NHL Insider Strongly Criticizes the Vancouver Canucks' Lack Of Plan Heading into the New Season

An NHL insider has given his take on the current state of the Vancouver Canucks, with the 2025-26 season set to begin for the club in less than 60 days.

The Canucks' roster is far from perfect and there's still a big hole to fill down the middle on the second line, but if everyone manages to stay healthy all year, there's no reason why they can't make the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but a lot needs to go right for that to happen.

NHL insider gives his take on current state of the Vancouver Canucks

On a recent edition of Sekeres and Price, Jeff Paterson and TSN's Farhan Lalji spoke about where the team stands currently and how this roster could do during the 2025-26 campaign.

Lalji believes that the timing around the trade for Evander Kane and re-signing Brock Boeser to a long-term contract were pretty reactive from the team's management group, although despite that, he thinks this is probably the best plan and approach to the 2025-26 season they had available to them this summer.

"You mean the no plan, plan?" Lalji said after Patterson mentioned Vancouver going into the season with a new Head Coach and guys like Elias Pettersson & Brock Boeser needing to bounce back.

Lalji added, "You know what, I feel like it's the best plan available to them because they couldn't make the move for the center ice position they wanted as far as an upgrade, right? We like what this team offers on the back end. For me, the Evander Kane, Brock Boeser moves and the timing and everything like that, I think you know reeks of reactive management, not proactive management, right? Because you go through that, I think we all believe that when the Evander Kane thing happened, that Boeser was done, I think they believe that and now, its...when they double down it just screams like 'okay, what are we doing here? How does this make sense?'

Yeah, they're going to count on internal improvement and it's the same thing that Jim Benning said two years ago. A lot's got to go right for this team to make the playoffs and I got to be honest, I don't hate it and I say that I don't hate it because I just think teams don't do enough to give younger players in their pipeline an opportunity. I'm not naive enough to think this was entirely orchestrated and the Canucks are taking an altruistic approach, I think they have no choice but to take this approach. But I'm interested to see what happens with a healthy dose of, you know, Lekkerimaki, Aatu Raty, and some of these players that have done everything that they could do and are now just waiting for that next opportunity, right? So, you know, I don't think it's horrible, but I do think it's reactive and I don't know that there's another way to look at it."

How realistic is it that they'll return to the big dance after missing out in 2024-25? Well, it's too way too early to tell as the Canucks, as mentioned, are counting on bounce back years from a few of their star players and have a rookie Head Coach in Adam Foote behind the bench.

If the Canucks can stay healthy and play above .500 hockey between October and New Year's Day, then they'll certainly give themselves a strong chance of returning to the postseason next spring.