By now, you’ve heard that it was a disappointing 2024-25 NHL season for the Vancouver Canucks.

After taking the league by storm in 2023-24 en route to winning the Pacific Division and taking the Edmonton Oilers to seven games in round two despite being without star goaltender Thatcher Demko, the Canucks failed to qualify for the playoffs the very next year.

There are plenty of reasons why, of course. A misconstructed blueline that management took too long to address. Injuries to Thatcher Demko, Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, and others. A rift between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller that got so bad that the Canucks felt the need to move Miller to the New York Rangers in-season.

That last point is likely the one people will remember the most, and for good reason. The rift turned from whispers to chatter to a confirmed issue in a matter of months, and while the players did what they’re supposed to do and said they were just focused on hockey and were blocking out the outside noise, that simply wasn’t going to be possible in this instance, and their play showed it.

And so the losses piled up (for many reasons) while the Miller-Pettersson drama took its toll on the players. In retrospect, alternate Brock Boeser says he wished the team squashed that noise earlier.

“It’s tough,” Boeser said during Friday’s exit availabilities. “It was a roller coaster of a year and we were banged up with injuries. There was a lot of noise around our team this year, and with all that noise, I kind of just wish that we kind of went in our room and maybe squashed that noise a little earlier maybe before some games, and just refocused. I feel like we kind of let the noise creep in to our room a bit, and I think we started playing not good hockey.”

Quinn Hughes agreed, but put the onus on him and his teammates to be better and be held accountable for the Canucks’ shortcomings this past season.

“I mean, there were some challenging times for sure, but I think it just comes down to it that everyone’s got to be better. And we need guys that elevate their game. That’s all it comes down to. So it’s not about one guy, Millsy or Petey. You look at it, it’s 82 games, it’s 24 guys on a roster. It’s not two guys. I think everyone should be held accountable; we’re [not] going to put it on that for why we’re in this position this year.”

Rick Tocchet also spoke more about the rift between Pettersson and Miller, saying:

“[There were] A lot of meeting and things – could something have been different? You know, I hear people on the sidelines on podcasts or whatever saying, ‘If I was coaching, they’ve got to go to dinner or go fight it out.’ You don’t think we’ve tried all that stuff? It just didn’t work out,” Tocchet said.