Better luck next year: The Vancouver Canucks really need some NHL Draft Lottery luck

The Vancouver Canucks might have finally realized what they need to do. Better late than never.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We begin today with the first team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Vancouver Canucks.

It is not really a huge surprise that the Vancouver Canucks are missing the playoffs this season. The surprise is that they are the worst team in hockey, by a wide margin, and are already mathematically eliminated with three weeks remaining in the regular season.

Even though they have just one playoff appearance to show for it, this is still a team that topped 90 points in three of the past four years, including 100 points, with a playoff series win, just two years ago. They have at least been respectable, even if completely mediocre.

That commitment to mediocrity, and perhaps the belief that their core was better than it actually is/was, led to some very questionable roster decisions in recent years.

• Getting a first-round pick and a couple of young players for J.T. Miller last season, while dumping all of Miller’s remaining salary, was an objectively good move, and a necessary move.

• Turning around and trading that first-round pick, which turned out to be the No. 12 overall pick in the draft, for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor, and then extending both players on multi-year contracts, was probably not as good.

• Helping a division rival (Edmonton) out of its salary cap mess by taking on all of Evander Kane’s contract, and then not even being able to trade Kane at the trade deadline, was also pretty nonsensical.

• Committing to so many players in their late 20s and early 30s that have never won anything with the team also raises some eyebrows, and now leaves them with a lot of bad contracts and an even worse tam on the ice.

In the end, there are a lot of things that go into a team being this bad, and there are a few different paths a team can take to get here.

• You are tearing your roster down to the foundation, going through a full-scale rebuild, and basically tanking for draft position.

• A lot of things simply go very, very wrong.

• You are just incompetently run as an organization.

The current state of the Canucks is very much the result of the second and third categories.

They soon might be starting to fit under the first category.

What went right this season

On the ice, not much.

When you have just 50 points in your first 69 games, and when you are 15 points worse than any other team in the NHL, and when you are only on pace for only 59 points over the course of an 82-game season there really is not anything you can hang your hat on as a team or a franchise.

This is bad. Awful. Brutal. Terrible.

But if there is one thing that did go right this season it might have been a philosophical thing. The organization, from ownership on down through the hockey management, might have finally come to its senses and realized what it has been doing is not going to work. They can not keep hanging around in the no-man’s land of the league with a bunch of mediocre veterans that just are not that good. They have to pick a direction here.

They finally seemed to kickstart something that resembles a rebuild earlier this season. And that might actually start to pay off in the long run.

When it became clear they were not going to be able to re-sign defenseman Quinn Hughes before his contract expired after next season, they made the decision to trade him to the Minnesota Wild for Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren and a first-round draft pick. I don’t know how well that is going to pan out in the long-term (usually the team trading the best player loses the deal in both the short-term and long-term), but there is definite talent added into the organization with it.

They sold high on Kiefer Sherwood instead of re-signing him to a bad contract, getting a couple of second-round draft picks in return.

Forward Connor Garland and defenseman Tyler Myers were also moved out for more draft picks.

They are now in a situation where they have four first-round picks over the next three years and multiple second-round picks in each of the next three years.

They also have chances to add more picks depending on who they look to move this offseason.

Perhaps the best thing that has gone right for them this season is that they might have ended up being awful in the right year. Sometimes timing is everything in that regard. Bottoming out in a year where, say, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the top player in the draft is very different from bottoming out in a year where Connor McDavid is the top player in the draft.

If there is a team that could use the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, or a top-three pick in a stacked draft class, it is absolutely this team.

The Canucks have never picked No. 1 overall in the NHL Draft, and with a potential franchise-changing player like Gavin McKenna sitting out there this would be a great year to have lottery luck on their side for a change. Even if they do not win the lottery, the top of the 2026 NHL Draft has multiple players that could be franchise-players and superstars. They should have an opportunity to get one of them.

What went wrong this season