It seems like only yesterday we were looking ahead at a month without Vancouver Canucks hockey and wondering what it would be like.

But we’re here now, there are only a couple of games left in the 2026 Olympics, and we’re less than a week from the return of the Canucks on February 25. After that, it’s another mad dash of 25 games in 51 nights before the 2025-26 regular season reaches its merciful conclusion.

This is the time of year we’d normally be referring to as the “stretch run,” where those teams on the fringe of the playoff race go all out to secure their postseason positions. But the Canucks aren’t on the fringe of the playoff race – they’re not even on the fringe of the fringe. They entered and will exit the Olympic Break in dead last in the NHL, with a seven-point gap to the second-last team, to boot.

But it’s still a stretch run of sorts for the Canucks, who really, really need to finish as low in the standings as possible. They may never admit to this goal publicly – and certainly not to ever actively trying to lose games – but a high draft pick is absolutely necessary to the security of the rebuild, and there’s really only one way to get that. The Canucks are in a race for last place, and even though they start that race with a considerable head-start, they’ve got a ways to go before they can call it safe.

Today, we’re taking a look at the two-month quest for last place that the Canucks are about to embark on, and how their odds sit here at the end of the Olympic Break.

As of now, a full 26 of the 31 other NHL teams are at least 16 points ahead of the Canucks’ 42 points in the standings. And while closing a 16-point gap over a span of 25 games is technically possible, it’s incredibly unlikely – unlikely enough that we can probably set all 26 teams aside in this discussion about the race for last place.

That leaves just five other “contenders” for the Canucks to compete with. Listed in reverse order of points, they are:

With this crew, the point gaps range from seven to 11. Those are still considerable gaps, but they are closeable. We wrote a while back that the Canucks might be the only team in the league actively tanking. Coming out of the Olympic Break, that will almost certainly no longer be the case.

The St. Louis Blues may not be committing to a rebuild quite yet, but they’ll be retooling to a major extent and will likely start selling off pieces.

The New York Rangers have already sold off a major piece in Artemi Panarin and a minor one in Carson Soucy, and won’t be stopping there.

The Calgary Flames have already sold off a major piece in Rasmus Andersson, and seemed poised to do more.

These three teams, at the very least, will be gunning for last place as earnestly as the Canucks from here on out.

The Winnipeg Jets are a little tougher to figure out. This season was a major dip for them, and one they will hope to rebound from as soon as next season. There may not be much of a sell-off from the Jets as of yet, and that might hurt their chances of staying in the basement with the rest of this crowd. The Jets still have some pride to play for, and might be one of those classic cases of a team ‘ruining’ their draft position post-deadline – just as the Canucks have done on several past occasions.

The Chicago Blackhawks are the most interesting case, because they’re significantly further along in their rebuild than anyone else we’ve mentioned, and already have most of their key future pieces in place. Their need for a lottery finish is less than that of the other contenders, and they probably have a bit more to gain by trying to remain somewhat competitive this season. That said, the Blackhawks have continued to make smart, long-term-minded moves, and there’s no reason to think they’ll change that patient approach much. They’re probably still selling off a number of UFAs, and that might cause them to sink a little further.

One of the simplest ways to gauge a race in the standings – in either direction, mind you – is to look at the various teams’ strength of remaining schedule, something that the website Tankathon keeps track of throughout the year. In short, they crunch the point percentages of a team’s remaining opponents into a number they call “SOS,” and the higher that number is, the tougher their remaining schedule.

As Tankathon reminds its readers at the top of the page, “A high strength of schedule is good for tanking.”

So where do our contenders rank?

This late in the year, with less than a third of the regular season remaining, the SOS scores are distributed fairly closely. And yet there are some notable advantages to be had here. The Calgary Flames have the third-toughest remaining schedule in the entire league. That’s going to help them get closer to the Canucks in the standings, especially if they trade away another reliable veteran or two.

The Canucks can feel good about the fact that their closest ‘rival’ here, the Blues, have the exact same SOS score. Neither team will get an opposition-based advantage; each will attempt to achieve last place on its own merits – but, remember, the Canucks are starting with a seven-point lead here.

Our suspicions of the Jets wrecking their own draft spot are raised even further by their SOS score, which has them with the fifth-easiest schedule in the league down the stretch. A couple of confidence-boosting wins is great for Winnipeg’s chances of rebounding next year, and great for the Canucks’ purposes, too.

If this were a playoff race, we’d be all about those so-called “four-point games,” otherwise known as the direct matchups between two teams competing for a spot. Well, four-point games exist for reverse races, too. They just work backwards.

The Canucks play the Jets twice, the Blackhawks once, the Blues once, and the Flames once over the next eight weeks. They do not play the Rangers again.

We won’t go as far as to call these ‘must-lose’ games, but you might. In particular, a couple of losses to the Jets would effectively take Winnipeg out of the running for last place, and a loss to the Blues would effectively open up that gap by a further four points, which could be crucial in the end.

The more injuries a team has, especially to key players, the harder it will be for them to rise in the standings – and the easier it should be to tank.

The Canucks obviously have some notable injuries of their own here, chiefly Thatcher Demko being out for the rest of the season, the uncertainty surrounding Filip Chytil, and Brock Boeser’s latest concussion. Marco Rossi and Zeev Buium are expected to return following the Olympic Break.

St. Louis, meanwhile, will also get a couple of their stars back post-Break in Dylan Holloway and Robert Thomas, and otherwise have no major injuries.

The same goes for the Rangers, who are set to get Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin back in action.

The Flames have lost Jonathan Huberdeau for the remainder of the season, which isn’t as big a blow as it might once have been, but it will further enable their tank.

Winnipeg is mostly fine, so long as Josh Morrisey’s Olympic ailment isn’t a long-term thing.

And the Blackhawks are healthy as horses, so long as you don’t count Shea Weber still sitting on their IR.

Something the Canucks will benefit very directly from is the shape of their April schedule.

In short, though the Canucks will have little to play for at that point, almost all of their April opponents will.

They’ll be facing a bunch of teams gearing up for potentially long playoff runs and jockeying for the top positions (Colorado, Minnesota, Vegas, Edmonton) or teams fighting for the last couple postseason spots (Utah, Los Angeles, San Jose, Anaheim). And that’s it. Each of those teams will be circling the Canucks on their calendars as a game they cannot afford to lose.

For a Vancouver team that can’t afford too many more wins to close out the year, that should be music to the ears.

However this race goes from here on out, there will be consequences.

Were the Canucks to be leapfrogged by all five of these teams, they’d finish in sixth-last place. That would give them a 7.5% chance of winning the lottery for first overall, but also could mean they drop as low as eighth in the standings. That would be a devastating outcome to a season this disastrous.

But that’s almost certainly not going to happen. Realistically, maybe one or two of the teams we’ve talked about could sink below the Canucks in the standings, but for all of them to do it at once would be astonishing.

Still, even that could make for some disappointment. Were the Canucks to finish third-last, they’d only have a 11.6% shot at first overall – compared to 18.6% for last place – and could drop as low as fifth in the draft. To go through a season like this and only end up with a 5OA would be awful. Top-five picks are all well and good, but this is a top-heavy draft with a clear-cut top-three of potential superstars. For all this suffering, the Canucks need an appropriately grand reward.

Win the race, however, and the Canucks get that 18.6% shot at first overall, an even better chance of getting the second overall pick if they miss that, and they’ll only be able to sink as low as third overall.

In other words, win the race for last place, and the Canucks can virtually guarantee the option of drafting at least one of Gavin McKenna, Ivar Stenberg, or Keaton Verhoeff. And that’s something worth competing for.