The best thing about professional sports fandom is that no matter how badly any one season goes, there is always next year. (Defunct teams notwithstanding, sorry, Arizona.)

The 2025-26 season was about as loss-filled a campaign as has ever been played out by the Vancouver Canucks, and it was just capped off with one last loss at the 2026 Draft Lottery table. But even in the wake of losing out on Gavin McKenna to the Toronto Maple Leafs, one could hear plenty of that next year sentiment. After picking third overall this time, the Canucks will be in the lottery again next year, they’ll get another shot at first overall, and next year’s draft class is said to be even better than that of 2026.

In saying that, most supporters of the Canucks have already made peace with the fact that 2026-27 will be another losing-centric season of play. You’ll never catch a hockey team outright announcing their intention to tank, but the Canucks front office – or what remains of it – has made clear that they’re in a rebuild, and that the only moves they will make are moves toward a longer-term sort of success. With no immediate help on the horizon, aside from whoever they pick at third overall, and the possibility of selling off even more veterans this offseason, the Canucks are aiming for individual improvement from their new young core but little to no team improvement.

We know that the length of the rebuild has been a topic of discussion during interviews for the vacant GM position. We assume that, though it’ll never be made public, there have already been internal discussions indicating that winning is not the priority for 2026-27 and that the playoffs are neither realistic nor important goals.

And if that’s the case, then the Canucks are at an advantage in the ‘race’ for last place already, because they’re one of the only teams who will open up next season already on the tank.

They won’t be competing, for example, with the Toronto Maple Leafs, or at least not intentionally so, as far as the Leafs are concerned. It might be high time for a rebuild in Toronto, but they’ve already traded away their 2027 and 2028 first-round picks, so there’s no real point to their losing. All sinking in the standings will do for the Leafs is earn the Flyers or the Bruins a higher draft pick.

The Leafs will almost have to attempt to make the climb back out of the league cellar to the fringes of the postseason.

And while they’re an extreme and unfortunate example, they’re not alone in that. We’d estimate that the majority of non-playoff teams from this past season will enter 2026-27 with a goal of returning to those playoffs.

There is a whole cadre of temporarily embarrassed would-be contenders who saw themselves as having off-years, and who will want nothing more than to restore their reputations with a postseason comeback. That group is led by the two-time defending champ Florida Panthers, of course, but also includes names like the Winnipeg Jets and the Washington Capitals. The New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders don’t quite fall into this same category, but they’re both expecting better performances from their veterans in 2026-27 and a return to the postseason all the same.

Then there’s a group of younger teams that have already gone through most of the steps of their own would-be rebuilds, and who are each interested in taking that next step into postseason contention. This is a big list, and it includes teams like the Detroit Red Wings, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Seattle Kraken, who were all in playoff positions at some point in the 2026-27 season, but faded out. The list also includes true up-and-comers like the San Jose Sharks and the Chicago Blackhawks, who are about ready to be done accumulating future-based assets and are instead ready to start accumulating wins.

Anyone keeping count will know that we’ve already mentioned 10 of 14 non-playoff teams who will at least enter the 2026-27 season with the goal of making the playoffs. We should also mention that there’s very little likelihood that any of the 16 teams that made the playoffs will enter the season with any goal other than maintaining or improving their place in the standings. There may be one playoff team heading toward rebuild territory – and more on them in a moment – but for the most part, we can already see that the vast majority of the league will arrive in 2026-27 with a very different goal than the Canucks, and that can’t help but make it more likely that the Canucks achieve theirs.

So, who are the other tank-contenders? Number one on that list is the Calgary Flames, whose own rebuild is on a near-parallel pace as Vancouver’s. The Calgary front office has been less vocal about being in a rebuild, but that’s the direction they’ve been moving in all the same. They sold off veterans over the last couple of seasons and are poised to add a bushel of new draft picks to their system.

Expect Calgary and Vancouver to go head-to-head all year long for the bottom spot in the Pacific Division, and probably the NHL as a whole.

Who else? The New York Rangers are probably in the neighbourhood, though that’s a little less certain. They did send out another one of those hey-we’re-going-to-kinda-sorta-rebuild letters to their fanbase this season. Still, they’ve already got a lot of highly competitive, high-priced veterans on the roster like JT Miller, Igor Shesterkin, and Adam Fox. If tanking is an NYR goal, they’ll need to do some roster manoeuvring if they really hope to compete with Vancouver and Calgary.

The St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators are two teams on the cusp. Both spent most of last year in the basement, then took late runs toward the playoffs that ultimately fell short. Both are about to hand the keys off from an aging manager to an entirely new GM. It’ll be up to those new GMs whether St. Louis and Nashville embrace their general downward trend or if they make one more push for a playoff run. We could see either one going either way.

That aforementioned playoff team, which could also be heading toward a rebuild? That’s the Pittsburgh Penguins. They weren’t really expected to make the postseason this year, either, but did, only to be casually tossed aside by their rival, the Philadelphia Flyers. Some saw it as a wake-up call that it was time to start laying down the foundation for the future. But others believe that the Penguins will continue to softly retool around that Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang trio until they all choose their own retirement dates. For the time being, it’s almost impossible to imagine a roster led by Crosby doing any sort of tanking.

And with that, we’ve covered the entire NHL. Across the 31 other NHL teams, we can say that only one is well and truly entering the 2026-27 season with no aim toward making the playoffs, and that’s the Calgary Flames. Beyond them, the Canucks may see some light competition for last place from the likes of the New York Rangers, the St. Louis Blues, the Nashville Predators, or the Pittsburgh Penguins, but even that isn’t certain.

Of course, we’re only talking about plans here. Many of the teams that ended up in the cellar of the 2025-26 season didn’t enter it with that in mind. It just sort of happened, and it will happen again to other teams next year.

But if the Canucks can have those internal discussions with their new GM and decide ahead of time that this will be another season in which developing young players and achieving a high draft pick are the priorities, then they’ll at least have a head start on the tank ahead of pretty much everyone else, other than Calgary.

And a burgeoning rebuild needs every advantage it can get.