Dawg, he is signed for two more years, take a breather. This kind of fan-wide panic and the Sports Writers asking and writing about what the fans want to hear will get Quinn to leave. Relax.
We are so back, baby!
Don’t Forget About Mancini
I am dying for Canucks hockey, so of course I found myself on Victor Mancini’s Hockey Reference page. I am very high on Mancini for a lot of reasons. He skates well, he’s big, he blocks shots and throws hits. But I think he has an offensive upside Vancouver hasn’t seen yet. Watching him, you can tell the skill is there to score and produce more offence, it just didn’t click during his time in Vancouver so far. If he can start getting some shots through, I think we will see an uptick in his production.
Mancini had a team-worst 18.9% of his shots get through to the net last season. The next lowest was Elias Pettersson (D) with 27.9%. That is a significant difference. Nearly 1/10 shots less. The majority of Canucks last year were between 40-60%.
The thing is though, he played nearly as many games for the Rangers as he did the Canucks. And when he was on the Rangers, he was getting 57.1% of his shots through. The best Canuck last year for getting shots through regularity was Mark Friedman with 4/8 shots getting on net. The next best defender was Carson Soucy with 41%.
If Mancini can get pucks on net at a rate even close to what he did in New York, Canucks fans will be quite impressed with him next season.
Hot Takes
I asked the fellas here at StadiumChinatown.ca to give me three hot takes each to get on record. Maybe we will visit them again at the end of the year.
Reid Boerma
Pettersson (forward) hits a new career high in points this year.
The Canucks will have a new bona fide 2C by Christmas.
There will be an announcement about a practice facility before the end of the year.
Not the hottest of takes, but Reid is probably going to be the most correct.
Brayden Fengler
Canucks make the playoffs with a bullet, in a similar way to two years ago, they still keep their clear weak points all season, but somehow someway things are working.
The goalie situations stays remarkably unremarkable. Demko and Lankenin both stay healthy, and the tandem is a welcome breath of stability all season.
Quinn Hughes remains a Canuck all season, but the temperature around his long-term situation only ramps up throughout the season and never cools off after 82 games.
“Goalie situations stays remarkably unremarkable”, “Quinn Hughes remains a Canucks and we keep talking about him” – not exactly the hot takes I was looking for.
Trent Leith
Only 2 Petterssons will end the year on the Canucks.
The Canucks will be rumoured to consider and Hughes for Eichel trade.
The Canucks will go farther than the Oilers in the playoffs resulting in McDavid leaving.
Now those are hot takes.