PHILADELPHIA — Trust the Vancouver Canucks to string together their first extended winning streak of the season at the precise moment when, following the Quinn Hughes trade, hockey operations leadership was seriously flirting with the idea that this team might have to prioritize the future, and perhaps even “rebuild” (albeit briefly).
However, despite Vancouver’s impressive recent run of form, the need to rebuild is a bigger-picture question, one that supersedes the recent uptick in defensive form and results.
It extends beyond the semantics of rebuilding, retooling, renovating or hybrid building. Whatever you label it, the key goal for the Canucks — or any NHL organization — is to accumulate a critical mass of high-end NHL players, within the confines of the NHL salary cap, who are capable of hitting a peak level of output simultaneously, to give your team a credible chance of winning the Stanley Cup multiple times over across a competitive window that, realistically, is likely to last for a five-to-seven year stretch.
The question the Canucks have to ask themselves isn’t “have we lost a bunch of games lately” or “have we won a bunch of games lately,” it’s “Are the players capable of leading that charge currently in the organization, both in terms of the quality of our players and the volume of good players we possess?”
And, if the answer to that question is “No,” as it clearly is for Vancouver at the moment despite the Hughes return representing a good start, then the second question you have to ask yourself is “What would it cost to add those players, and do we, as currently constructed, have enough assets to win the bidding for those players in those rare instances when they become available?”
Once you’ve answered “No” to both of those questions, as we confidently can in the Canucks’ case, then it follows logically that your directive should be to trade useful veteran players, avoid (or shed) long-term contractual commitments to players over 25, and accumulate prospects and surplus draft capital.
This isn’t a hot take. It’s not even complicated. It’s common sense.
And it’s where this organization had arrived in the wake of the Hughes trade, more or less, at least until this recent winning streak. It’s also where this organization should remain, although if you think Canucks ownership would welcome aggressively selling useful veteran players from six points outside of the second Western Conference wild-card spot at Christmas time, then this must be your first rodeo.
The Athletic has been on this recent Canucks road trip, chatting with players and team personnel and watching the games unfold closely. Here are nine observations from Vancouver’s winning road trip so far.
1. Why isn’t Aatu Räty playing?
On Saturday night in Boston, Canucks centre Aatu Räty got back into the lineup for the first time on this road trip.
Räty’s demotion from the lineup has been a source of significant mystery in the Vancouver market. The 23-year-old pivot is Vancouver’s best faceoff man, and until Linus Karlsson surpassed him with a three-point game in Boston on Saturday night, was leading all Canucks skaters in five-on-five ice time. Getting Räty reps, given this club’s orientation, seems like the tap-in decision for Adam Foote and his coaching staff. Especially given that Räty’s form largely merits it.
Even though Räty got back into the lineup on Saturday, it’s worth noting that he played the fewest minutes of any Canucks skater, logging just under eight and a half minutes of ice time at five-on-five.
So what’s going on? In asking the question — both directly to Foote, and behind the scenes — Räty’s usage, or lack thereof, comes down to some issues with his defensive play. While the underlying data paints a mostly neutral picture of Räty’s defensive impact, the club appears to be concerned with the quality and frequency of scoring chances that it has surrendered in Räty’s minutes, which explains why David Kampf has been far more heavily utilized despite being a far less threatening option offensively.
For what it’s worth, the Canucks are enjoying their best run of defensive form of the year over the past week, so it’s difficult to quibble with the results. Given where Vancouver’s priorities should be, however, finding a way to keep Räty in a regular rotation in the lineup is a must going forward.
2. Why Räty is so good in the circle
Getting back into the lineup on Saturday, Räty won eight of the 10 faceoffs he took against Boston. Winning draws is generally a characteristic of older pivots, but Räty appears to be a real savant.
Max Sasson talked about Räty’s defensive prowess and the tips that Räty has given him as he’s attempted to hone that part of his game himself.
“I probably take 100 draws every single day with (Räty),” Sasson said. “He’s obviously our draw guy, so I’m working to continue to improve at that …
“He knows every single faceoff guy, I swear, across the whole league. Every single time we play, he doesn’t even need to look at the pre-scout; he just tells you, ‘This guy is going to do this,’ and ‘This guy is going to do that.’ And then he just gives me little tips about how he got really good at it, just telling me about how to get lower, how to get more leverage. He’s helped me a ton with that.”
