If you’ve watched Vancouver Canucks games this season, you know all about the things that haven’t gone right for the hockey club.

Thatcher Demko is injured. Quinn Hughes and Conor Garland have both missed some games. Filip Chytil suffered another concussion just six games into the season. Key penalty killers in Derek Fobort and Teddy Blueger have been out, and the Canucks’ PK — which currently ranks dead last in the NHL — has certainly felt the effects.

Jim Rutherford’s declaration that the Canucks had a playoff team “if everything went right” ahead of the 2023-24 season has also proven an accurate description of the Canucks teams we’ve seen since then. In 23-24, everything went right, and the Canucks won the Pacific Division and one playoff round. Last season, things went poorly, and the Canucks finished with 90 points, failing to qualify for the playoffs.

Between the in-season trade of JT Miller, a misconstructed blueline that the Canucks felt like they fixed by shipping out Vincent Desharnais and bringing in Marcus Pettersson — not to mention injuries to some key players like Thatcher Demko — 24-25 felt like a season to forget. Really, it felt like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, meaning that naturally, the “real Canucks” had to be somewhere in the middle of the 23-24 and 24-25 teams.

And then this season happened.

On top of the injuries mentioned above, the Canucks’ blueline, which was projected to be one of the very best in the Pacific, if not the league, has been a disappointment outside of the top pairing of Filip Hronek and Quinn Hughes. The centre depth hasn’t exactly held up, and the Canucks’ vulnerability at the position has been on full display since Filip Chytil went down. With Monday night’s loss to the Florida Panthers, the Canucks have officially given up more goals than any team in the league. Like we said. You know all the things that haven’t gone right for the team so far this season, and there’s no need to overanalyze these things.

Instead, we’re going to highlight all of the things that have gone right for the Canucks through the first quarter of the 2025-26 season.

Kiefer Sherwood is proving that the success he had in his first year with the Canucks was anything but a one-off. Sherwood scored nine goals in the month of October, including a two-goal performance against St. Louis and a hat trick against the Oilers to close out the month. After potting a career-high 19 goals last season, the pending free agent is already up to 12 this season. He’s been a mainstay on the Canucks’ penalty kill and has also chipped in with three power play goals, second only to Jake DeBrusk’s seven goals with the man advantage. Oh, and of course, he’s once again leading the NHL in hits after breaking the all-time hits record last season.

The penalty kill? Not so much. But the Canucks’ power play? That’s been good. At the time of this writing, the Canucks’ power play sits ninth in the league. So far, that’s an improvement on last season. Visually, they’ve snapped the puck around with poise and have looked dangerous on almost every power play opportunity they’ve gotten this season. Also an improvement on last season.

When I first learned of the Canucks’ interest in Drew O’Connor, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. A big body who can skate is really all it seemed to come down to. Upon trading for him, the Canucks quickly signed O’Connor to a two-year extension at $2.5 million annually with trade protection. While O’Connor’s start to the season was a bit lacklustre, he’s scored six games through nine games in November. He’s quite clearly found a role for himself in the Canucks’ middle six and is contributing in a big way for this team.

There’s a solid chance that at this point, Elias Pettersson may never eclipse the 100-point mark ever again in his NHL career. But few fans will be complaining if he can bring his game back up to a level where he provides elite defensive play while producing at or near a point per game clip. And lately, that’s exactly what Pettersson has been doing. Pettersson has tallied 11 points through nine games in November, registering eight points in his last four games. His bounce back was one of the things the Canucks needed to happen in order to have a good season, and while Pettersson will need to keep this up for an extended period of time before anyone declares him as “back,” the Canucks’ number one centre has certainly raised his game to a level we haven’t seen it at for well over a year and a half now.

Not only has Conor Garland been good for the Canucks this year, he was arguably their best forward at the beginning of the season. Garland put up 11 points through the Canucks’ first 11 games of the season during the month of October. While his point production has slowed down a bit since then, it’s clear that the recently-extended Garland is someone who can be relied upon to drive a line on his own despite being a winger.

With or without Quinn Hughes on his pairing, Filip Hronek has been a major bright spot for the Canucks. On top of filling in admirably when called upon to quarterback the first power play unit, Hronek has put up a more than respectable 12 points in 21 games. Only Quinn Hughes has a higher average ice time than Hronek, and because the veteran defenceman has appeared in all 21 of the club’s games, he leads the Canucks in total ice time by a significant margin:

The Canucks have relied heavily on Hronek, and he’s been great for them all season long.

It was almost weird to see Quinn Hughes playing like a top pairing defenceman as opposed to a superstar who dramatically tilts the ice in his team’s favour every time he hops over the boards. Thankfully, that didn’t last long. On Tuesday, we highlighted once again just how much better the Canucks are when Hughes is on the ice, and compared that impact to other top NHL defencemen. If you haven’t read that piece yet, we’d certainly encourage you to! Hughes tallied just seven points through the month of October, and is already up to 13 in the month of November in two fewer games. Over his last three games, Hughes jumped from 18th in scoring among NHL defencemen up to 2nd place behind only Cale Makar.*

It didn’t happen right away and required a brief stint in the AHL, but Tom Willander is establishing himself as an NHL defenceman before our very eyes. It was clear during training camp that Willander was going to need some time away from the big club to get himself acclimated for the challenges that come every night in the NHL. What we didn’t know was how long he would need before he’d be able to take that step. While that day likely came sooner thanks to multiple injuries to defencemen ahead of Willander on the depth chart, Willander has seeminly improved with each game he’s played. There have no doubt been mistakes along the way, but that’s all part of being a young defenceman and learning the league. Even as the Canucks have begun to get healthy on the blueline, Willander has stuck around, suggesting that he’s leapfrogged some names on the depth chart and has earned the right to play NHL minutes this early in his career.

Unfortunately, there is a common theme with every one these things that have gone right for the Canucks: they haven’t been enough to outweigh the things that have gone wrong for this team through a quarter of the NHL regular season. And that is just unfortunate.

What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section below!

*Winnipeg’s Josh Morrissey moved into second in scoring among NHL defencemen on Tuesday night.