Canucks rank 26th on The Athletic’s front office confidence survey

Every offseason, The Athletic asks fans around the league to grade their team’s front office, and a smaller percentage of fans to rank every team around the league. This summer, they asked over 13,000 fans to grade their team, and 500 fans to grade every team.

Last season, the Vancouver Canucks ranked fifth in the experiment following their outstanding 2023-2024 campaign, which saw the franchise take home their first Pacific Division title and advance to the second round of the playoffs for only the second time since the 2011 Stanley Cup run. This was a massive jump from their 30th rank following the 2022-2023 season.

However, the Canucks front office seems to have lost the backing of their fan base after a lacklustre season in which they fell six points out of a playoff spot. Vancouver fell from fifth to 26th in this year’s rankings.

Here’s a snippet of what The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn wrote about the rankings:

“After an extremely turbulent season, it’s no shock the Canucks dropped further in these rankings than any other team, going from the top five to just outside the bottom five.

“The big error in many fans’ eyes was how the franchise handled the Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller feud. It’s not often that a spat like that becomes public to such a high degree midseason, and it created a sideshow that distracted an on-the-rise team toward missing the playoffs.

“The end result — trading Miller — is also a reminder that this management group effectively chose Miller over Bo Horvat two years earlier, only to see the team move both. While the Canucks ended up with one of the league’s best back ends as a result, it was at the expense of the center depth, whi ch now looks like a major weakness. The peculiar departure of Pius Suter, given the cost, only adds to that.”

General Manager Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford had their work cut out for them in 2024-2025. The rift between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller forced their hand in trading one of the two as the feud became the talking point of the National Hockey League. The disconnect between the two players started affecting the team’s on-ice play, and they had no choice but to pull the trigger, sending Miller to the New York Rangers.

At the trade deadline, the Canucks were a teetering playoff team and did not want to sell off their pending free agents, Brock Boeser or Pius Suter, but also weren’t in a position to spend assets to improve the team. They were able to move defenceman Carson Soucy to the Rangers, but that was more because of the emergence of young defenceman Elias Pettersson.

This offseason, the Canucks struck out trying to find their soluti on at second-line centre, but they were able to come to an agreement at the 11th hour with Boeser, locking him up to a seven-year deal . Otherwise, they were relatively quiet on the signing front, only bringing in depth defenceman Pierre-Olivier Joseph.

However, they did most of their business through the trade market. The Canucks brought in Evander Kane as a cap dump from the Edmonton Oilers for the low price of a fourth-round pick, which they were able to recoup by sending Dakota Joshua to the Toronto Maple Leafs. They also had to part ways with Calder Cup MVP Arturs Silovs, as there was no room for him at the NHL level with Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen.

Rutherford and Allvin will have a lot of work to do to work their way back up to the top half of The Athletic’s confidence rankings next season. The Canucks only ranked behind the Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Seattle Kraken, Boston Bruins, Nashville Predators and Buffalo Sabres in the front office confidence rankings.