3. Kiefer Sherwood and the game within the game
On his way to a hat trick for Vancouver to salt away a win on Long Island on Friday night, a game that was the club’s best of this road trip so far, Kiefer Sherwood managed to pick Matthew Schaefer’s pocket brilliantly to extend the Canucks’ first-period lead.
Kiefer Sherwood pickpockets Matthew Schaefer and RIPS it home for his 14th of the season 👀🚨 pic.twitter.com/bFUPvSi2fD
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) December 20, 2025
You remember the way Sherwood, as a member of the Nashville Predators, gave Hughes so much difficulty in the 2024 playoffs? This play is another example of it, and it’s about more than just the quick stick to pick-pocket Schaefer.
“Yeah, I knew who it was,” Sherwood said when asked if he was aware of who he was chasing down on that sequence. “Honestly, it’s kind of the game within a game.
“If you watch it, I finished my check on him earlier in the shift off of the faceoff, so I saw the second time that he was looking over his shoulder. So I just got in there, and that’s kind of the chess game that you play. That’s why you set the tone early.”
The speed and tenacity to force opponents into errors, and the intelligence and skill level required to punish those mistakes when they happen; that’s the combination of traits that’s made Sherwood such a valuable middle-six contributor.
4. What we learned about Sherwood’s trade value before the holiday freeze
Right before the holiday freeze hit, the Montreal Canadiens paid a second-round pick to acquire Phillip Danault from the Los Angeles Kings. Danault has zero goals and five assists this season, but he’s been better than those counting statistics indicate. He’s also a centre, and there’s a huge premium placed on the ability to play the middle across the NHL at the moment.
Additionally, the Columbus Blue Jackets paid a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick to acquire Mason Marchment from the Seattle Kraken. In addition to carrying a cap hit at one-third the cost of Marchment’s, Sherwood has scored more goals this season than Marchment has managed points.
So what do those prices tell us about Sherwood’s trade value?
It’s a trick question, because the answer is nothing. Sherwood has unique physical value, and far more unique trade value given both his combination of competitive intensity and goal scoring ability and the affordability of his cap hit. His trade value exists in a different and altogether more competitive and expensive marketplace.
The Canucks player whose value might be more closely attached to what Danault and Marchment netted, in fact, is Evander Kane. Like Danault and Marchment, Kane is an experienced and proven playoff performer, and his cap hit is relatively expensive.
Now Kane’s value is somewhat unique because he’s likely to be a bit of an acquired taste on the trade market. Ultimately, the demand for heavier forwards who’ve proven they can produce in May and June, however, tends to outweigh other concerns. At least a second-round pick seems like a realistic baseline for a Kane return.
5. The vibes are high, and so is the competition
If you want to buy into the idea that the vibes are high around this team at the moment, and that’s partly why the Canucks are winning games, there’s plenty of grounds for it.
The winning helps, but even in media availabilities, this team has seemed to be in a very good mood on this trip. That’s shown through even at practices, during which the competitive level has been observably and unusually sky high.
On Thursday at a practice on Long Island, for example, Marcus Pettersson absolutely levelled Elias Pettersson, the defender, early on in practice in a battle drill, garnering hoots and hollers from his teammates. On his very next rep, Elias went hard at Kiefer Sherwood, as the peanut gallery on the ice got into it once again.
As it turns out, Elias and Sherwood have something of a tacit understanding to go extra hard against one another in a practice environment.
“Me and Sherwood, though, we compete like that every practice and battle hard,” Elias told The Athletic following the on-ice session. “We talk about it too, so I really want to be on him at practice. It’s good for the team, it’s good for us.
“I’d say I try to be on him every time I’m out there against him at practice. It’s fun!”
6. Maintaining the vibe
Sometimes, when an off-ice situation lingers in hockey, it gathers its own gravity. It can become a distraction, or at least something that takes energy away from a team.
Like how the scariest part of a roller coaster isn’t going down the drop, but waiting as the coaster ticks slowly up toward the summit.
I’d wondered if the Hughes situation was like that for Canucks players. If there was a sense of relief when it happened, even if the Canucks’ longest tenured players were upset to see their best skater — and close friend — depart via trade.
“It’s weird because you knew it was going to happen, but it also happened really fast and caught us off guard,” Brock Boeser said. “I think it’s a good thing that we had a couple of days off before we played a game, it gave us some time to really comprehend that he wasn’t going to be here. And get in a practice with the new guys.
