Vancouver Canucks report cards 2025-26: Grading the defenders and goalies

Goal prevention was in short supply for the Vancouver Canucks this season, and that’s reflected in our grades for the team’s defencemen and goaltenders. On the back end, the Canucks traded a franchise player in December and iced a trio of young players regularly. In a lot of games, those players didn’t look ready to execute what was asked of them. In goal, meanwhile, Vancouver had to patch things together after another significant Thatcher Demko injury required season-ending surgery to address. We’ll do our best to fairly tease out the team’s struggles from the players’ individual contributions in the analysis that follows. On Wednesday, we handed out our season-ending letter grades to the forwards. Now, we’ll turn our attention to the Vancouver blue line and goaltending for the 2025-26 season. Hronek held up pretty well, even after the Quinn Hughes trade, at least until the final few weeks of the regular season, when the bottom really fell out on his on-ice goal differential. Even then, Hronek improved pretty much every aspect of Vancouver’s game whenever he was on the ice. And it was the minutes where he took a breather that were truly concerning. Hronek’s most valuable defensive tool is the ability to defend physically without ever really being assessed penalties, but his well-rounded game also made him an enormously valuable asset for Vancouver on the power play, especially in the final quarter of the season when he took over on the top power-play unit. His presence at five-on-four was a key stimulant leading to the Canucks’ power-play success down the stretch. Overall, Hronek continued to cement his reputation as a legitimate top-pair defender and is far and away Vancouver’s best player. Purely from a two-way perspective, Willander struggled in just about all aspects of the game in his first year in the NHL aside from his own personal point production, which was solid. Despite Willander’s point totals, the Canucks generated very little when he was on the ice relative to his teammates. They also surrendered scoring chances at a higher rate in his minutes. His two-way impact, in fact, was somewhat worse than his actual on-ice results, which is captured by his RAPM chart over at Evolving-Hockey: Effectively, this chart is measuring a player’s individual impact, and it attempts to correct for team context in various categories. What it shows is that Willander’s impact on the rate at which the Canucks were out-chanced and out-attempted was severe in his first NHL season, but the rate at which Vancouver was outscored in his minutes was significantly less severe. This is a troubling indicator generally because, as samples expand, the results tend to catch up to the underlying form. And it can be difficult for fans and even hockey people — like experienced NHL talent evaluators — to see the extent to which a player is struggling, until those results catch up to a player’s underlying impact. For all that Willander’s two-way game was poor in his rookie campaign, there were flashes in which you could see how his work rate, willingness to stick his nose in and speed could ultimately make him a top-four calibre defender at the NHL level. We should also note that there’s a fair bit of team context — the Canucks were wildly disorganized throughout last season — that factored into how every Vancouver defender performed this season. In a more organized one-read defensive system, Willander would almost certainly have struggled somewhat less than he did in his first NHL season in Vancouver. We should note, too, that Willander’s consistent work ethic is unquestioned, and he deserves praise for the mature way he carried himself publicly throughout an enormously difficult season. Given Willander’s age, pedigree and the extent to which his difficult first NHL season was shaped by a brutal defensive environment around him, it’s reasonable to expect that he’ll improve significantly next season. The Canucks will absolutely need him too. Like just about every Canucks defender outside of Hronek, there were stretches this season in which Pettersson looked as if he were struggling enormously, confused about where to be and what to do, and in which mistakes piled up and made him look out of his depth. However, Pettersson’s defensive impact remained consistently solid throughout this season. It wasn’t pretty, but with Pettersson on the ice, the Canucks surrendered scoring chances at a much lower clip than they did in all other minutes. He remains a fringe top-of-the-lineup calibre shutdown defender; it’s just harder to see it given how poorly the Canucks played as a team. Acquired from the Minnesota Wild in the Hughes trade, the portion of his first NHL season that Buium spent with the Canucks was interesting to watch. When he began to play for Vancouver, Buium picked up some points on the power play and was tasked with playing top-four minutes alongside veteran defender Tyler Myers. And in those five-on-five minutes, it looked as if Buium was focused on just playing like an everyday NHL top-four defender. He was playing a quiet game, and I mean that as a compliment. As the season slipped away from the Canucks more squarely, Buium started to more assertively test and find his limits. And it was really in the final month of the season in which Buium played his most impressive hockey, even if, by that point, he was removed from the top power-play unit in favour of Hronek. Buium’s two-way impacts as a rookie defender were poor, and he produced at a pedestrian rate relative to how frequently he pulled off dynamic moves to challenge checkers one-on-one, but unlike with Vancouver’s other rookie defenders, to watch him play, you could see evidence of meaningful progress and growing confidence as the season went along. That confidence showed too in Buium’s public commentary and the way he seemed to bring energy and professionalism to the rink and in his interactions with various media members throughout the season. Unlike some more veteran Canucks players, it never seemed as if Buium was able to tolerate the losing, which is also to his credit. Pettersson struggled more than his fellow rookie Canucks defenders this season, which is disappointing given how advanced and sharp his two-way game looked down the stretch of the 2024-25 campaign. More than Vancouver’s other young defenders, it seemed, Pettersson’s struggles were especially pronounced as a result of the disorganized, systematic hockey the Canucks played. He was still a physical presence who seemed to hit to hurt, and his timing on pinches at the blue line remains excellent, but his defensive game lost the authority that it had previously shown. If the Canucks can figure out how to play a more structurally sound team game, you’d expect Pettersson to bounce back. In general, though, you’d have to say that he didn’t build off the promise that he showed in the spring of 2025. Joseph was quietly a pretty effective five-on-five presence for Vancouver, managing — in a brutal environment — to help the Canucks both generate chances and limit them in his minutes. A useful depth defender with the ability to play both sides, Joseph’s professionalism was evident throughout the campaign, and his underlying form was stronger than his results. A pending restricted free agent, the Canucks should probably prioritize keeping him as a depth option next season. It was an inconsistent season for Lankinen, although the extent to which the Canucks were an absolute tire fire to play behind was a major part of the story. For Vancouver to win, given the quality of chances it was surrendering, the goaltenders needed to effectively catch bullets in their teeth. In some games, Lankinen was up to the task. In others, he wasn’t. Even when you correct for the circumstances of Vancouver’s porous defensive play, Lankinen probably endured some runs this season in which he underperformed. He was also sensational in the shootout and stole a fair number of points for the Canucks in games that they didn’t deserve. Ultimately, Lankinen remains a steady, veteran 1B option who is at his best when he isn’t run out as a workhorse starter. Demko had some brilliant moments when he was healthy this season, but he wasn’t healthy frequently enough, and we won’t assign him a letter grade. On some level, a starting goaltender is paid to be available, and for a variety of reasons, Demko hasn’t been available often enough for the Canucks over the past two years. And his three-year extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. Going forward, what matters far more than his performance is whether or not Demko, who underwent hip surgery and expressed confidence at Vancouver’s locker-room clean-out day that the surgery should fix his repetitive lower-body issues, can stay healthy. Tolopilo struggled a bit down the stretch, although the club’s absurd usage of him — icing him for two and a half weeks following a difficult start against the Seattle Kraken — was unfair, and not a fair reflection on his overall performance or progress throughout the season. On balance, however, Tolopilo mostly looked like an NHL-level goaltender. There are some technical issues, especially with slot line plays, that Tolopilo will have to iron out to be more consistent, but the 25-year-old largely looked the part and performed as well as you could expect a goaltender to behind this permissive Canucks team. Tolopilo has a year remaining on his contract and will require waivers next season. The Canucks should strongly consider keeping him on the NHL roster as a third goaltender to help them scrupulously manage Demko’s pitch count.