Better luck next year: Will it get better for the Vancouver Canucks next season?

This was a perfect storm of a season that was also really fun to watch.

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 continue today with the next team to be officially eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Vancouver Canucks.

All season I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall with the Vancouver Canucks and some sort of gigantic regression to kick in and lay waste to their season. Instead, they simply kept getting better, improving their underlying numbers and playing some of the most exciting hockey in the league.

They were good. They were exciting. They were fun to watch.

Everything that could have gone right — for the most part — went right over the 82-game season.

Their top players performed at an exceptionally high level with some monster offensive numbers, including but not limited to…

• Defenseman Quinn Hughes who not only continued to be one of the league’s best play-making and puck-moving defensemen, but also added a massive goal-scoring touch to his game.

• Forward J.T. Miller who shook off last year’s trade rumors and contract criticisms to top the 100-point mark and score like a bonafide star.

• Elias Pettersson who scored at least 32 goals for the third consecutive season.

• Brock Boeser who scored a career-high 40 goals.

• Overall they had 10 different players score at least 10 goals on their way to scoring the seventh-most goals in the league as a team.

• Starting goalie Thatcher Demko bounced back with a fully healthy and productive season and played at Vezina level over the course of the season.

It all came together for a shocking Pacific Division title (beating out the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl Edmonton Oilers and a very good Los Angeles Kings team) and a first-round playoff series win over the Nashville Predators. Then they took Edmonton — the current Western Conference champions — to a seventh game despite being relegated to playing their third-string goalie due to injury.

It was by pretty much every objective measure a wildly successful season that exceeded almost any and all preseason expectations.

There was also a lot of reason to buy into it being somewhat repeatable into the future.

Not only do they have a strong core of high-end talent at the top of the roster, they also have a top-tier goalie (when healthy) and played extremely well during 5-on-5 play. They were second in 5-on-5 goal share at even-strength, eighth in expected goal share and generally had strong underlying numbers. It was a good team!

But even with that there are some potential red flags going into the offseason that have me wondering if this season is a jumping off point to better days ahead in the future, or if it is as good as it is going to get for this group.

Let’s talk about it.