The Vancouver Canucks put out the call to fans on Thursday to vote on the 2025-26 team awards.

Now, this season has been a complete disaster for pretty much every player on the roster. And while they won’t garner any consideration for any league awards, they still have to hand out team awards. So, let’s dive into the four awards voted on by the fans and the three other awards, and give our pick for each honour.

We’ll start with the four awards voted on by the fans.

There really shouldn’t be much debate on who the best Canucks defenceman has been after trading Quinn Hughes. Since the Hughes trade on December 12, Hronek has logged the most ice time of any defenceman, averaging 25:06 minutes per game, which is nearly three minutes on average more than Marcus Pettersson in second. His impact on both special teams has been massive, as he’s turned the power play into one of the hottest units in the league of late, while still logging the second-most penalty kill time by a defenceman.

Put all that together with the fact that he is second on the entire team in points with 44, 24 more points than the next highest point total by a defenceman in a Canuck uniform, Tom Willander, and he’s making an impact in all three facets of the game. Hronek has been the most consistent Canucks defender all season, and the only one who has understood and excelled in Adam Foote’s system. The conversation isn’t close as to why he should be honoured as the best defenceman this season.

Again, there has been only one player who you could warrant giving the most valuable player of the year award to, and it’s Filip Hronek. Since the Hughes trade on December 12, Hronek leads not only all defencemen, but the entire team in points with 28. He leads Brock Boeser by one and Elias Pettersson by two.

As mentioned, he’s logging the most ice time of any skater on the team, while being only one of three players (Hronek, M. Pettersson and Drew O’Connor) to have not missed a game this season. Yes, they are still dead last in the league with him, but some nights would look even more ugly without him.

There’s really only two options for who could be this year’s unsung hero: Drew O’Connor or Linus Karlsson. We’re going with the latter.

The argument for Karlsson over O’Connor is simple. Karlsson has two more points in three fewer games, despite averaging two minutes per game less than O’Connor. Karlsson averages more than a minute of power play time per game than O’Connor; however, he not only bests O’Connor but also leads the entire team in 5v5 points with 26 this season. Karlsson has managed to do so in a mostly bottom-six role, while O’Connor has been playing higher in the lineup for the majority of the season.

Going from starting the year as a healthy scratch to now being tied for fifth in goals and points makes him a strong candidate to be this year’s unsung hero.

I am officially making the case for Liam Öhgren to win the most exciting player award for this season, and here is why.

Öhgren made a good first impression, as he scored in just his second game in a Canucks sweater against the New York Rangers. He then added a goal, an assist, and buried the shootout winner two games later against the Boston Bruins.

Then Öhgren began to earn Foote’s trust, and he was elevated to the third line with Teddy Blueger and Conor Garland in early February. Over the following five games in which the trio played together, they logged the most 5v5 ice time of any Canucks line, while still having the best analytics with them on the ice rather than in any other lines’ minutes:

And over that five-game stretch, the Canucks scored eight goals. Of those eight goals, a member of that line factored into the scoring on six of them.

But then, Foote invented the BRÖ line. They got much longer of a runway, playing 11 games with each other, while drawing the hard matchups against the opposition’s top competition. However, they still managed to rack up respectable analytics given the circumstances compared to the rest of the team:

A member of that line registered a point on 16 of the 29 goals scored in those 11 outings. Granted, seven of those goals came on the power play without Öhgren. However, the way their line was rolling carried over onto the man advantage. And their nine 5v5 goals were far and away the most by any Canucks line over that stretch.

Foote has since elevated Öhgren to the top line with Pettersson, where he has developed early chemistry with his fellow countrymen, with Karlsson and Jake DeBrusk alternating on the opposite wing.

There really have been three lines going for the Canucks since February. And the common denominator on all three of those lines is Liam Öhgren. Whatever line he has been on has brought offence and excitement to what’s been a tough stretch of 4-14-2 Canucks hockey.

And let’s not forget that he was viewed as a throw-in in the Hughes trade. However, Öhgren’s 15 5v5 points trail only Karlsson since the move. For a player with next to no expectations when he joined the team to have this big an impact, he should absolutely garner some fan votes for him as the 2025-26 most exciting player.

Now, we’ll give our best guesses on how the rest of the year will end up and who will receive the statistical and leadership honours that are not voted on by the fans.

At the time of this writing, Elias Pettersson leads the Canucks with 48 points (15 goals and 33 assists) in 67 games. He is ahead of fellow assistant captains Hronek (44 points in 75 games) and Boeser (43 points in 68 games). With a four- and five-point gap on the only other two Canucks within striking distance, along with Pettersson catching heat on the power play lately, racking up nine of his 10 points in his last nine games on the man advantage, Pettersson’s lead should be safe over the final seven games.

Looking through all of the Canucks’ three-star selections this season, we currently have a three-way tie at the top, with Pettersson, Boeser and Thatcher Demko all tied with seven.

Considering Demko has been shut down for the season, it’s really a two-man race to see who can muster up enough big games to have them honoured as a three-star selection over the final seven games.

I think this is an easy one, given that it’s an award handed out by the team. Since the Hughes trade, there has been plenty of talk about Hronek and how he’s stepped up as a leader in the locker room, with insiders going so far as to say that the organization believes he has what it takes to be the next Canucks captain. To align with those beliefs, it would make sense that the team would give this award to Hronek.

What do you think, Canucks fans? Who do you want to see win these awards? Let us know in the comments below! And be sure to vote on the team awards here.