When it comes to areas of obvious improvement for the Vancouver Canucks this season, the team’s performance on home ice should be at the top of the list. But saying they need to be better at Rogers Arena isn’t enough. The challenge, of course, is for the Canucks to make it happen.

Last season, the team finished with an appalling 17-16-8 record in front of its home fans. Only bottom feeders Chicago (15) and San Jose (12) managed fewer home ice victories. But it goes much further than that.

The Canucks were outscored 127-112 at home, won just one of eight games decided in overtime on home ice and generated a league-low 24.8 shots per game. Individually, Quinn Hughes was the only Canuck to crest 30 points in the team’s 41 home games and Brock Boeser, with 15, was the only player on the team to score more than 12 home ice goals. On many nights, the home team’s performance was borderline unwatchable.

Through all of that, the Canucks still managed to scrape together 90 points in the standings and finished just six points back of St. Louis in the race for the final Wild Card spot in the NHL’s Western Conference. So it’s an easy conclusion to draw that had the Canucks been even remotely improved in front of their home fans last season, they could have been a playoff team.

Only one team qualified for the postseason in 2024-25 with fewer than 20 home ice wins. The New Jersey Devils made it to the dance with a home record of 19-17-5. So it’s not like a minimum of 25 wins is required to be a playoff team. In fact, four teams locked down playoff berths with fewer than 25 victories last season.

The previous season en route to 50 wins, 109 points and a Pacific Division title, the Canucks rolled to a record of 27-9-5 on home ice. So there is recent precedent for the organization to draw on when it comes to getting it right more often than not at Rogers Arena.

Between dictating matchups, benefitting from tired teams making their way to town and the comforts of sleeping in their own beds, the Canucks simply have to find a way to make home ice more of an advantage than it was last season when the team suffered a series of embarrassing losses to the likes of Buffalo, Detroit, Boston, New York Islanders, Nashville and Seattle. Earn wins in even half of those games, and the Canucks would have recouped the points needed to climb above the playoff bar.

The team opens at home on October 9th against a Calgary club that plays the night before in Edmonton. That should play into Vancouver’s favour. The Canucks open with just two of their first eight games and only five of their first 14 on home ice. So the front end of the schedule is loaded with road contests. That will add heft to the home games to ensure the Canucks stabilize results in the early going.

The team’s first seven home dates are against the Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Columbus Blue Jackets. Of that group, only St. Louis, Edmonton, and Montreal were playoff teams last season, and only the Oilers secured a division postseason berth. So opportunity comes calling early and often among the team’s initial home outings.

It’s imperative that the Canucks figure out the reasons behind their sluggish starts on home ice on too many nights last season and find ways to reverse that troubling trend. Opponents opened the scoring in 20 of the 41 games at Rogers Arena last season, and the Canucks managed to come back to win just eight of those games. In the 21 games in which they scored first, the Canucks only won nine of those. So, protecting leads (and building on them) proved to be a problem as well.

Good teams are generally good both home and away. No one is expecting the Canucks to be a dominant force this season. However, with solid goaltending and a strong defensive corps, the team must find a way to generate more results on home ice than it did last season. That should go without saying.

And it really shouldn’t be too much to ask the team to pick up an additional five or six victories in Vancouver. Hold on to a few leads. Reverse fortune in a few overtime games. Get a handful of individual performances that tip the scales in the home team’s favour. It all seems simple enough. New head coach Adam Foote has his work cut out for him in many facets of the game, and putting on a better show for the paying customers is an area that needs to improve.

Anything less than 23-15-3 (49 points) this season would be disappointing for both the hockey club and its fans.