NHL
Kiefer Sherwood has been one of the Canucks' standout performers so far this season. Derek Cain / Getty Images
The Vancouver Canucks won’t keep up even the middling results they’ve managed through the first quarter of the season if they continue to get outshot, out-chanced and out-possessed at the rate they did across three games in the southeastern United States on this road trip.
Although Vancouver managed to earn three points (1-1-1) on its latest road trip while competing against some of the NHL’s best teams, which is impressive, even with the context that all three sides were dealing with injury-related absences at least as significant (if not more so) than what the Canucks themselves are working through, their overall form was alarming. The Canucks were outshot by a greater than two-to-one margin on this three-game trip. Without a stunning and deeply fortuitous onslaught of deflection goals against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the third period of their regulation victory on Sunday, our perception of the Canucks’ recent play would have a very different, and entirely more dour complexion.
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Simply put, the Canucks cannot expect to win with the sort of consistency they’ll require over the balance of this season if they don’t tighten up defensively in all phases of the game. That’s not all that’s ailing this club, though. The Canucks will also have to devise ways to hold their own at five-on-five and generate looks at a volume that more closely approximates the rate at which they’re surrendering them.
Even Vancouver’s recent run of goal scoring — it managed 14 goals across this three-game trip — is the product of a sure-to-be ephemeral, absolutely dizzying 28 percent conversion rate, more so than a reflection of this club manufacturing high-quality looks.
We’re now a quarter of the way into the 2025-26 season and, frankly, I’m not precisely sure what this Canucks team’s identity is, or even what it’s intended to look like. I think they’re supposed to be an aggressive defensive team that leans on goaltending while basing the offensive attack on rush counterattacks, but their defensive aggressiveness is being exploited by their opponents far more than it’s denying them zone time, and the rush chances are few and far between, even if the Canucks are converting on them at a sky-high clip.
As the Canucks return home from this road trip and attempt to find a more consistent, structured level of performance, let’s spotlight a trio of players whose stock is rising as a result of what we’ve seen through the first quarter of the season. And another four whose stock is down, given their performance over that same time frame.
It’s stunning that Kiefer Sherwood has already scored 12 goals through 21 games this season.
The speedy, hard-hitting winger is in a contract year and is tracking extraordinarily well to earn himself a significant payday on July 1 (or sooner) with a breakout performance in this platform season. It’s not just that Sherwood, 30, is pacing to absolutely shatter his previous career high in goals scored (he scored 19 last season), or that he’s tracking to lead the NHL in hits for a second consecutive season; it’s also that he’s playing a bona fide top-six role with a healthy diet of power-play time.
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The usage is key for Sherwood, not just from a contractual standpoint, but in terms of how it could impact his production. This isn’t a player that’s typically held down a top-six role at the NHL level, and in combination with his red-hot start to this season, the heavy usage that Sherwood has earned in Vancouver has the potential to materially impact his goal totals over the balance of this season.
We know, for example, that Sherwood won’t continue to score on over 30 percent of the shots he takes over the balance of this campaign. That’s just not how hockey works when it’s NHL defenders thwarting your looks and NHL-level goaltenders on the other end of your shots. Sherwood will cool off at some point, as unlikely as that seems given his talismanic form through 21 games.
Still, if Sherwood can stay healthy, can continue to hold down a top-six role at five-on-five and continue to be a featured part of the power play (where he’s currently averaging nearly 2 1/2 minutes of ice time per game), then he can cool off significantly, produce at rates consistent with what he’s managed in his career prior to this season, and still flirt with 30 goals or so this season.
Seriously, even if we’re conservative about this and throw out Sherwood’s stunning season to this point, and take his five-on-five goal-scoring rate from his final season with the Nashville Predators and his first season in Vancouver and extrapolate it over the ice time we’d expect him to log if he can continue playing a second-line role in Vancouver, then we’d expect him to score 12 additional five-on-five goals before the end of the season. Add two or three more power-play goals, which is conservative if Sherwood continues to play regularly on the first power-play unit, and a few empty-netters, and Sherwood should get very close to that critical 30-goal milestone without requiring a single lucky bounce or an elevated shooting percentage between now and season’s end.
It’s difficult to imagine where Vancouver would be through its first 21 games were it not for the steadying presence that Filip Hronek has brought to the back end, both as Quinn Hughes’ defensive partner and when the team has been without its most important skater.
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Hronek is leading all Canucks skaters in five-on-five ice time logged this season, and somehow, Vancouver is decisively winning his minutes. With Hronek on the ice, the Canucks have outscored their opponents 19-10; in all other five-on-five minutes, they have been outscored 20 to 32.
Even beyond his work as a minutes muncher at even strength, Hronek has been exceptionally direct when thrust into a spot on the first power-play unit. The only blemish on what’s been a really remarkable first quarter of the campaign for Hronek has been his work on the penalty kill, which has been mixed, as it’s been for most of his teammates.
