The Canucks stir so many emotions for their fans and media; yet the complexity isn’t lost. In fact, it’s like peeling an onion.
They’re the worst team in the National Hockey League, having finished dead last in 2025-’26, and they’re sitting in the NHL basement again while owning a ten-game losing streak.
Despite the fact it was a good visiting team playing a poor local one, the Minnesota Wild with former Canucks captain Quinn Hughes making his return to Rogers Arena on Sunday night was a kick in the teeth. “Huggy” scored a goal and his team strode to victory.
Big picture, for what seems to have become the “Island of Misfit Toys”, many Canucks fans blame ownership, hate ownership in fact, and a few hockey people of the dozens I run into quote the proverb “a fish rots from the head down.”
I’ve never not gotten along with owner Francesco Aquilini and I enjoyed a long conversation with him at a Hockey Hall of Fame party in Toronto when the Sedins were inducted. I did share my displeasure with him in person at an NHL Draft regarding my ban from his team’s press box, which was ironic, since when I first arrived in Vancouver I attempted to introduce plans for building a media program for him and the Canucks.
Long time Vancouverites would definitely have a deeper feel for his past than I would, and I tend to exclusively judge people on their interactions with me, while dismissing chatter, rumours, or negative speak from others about others.
One thing is clear, the negative karma the club emits is dishonest on some levels and equally poisonous on others. Yet the status quo remains.
As for Henrik and Daniel Sedin, I was as equally enthusiastic about them taking over the hockey biz, and the addition of Ryan Johnson as GM, as anyone. This would be the honest part of this hockey club, likely the most important part.
However, as we’ve learned from Wayne Gretzky coaching and Ron Francis managing, and others, a Hall of Fame hockey player does not necessarily make a great bench coach or team builder.
One important caveat to that last thought of caution: we’re less than a month into the first season of the regime’s rebuild, and October NHL hockey can be very misleading.
Not that the Canucks will make a playoff run, they won’t.
More importantly, are the touted prospects really prospects? The young players truly viable?
Can we laugh again at the local media who touted the enormous importance of the Brendan Gallagher and Luke Schenn acquisitions. Cultural influence? The only part of the current culture the young players will remember is the chronic losing, and they hope to be viewing it as soon as possible in the rear view mirror.
The “old-timers” will long be forgotten. Trivia questions.
End of the day; be patient. It’s gonna be awhile. Planet Karma’s a bitch.
Earlier Kraken:
— Two Wild Breakaway Goals Too Much For Kraken
