Rebuild. Reconstruction. Refresh.

Whatever term one chooses to use, everyone understands that the Vancouver Canucks began a process of remaking their franchise in the mid-2010s, attempting to transition from the highs of the 2011 Cup Finals run to what they hoped would be another window of contention.

It may have taken the better part of a decade, but the Canucks have finally made it through to the other side. Having returned to the playoffs in 2024, and then taken the eventual Western Conference Champions to Game 7 of Round Two, the Canucks are contenders again. Or, if that’s too strong a term for some, they’re definitely competitive again.

Of course, there’s little relief or reason to celebrate in just making it this far. In the grand scheme of things, just being competitive doesn’t really count for all that much. The challenge now becomes taking the team from just ‘competitive’ to a team that has a genuine chance of winning hockey’s ultimate glory.

That’s the next step for these current Canucks. But it won’t be an easy step to take.

There’s an argument to be made that the Canucks successfully tread water throughout the 2024 offseason. The team suffered two major losses to its blueline in the form of Nikita Zadorov and Ian Cole. They will attempt to replace their contributions with those of two UFA signings in Derek Forbort and Vincent Desharnais.

Up front, the team lost key in-season acquisition Elias Lindholm. He’ll be replaced, in a roundabout fashion, by the additions of Jake DeBrusk, most prominently, but also Danton Heinen and Daniel Sprong.

We can buy the argument that Forbort and Desharnais, should they adapt to Rick Tocchet’s system and structure well enough, might be able to perform a reasonable job of replacing what Zadorov and Cole did for the backend. Or the argument that the collective contributions of DeBrusk, Heinen, and Sprong might add up to about the same as one Lindholm.

The argument we can’t buy, and that no one is really attempting to make, is that the Canucks are better off on paper than they were in 2023/24.

And that’s potentially a problem, because just treading water isn’t going to be good enough. Now that the Canucks have reached the fringes of contention, nobody is interested in having them stay there. A next step is needed, advancement is required, and the Canucks have to find a way to join the upper echelons of NHL contenders. That necessitates improvement, not steadiness, and the Canucks have thus far largely failed to improve their roster with additions from without.

That means that, for the time being, the Canucks only real hope for taking the next step as a franchise is self-improvement. Or improvement from within. Essentially, they’re hinging their hopes for 2024/25 and beyond on the players they already have in hand getting better over the course of the next couple years.

And you know what? That’s actually not a bad bet.

On the one hand, the core individuals on the Canucks have already reached some high heights. Quinn Hughes just won the Norris. Thatcher Demko was just nominated for the Vezina. JT Miller and Elias Pettersson have now each cracked 100 points. Brock Boeser just got 40 goals. Can one really look at the most important players on the Canucks roster and expect them to give even more next season, and for the next couple seasons thereafter?

Yes, actually.

Let’s start with Pettersson, the easiest player to make a case for of being able to give more. In a sense, Pettersson’s 2023/24 campaign of 89 points in 82 games wasn’t a bad result, but it wasn’t his best work, and that’s doubly true of his six points in 13 playoff games. Pettersson can produce more, but he can also pay a significantly more central role in the team’s offence. He’s done it before.

More than that, however, Pettersson has a long history of improving upon himself. Remember that a year after being drafted, Pettersson rose from 41 points in the second-tier Swedish league to a record-setting 56 points in the top SHL.

Over in the NHL, Pettersson responded to a lackluster, injury-plagued 2020/21 season by setting new personal records in 2021/22, and then, instead of resting on his laurels, took it all a step further in 2022/23 with 102 points.

Now, after a step back in 2023/24, he’s got something to prove again. If his past precedent is anything to go by, Pettersson will spend 2024/25 doing that proving. He’s certainly got the capacity.

With Hughes, it’s harder to say that he’s got more to give. Hughes is already the greatest defender in franchise history by a longshot, and he’s the first Canuck to ever even come close to winning the Norris Trophy. If last season were truly the best Hughes could do, no one would have much reason to complain.

And, yet, we suspect it probably isn’t. For all that self-improvement we described Pettersson undergoing in his career, Hughes still has him beat by leaps and bounds. After breaking the franchise record for blueline scoring in 2021/22 but drawing critiques for his defensive play, Hughes returned in 2022/23 to establish himself as the best two-way defender on the team. When his shot was then pointed at as an obvious weak-spot in his game, Hughes spent the summer working on it, and returned to score 17 goals in 2023/24.

Hughes has come back for each of his NHL seasons not just improved, but improved in some specific way that makes him a more complete hockey player. Given his competitive spirit, there’s little reason to believe 2024/25 will be any different. All that’s left to wonder is which new thing Hughes will suddenly be proficient at.

Then there is JT Miller. In a sense, he’s already defying the typical aging curve of an NHL forward by having his best years in his late-20s. One could use that to argue that he’s on borrowed time. But the other side of that coin is that Miller has somehow found a way to get even better at hockey as he ages. Most assumed that the 99 points he put up in 2021/22 would be his career high-mark. Instead, he took it to the next level in 2023/24 with 103 points, with that improvement seemingly driven almost entirely by power of will. Perhaps most impressively of all, those 103 points also came with a considerable uptick in defensive performance.

Expecting Miller to continue to increase his point totals into his 30s is asking a lot. But his continuing to have an even greater impact on the game might not be. Especially as he continues to get more support from the team around him.

Brock Boeser and Thatcher Demko’s lingering health questions make them harder to prognosticate. But, if we’re being perfectly honest, both players had to be approaching pretty close to their personal peaks in 2023/24. If either player can just stay healthy, that’s improvement enough to keep the Canucks trending upward.

Another name we haven’t mentioned yet, but that probably deserves mention alongside the core Canucks, is Filip Hronek. He, too, enjoyed a career season in 2023/24, but unlike the others, he’d already secured that career season in the first-half of the year – and didn’t do a whole heck of a lot thereafter. A more consistent year, start to finish, constitutes an important improvement from Hronek, and that seems perfectly doable.

There could, of course, also be improvement from within outside of the core. Incoming players like DeBrusk and Desharnais may thrive in increased roles. Younger folks like Nils Höglander, Nils Åman, and Arturs Silovs are still theoretically in the growing stages.

But, really, it all comes down to what the Canucks are able to get out of the players they rely on most.

If Pettersson can get back on the superstar track, if Hughes can further round out his game, if Miller can continue to drive himself and the team around him to greater things. If Boeser and Demko can stay healthy. If Hronek can find more consistency.

That’s a lot of ‘ifs,’ to be sure. But they’re all, at the very least, ‘ifs’ that might reasonably come to pass, given this team and it’s core members’ penchant for self-improvement.
And if enough of these ‘ifs’ come to pass, the Canucks should be able to take that next step forward – without necessarily having to have added much to their roster from the outside.