Overall, Hronek is pacing to be the sort of dynamic 40-plus point, two-way defender that every NHL team is looking for. And in Hughes’ absence on occasion due to injury this season, Hronek’s steadiness has given him the opportunity to step out of his Norris Trophy-winning defensive partner’s shadow, and demonstrate convincingly that he’s capable of impacting an NHL game as a 1A-level defenseman.
This might seem like a surprise inclusion, especially given Aatu Räty’s pedestrian scoring stats and that his usage dropped precipitously on Monday night following the addition of David Kämpf to the lineup.
However, Räty has been one of Vancouver’s best two-way forwards this season, and probably ranks fourth among his teammates by overall defensive impact (behind Elias Pettersson, Sherwood and Drew O’Connor). For a team desperate to stem the defensive bleeding, upping Räty’s five-on-five usage may be a partial solution that the Canucks would do well to strongly consider.
Through his 19 appearances this season, Räty is the only regular forward with an on-ice shot differential in the black — meaning Vancouver has actually outshot its opponents in his even-strength minutes. The club is also surrendering significantly fewer expected goals in Räty’s minutes than it is in all other minutes, and while his offensive impact has been minimal, at least in Räty’s minutes, the Cancuks are generating chances and shots at a rate consistent with what they do with their other centres on the ice.
The lack of production, of course, is notable; Räty has managed one goal and seven points in 19 games. His overall points rate is pretty consistent with what he managed down the stretch last season, however, albeit with fewer goals, and he’s converting on fewer than 6 percent of his shots on goal this season, a number that will likely regress, especially given the quality of Räty’s shot and his ability to make skill plays in traffic at the net front.
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Given how defensively oriented Räty’s usage has been — the 23-year-old pivot ranks behind only Pettersson among Canucks centres in defensive-zone faceoffs taken — that he’s pacing for somewhere in the range of 25-30 points despite poor finishing luck with a solid underlying profile is genuinely promising.
He’s an under-the-radar good news story for a team that’s absolutely desperate for help down the middle of its forward group, and appears to have developed a real NHL-level contributor in Räty.
Thatcher Demko has been spectacular when available for the Canucks, as he usually is, but the simple fact that Vancouver’s star netminder has sustained a lower-body injury that will cost him a protracted stretch of time again is enough to land him on our “stock down” list.
We know that Demko is one of the NHL’s most imposing puck stoppers when he’s healthy, and that he can impact the game to a rare extent when he plays. The only thing that Demko really has left to prove is that he can be available and durable and hold up over the rigours of a long NHL season.
That it took 10 appearances before Demko sustained another injury — his fifth injury in his last 37 starts dating back to March 2024 — is enough cause for concern for his inclusion in this section.
Acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks via trade at the cost of a fourth-round pick, Lukas Reichel has struggled defensively and hasn’t produced much while given significant opportunities in Vancouver. On Monday, mercifully, Reichel was shifted away from centre and to the wing. That change didn’t significantly alter Reichel’s ability to make an impact on his new team.
The skilled, speedy forward can look dangerous off the rush, but rarely contributes to the build-up and hasn’t been able to make what chances he gets off the rush count. He struggles mightily to use his speed as an off-puck weapon, and his defensive impact has been roundly harmful at five-on-five.
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Reichel has serious NHL-level tools, but whether he’ll be able to use them to be a full-time NHL contributor is very much in question through his first 13 Canucks games.
Of the 86 NHL defence pairs that have logged at least 100 minutes as a duo through the first quarter of the season, the pair of Tyler Myers and Marcus Pettersson ranks 86th by expected goals differential, 85th by shot attempt differential and 84th by unblocked shot attempt differential.
Myers and Pettersson are both good players. These are useful, veteran defencemen in this league. At the moment, however, the performance of the Pettersson-Myers pair is a major reason for Vancouver’s significant territorial struggles.
To this point, Vancouver hasn’t been unduly burned for Myers and Pettersson’s permissiveness as a duo. In fact, largely thanks to the play of Demko and Kevin Lankinen, the Canucks have outscored their opponents 8-6 with the Pettersson-Myers pair on the ice at five-on-five.
That isn’t going to last, however, if this pair can’t figure out how to spend more time on-puck and less time defending in their own end of the rink.
The blue line was supposed to be the team’s engine, but at the moment, the Canucks are once again drowning in the non-Hughes minutes.
#Canucks at 5v5 since Nov 6:
Shot attempt differential with Quinn Hughes on ice: +11
Shot attempt differential without Hughes on ice: -109
— Harman Dayal (@harmandayal2) November 18, 2025
While Myers and Pettersson are generally dependable contributors and should perform better over the balance of the season, as it stands, their collective struggles are a matter that the Canucks are going to need to address and fix if this team is going to get its five-on-five game — and its season — back on track.
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Thomas Drance covers the Vancouver Canucks as a senior writer for The Athletic. He is also the co-host of the Canucks Hour on Sportsnet 650. His career in hockey media — as a journalist, editor and author — has included stops at Canucks Army, The Score, Triumph Publishing, the Nation Network and Sportsnet. Previously, he was vice president, public relations and communications, for the Florida Panthers for three seasons. Follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasDrance
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