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JPat’s Monday Canucks Mailbag: Is there more to Curtis Douglas than fists of fury?
Jeff Paterson's weekly Vancouver Canucks mailbag.
Jeff Paterson
Mar 9, 2026, 10:00 EDTUpdated: Mar 9, 2026, 11:21 EDT
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The trade deadline has come and gone. The NHL draft lottery is still a couple of months away. What happens on the ice over the final six weeks of the schedule doesn’t really matter – unless the Canucks somehow go on an absolute heater. We are officially in countdown mode. There are 19 games and 39 days remaining in the Canucks 2025-26 season. For many, the end can’t come soon enough. But the show must go on. And the mail must get through, too. We put out the call for Canucks questions in the wake of last week’s trade deadline, and many of you responded. Let’s get to answering a handful of submissions to the CanucksArmy Monday mailbag:
Like many, I’m curious to see what Curtis Douglas can do in a Vancouver Canucks uniform. I think it was a worthwhile move to pluck him off waivers from Tampa last week. The early reviews are that Douglas is limited in terms of his ability to contribute offensively at the NHL level. And his two assists in 29 games on a good Tampa team backs that up. But he seems to know his role and his eight fighting majors and 92 penalty minutes this season suggest that, as well. It is worth noting, however, that his underlying numbers in Tampa were fairly strong. In 172 five-on-five minutes with the Bolts this season, Douglas carried a 52.7% CF,  a 60.4% xGF and Tampa outscored its opponents 5-4, outshot them 75-63 and held a 72-55 scoring chance advantage.
This is a player who scored 30 goals in his final year in the Ontario Hockey League and netted 13 goals in his first full season in the American Hockey League. The one-dimensional fighter is a rare breed in the NHL these days and it’s not always easy to find a willing combatant on the other team. So Curtis Douglas needs to show the Canucks that there is value in having him in uniform to provide some safety for the young players on the roster as the team goes through its rebuild. But he also needs to prove that he can play at this level.
He’s on an expiring contract, so he has to be hoping to use however many of the remaining 19 games he plays to showcase himself for the Canucks — and the rest of the league. As an aside, it was probably tough for Douglas to watch from afar as his former Tampa team went into Buffalo in what turned out to be the game of the year so far in the NHL on Sunday with 15 goals, 10 fighting majors and chaos after just about every whistle.
Let’s just set the table on this one first. Evander Kane has played 991 career NHL games, and the countdown is now very much on to 1,000. It could come as early as March 28th in Calgary. Reaching 1,000 NHL games is an incredible accomplishment. It’s a select club, and as of this writing, only 416 players are in it. Jared Spurgeon (997), Adam Larsson (992) and Mika Zibanejad (991) are also poised for membership this month. I think the Canucks should – and will – help Kane reach the milestone. I don’t know that he will play every game remaining on the schedule, but I am taking the over for him to get to 1,000 in a Canucks uniform.
I’ve seen some suggestions in social spaces that the Canucks should game the system to allow Kane to play his 1,000th career game in Edmonton on the final night of the schedule. I think it’s more likely the Canucks make it happen at home which would be fitting for a Vancouver product to reach the mark in his hometown with family and friends in attendance. It hasn’t been a memorable season for Kane or the Canucks, but at 34 and without a contract for next season at this point, Evander Kane deserves his flowers for a long and prosperous career. I think the Canucks will do right by him when it comes to helping him get that thousandth game.
You’re probably safe now. As of Monday morning, the Canucks – quite remarkably – have a 10-point cushion at the bottom of the overall standings. Such is life when a team manages just three victories in a 25-game span. So the often-discussed notion of the Canucks going on a late-season run to ruin their draft lottery odds just feels misguided this season. First things first, they open an eight-game homestand tonight against an Ottawa team playing really good hockey these days. The Senators have one outright loss in their last 11 games (7-1-3). We all know the Canucks have been dreadful at home this season, so eight in a row on home ice doesn’t seem like a huge advantage. And then they finish the season with eight of their final 11 on the road.
The schedule ahead still includes an absolute five-game gauntlet against Vegas, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and another game against the Golden Knights. Even if you stretch the realm of possibilities and suggest the Canucks will somehow go 9-10 over their final 19, that will give them 18 more points for a total of 64. Working off that premise, teams like the Rangers and Chicago would need just four wins in their final 20 games to reach 64 points. At this time of year, hockey math gets pretty easy. The Canucks have likely locked up last place, but they just need to see this project through to completion.
Well, we saw at the deadline that all of Chicago, the Rangers, Calgary, and St. Louis did their best to juice their draft lottery odds. The Rangers weren’t able or willing to offload Vincent Trocheck, so they didn’t strip things down as far as they could have. Chicago and Calgary were both fairly active around the deadline and yet the Flames still found a way to beat a good Carolina team on Saturday night. And the Blues could have really bottomed out with some help from Colton Parayko, but even still, they managed to move veterans Brayden Schenn and Justin Faulk, and through all of that, they’ve won four in a row.
I’d say the Rangers are probably the team to watch. They’ve been lifeless for much of the season, they don’t win at home, they moved Artemi Panarin, and now old friend JT Miller is on the shelf. But don’t sleep on the Blackhawks. On Friday, they showed the Canucks that they don’t have much going on. They’ve lost 11 of their last 13 and don’t look intent on adding many more points to their collection. Then again, they did manage to grind out an overtime loss in Dallas on Sunday.
I’m guessing you mean 5 Canucks players? Just checking! I suppose I’d go young. The Canucks have signalled they’re all in on the rebuild, so why wouldn’t you use the outside of your own building to market that idea to the fans in this city? People will say it’s too much, too soon for some of the young guys. But this is pro sports and these are the players that can help sell hope for the franchise. So I’d go Tom Willander, Zeev Buium, DPetey, Liam Öhgren, and I’d keep the final slot open and have a banner ready to go on draft day, the minute the team makes its first round selection. If all goes according to form, the Canucks will land a top-three pick in the draft, and that player will instantly become one of the faces of the franchise. How cool would it be for an 18-year-old to fly into Vancouver after the draft and see a 40-foot poster of himself draped off the side of the arena he’ll call home for years to come?
With the Quinn Hughes trade, the Kiefer Sherwood deal and then their moves last week, the Canucks have certainly added to their draft stockpile for the next few years. Is it enough? I don’t think it can ever truly be enough for a team at this early stage of its rebuild. They will likely need to be in the Landon DuPont hunt at this time next year. Accumulating draft capital is important, but in some ways, it’s also the easy part. The Canucks have to maximize the value of those picks.
They may not use every single one of them and they likely won’t hit on every pick either. But there is now heavy pressure on Todd Harvey and his amateur scouting staff to deliver the next wave of talented prospects for this organization. And they have to be hoping that a couple of those picks have star-level potential. Otherwise, they’re just amassing a group of young players with potential. But that potential absolutely must be realized for the Canucks to eventually start taking strides back to respectability and then, hopefully, on to bigger and better things from there. So picks are good, no doubt. The higher the better. Then it becomes a question of developing those picks into players that can one day form the core of a true Stanley Cup contender.
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