“I think everyone knew he wasn’t coming back, so it was probably best to get it done sooner and, obviously, what we got back was awesome. It’s exciting to add some new young players, and everyone sees that, and we have good vibes right now.”
Another thing we sometimes see in hockey is that the adrenaline hit can cause a team or a player to be shot out of a cannon at first after their circumstances change — following a coaching change, for example, or after being called up, or following a big trade — but the real test is whether that energy and focus can be maintained.
Does this club have to be thoughtful about maintaining these post-Hughes trade vibes?
“One-hundred percent,” Boeser agreed, “like even these next two games (the game-to-back against the Islanders and Bruins), like we’ve won our last two, but we’ve been getting outshot and stuff. We think we can be better, we think we can be better offensively. We have to be.”
7. Winning culture clarification
There’s been a lot of conversation about the culture around the Canucks, especially in the wake of J.T. Miller’s departure, Rick Tocchet’s departure and now Hughes’ departure. It was notable, then, when Boeser was quoted last week at The Athletic suggesting Hughes wanted specifically to go to a winning culture.
I asked Boeser for some clarification on that and to elaborate on how the veteran players on this team could go about changing it.
“I think I meant more like he’s going to a team that can win now, a team that he feels can win the Stanley Cup right away,” Boeser said.
“Obviously we have a lot of really good young pieces, like the young defencemen, and we have a ton of young players now. … I think it’s important that we understand that we have to push to better every day in practice, come to these games and play the right way now, no selfishness out there, just play a team game. Step by step, we have to keep building it. As frustrated as we’ve been by how it’s gone, I mean, we win a couple of those close ones at home, and we’re .500. That’s why these next few games before the break are so important.”
8. Tyler Myers and the rare, physical five-on-three shift
The tone for Vancouver’s win over the Islanders on Friday night was set early when Tyler Myers, playing in his 1,100th career NHL game, threw two absolutely thunderous body checks on Islanders forwards while killing an extended five-on-three sequence.
Not only did Vancouver kill off the Islanders’ two-man advantage, but the sequence was both authoritative and hilarious. The hits didn’t just dispossess the Islanders’ forwards, but they were bone-crunching, haymakers delivered by the Vancouver defender.
“They never call a penalty five-on-three!” Myers joked when asked about the sequence postgame. “No, honestly, I don’t think they were penalties, but in my experience, you tend to get a little wiggle room five-on-three.
“I just noticed that they were in tight positions along the wall, and I thought it was a good time to pressure; they didn’t quite have the puck, so I’m just trying to play it hard,” Myers continued, explaining the sequence from his point of view.
I followed up by asking Myers how often you get a chance to lay out two forwards on the same five-on-three sequence.
“Never,” he agreed. “That was maybe my second and third hit on a five-on-three my whole career.”
Given that Myers has now played 1,101 NHL games, that’s a testament to just how rare what we witnessed on Friday really is.
9. Liam Öhgren has real skill
Don’t underrate what Liam Öhgren has the skill level to become.
On Saturday night in Boston, he recorded two points, but it was the skill he showed on his shootout tally that stood out most to me. This is a big-bodied, heavy forward, and he went into that shootout attempt, by his own admission, looking to shoot. It was only when Jeremy Swayman, one of the best goalies in the league, overcommitted to the shot that Öhgren decided to pull a smooth deke for the game-winning shootout goal.
It’s one thing to have a heavy shot or slick puck skills. It’s another to be able to marry those attributes in real time to reading the play and directly attacking what an elite NHL goaltender is giving you. That’s the sort of skill that Öhgren possesses, which is why he was a high-end SHL scorer as a teenager and a productive AHL player at 20.
The fourth most valuable piece acquired for Hughes, Öhgren’s potential shouldn’t be overlooked. He has the doggedness, intelligence and high-end tools to be more than just a depth piece for Vancouver, provided he can continue to develop and seize the opportunity at hand.
The Canucks wanted to give him a look following the trade, but the organization initially thought Öhgren might go back down to the AHL for a spell before being recalled for the stretch run. You can bet that those plans have changed.
Not only does Öhgren look ready to play full-time at the NHL level, but it looks to me like he’s ready to play a middle-six role. I’d even go so far as to suggest that the club would do well to expedite selling some of its surplus, pending unrestricted free agent wingers for the purpose of carving out additional opportunity for Öhgren further up the lineup.