Over the last 10 days, we here at CanucksArmy have compiled a list of the top 10 Vancouver Canucks news stories of the year 2025. With 2026 now officially upon us, we thought it’d be fitting to have one final look back on those top stories as we eagerly look ahead to a year that is hopefully filled with many more positive stories than we saw in 2025. Here’s our list!

Remember the good vibes of the offseason? Conor Garland and Thatcher Demko both committed to the Canucks on day one of free agency, signing extensions literally as soon as possible. Brock Boeser re-signed. The big bad vibes of the 2024-25 were gone and everyone was ready to turn the page. And hey, maybe all these Canucks committing to the team would be a preview of what was to come the next offseason, when Quinn Hughes would be extension eligible!? As we know now, that’s not exactly how things played out…

Wouldn’t this have been a nice curveball to actually execute on? Unfortunately, all this out-of-left-field comment from Rutherford really did was get people talking more and more about the possibility of Hughes leaving and his desire to play with his brothers. Read the full story here.

See! It wasn’t ALL doom and gloom in Canucksland in 2025! The club selected Braeden Cootes with the 15th overall pick, and people were immediately excited. Cootes would go on to knock the door down and earn an NHL roster spot in his first professional training camp, which has only grown Canucks fans excitement level for the 18-year-old centre.

Like Garland and Demko, Brock Boeser signed a new contract with the Canucks on July 1st. Of course, the circumstances around Boeser and his new deal were quite different, as it really did seem like both parties were ready to move on. But as free agency opened, Canucks GM Patrik Allvin made a last-minute phone call to Boeser’s agent Ben Hankinson, which ultimately kept the winger in Vancouver on a brand-new seven-year deal.

“It felt like the door shut a couple of times there [with the Canucks],” Boeser said. “So I really had to wrap my head around moving on, and then obviously, trying to get a sense in my head what might be a good fit and all that. So there’s so many things going through my head, and that’s why I said my head was spinning a lot, and it was hard to kind of grasp, and you know, that phone call kind of came out of nowhere. So it was definitely a shock to me. But you know, the way I felt when that phone call came is, like, I told my agent. I was like, ‘get a deal done’, and then we made something work. I didn’t even know if Patrik was calling to get a deal done. He was just calling Hank, I was just assuming that was it. So, you know, I’m really happy that he did.”

I was in the room when Rick Tocchet said the following quote:

“He’s struggling. He’s caught in between. You know, it seems like every time he’s on the ice, something bad happens. I think he’s got some bad luck, but he’s also got some reads that he’s got to – big pause – he’s got to look at himself right now and focus on some of these reads. You can’t dive in on the four-on-four, things like that. I think he’s trying, [but] sometimes the focus level has to get a little higher.”

Honestly, I had to actually listen back to my audio recording of Tocchet’s answer to make sure I wasn’t hearing things, and that Tocchet did really say that “it seems like every time he’s on the ice, something bad happens.”

Everybody and their mother had an opinion on the rift between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller. But when Brian Burke offered his, people really did care to listen. Read more here.

This one came as a bit of a shock to the fanbase, and if we’re being honest, to the Canucks themselves. The club did everything they could to keep Tocchet but in the end, their bench boss elected to test free agency and ended up in Philadelphia — a place he’s comfortable in from his playing days — with a big-money contract in hand, similar to the one the Canucks offered him.

After months of speculation and a bombshell interview from Jim Rutherford, the Canucks finally pulled the trigger on a JT Miller trade, sending him to the New York Rangers. The Rangers named Miller their captain at the start of this season. Read more here.

Of course, there was only one trade bigger than the JT Miller trade in 2025, and that’s the Quinn Hughes trade. The Hughes trade is no doubt going to go down as one of the biggest in Canucks franchise history, so of course it’s high on this year’s list. Read more here.

Enough ink has been spilled on this one. Let this be the last time we mention for a long time.

Happy New Year from all of us at CanucksArmy!