The Vancouver Canucks made a valiant effort on Tuesday evening, turning the tide of play neatly and mounting a partial comeback after going down 3-0 to the Montreal Canadiens. They still, however, lost the game 4-2. It was their second consecutive loss on the week, and their sixth loss out of nine post-4 Nations contests.

Now, despite all that losing, the Canucks’ position in the standings hasn’t changed all that much. They’re, as of this Wednesday morning writing, one point back of the Calgary Flames for the last wild card spot in the Western Conference. It’s where they’ve been for much of the season, although at this point the Flames also have a game in hand.

The Canucks and Flames play Wednesday night in a classic ‘four-point game.’ Should the Canucks lose this one, they’ll be three points back of the Flames with just 17 games remaining on the year, which will be the most ‘out of it’ they’ve been all season. If the Canucks win, they’re technically back in a playoff spot by one point (with the Flames maintaining that game-in-hand.)

But we’re not really here to talk about the Calgary Flames today, anyway. We’re here to talk about all those other teams still ranked below the Canucks in the NHL standings. We’re here to talk about how low the Canucks can realistically drop in the league rankings before the end of the 2024/25, if things continue to go as losingly as they have been lately.

The Canucks did manage to escape the 2025 Trade Deadline with their own first round pick intact. Where that first round pick falls will be dependent on where the Canucks finish in the standings. If the season ended today (and they didn’t trade the pick between now and the draft), the Canucks would enter the lottery with the 16^th overall pick, and very little chance of moving up.

But the season won’t end today. It’ll end a month from now. And a lot can change in a month.

Right now, there are a total of four different teams that are below the Canucks in the standings, but within a single point of the Canucks’ 69. Those teams are St. Louis (69, Canucks have game in hand), Montreal (68), NYR (68), and Boston (68). And then there are three more teams within four or fewer points of the Canucks, those being Utah (67), Detroit (66), and the New York Islanders (65).

If we wanted to cover all the teams that have a chance of catching up the Canucks, we might have to include Anaheim (63), Philadelphia (62), and Pittsburgh (62), although now we might be stretching the bounds of realism. We can leave it at the list of seven teams in the previous paragraph, and still say it means the Canucks have a decent shot at dropping a decent amount of spots in the standings by year’s end.

Of those seven teams, only two of them – Boston and the Islanders – sold off significant pieces at the Trade Deadline.

Were the Canucks to be leapfrogged by all seven, they’d drop to 24^th overall in the league, or a position better known as 9^th-last. It would slot them in, initially at least, at the 9^th overall selection in the 2025 Entry Draft. Interesting enough, that’s the exact same slot they found themselves in after the 2020/21 season, though they sent that pick – eventually used on Dylan Guenther – to Arizona in the now-infamous Oliver Ekman-Larsson/Conor Garland trade.

At the 9^th overall slot, the Canucks would have a 5% shot at winning the Draft Lottery and sliding into 1^st overall. Those are long odds, sure, but they’re definitely better than zero.

But in order for that to happen, those teams below the Canucks are going to have to do some winning, and the Canucks are going to have to do some losing.

Coming out of the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Canucks had one of the toughest remaining strength-of-schedules in the entire league. Now, with matchups against the Golden Knights, Kings, Wild, and Stars all out of the way, they’ve dropped down to only the 12^th-most difficult remaining schedule. The Canucks do still have two games against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets, two against the Golden Knights, and single games against the Stars, Avalanche, and Wild to contend with over the last 17. Those are lots of what we might call opportunities to lose – not that the Canucks themselves will ever see it that way.

Of those seven teams chasing them, it’s just Detroit, the Islanders, and the Rangers who have a tougher schedule than the Canucks. The rest have easier schedules, with St. Louis actually having the easiest remaining schedule in the entire NHL.

The Canucks will also have a bit of a direct hand in their ultimate fate. Of those seven teams, the Canucks do have remaining games against Utah, St. Louis, and both New York teams. Just like Wednesday’s game against Calgary, these are veritable ‘four-point games’ – just in the opposite direction than we usually think of four-point games. If the Canucks lose these matchups, they increase their odds of finishing lower in the standings, and drafting higher.

So, to answer the question in the headline, the Canucks could fairly easily drop into the NHL’s bottom-ten. At the same time, they could not. They could still, after all, beat out Calgary and make the playoffs.

It’s interesting to note that, should the Canucks lose against Calgary and should the Islanders win their next game, the Canucks would find themselves equally separated (three points) from a playoff spot as from the bottom-ten. That’s how up-in-the-air this all still is.

Other circumstances will factor, with the first and foremost probably being how soon Quinn Hughes is back in the Canucks’ lineup. Should he miss more time, it probably goes without saying that the Canucks’ odds of falling in the standings sharply increase.

Whether or not a plummet in the standings would be a good thing? That’s significantly more up for debate. Plenty of Canucks faithful have found themselves on ‘Team Tank’ in the past, but now there’s a serious ‘disappointment factor’ to the 2024/25 season, and one has to wonder how a steep descent down the standings might impact the group’s long-term confidence.

But that’s probably a debate for another day. For now, let’s just say that the Canucks could finish anywhere between a wild card playoff spot and the bottom-ten of the league, and leave it at that.

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