Though the Vancouver Canucks are playing well, competing hard and winning games, they can’t close the gap that the St. Louis Blues have opened up in the race for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
The Blues simply refuse to lose, which has left the Canucks with no choice but to try and follow suit.
Vancouver will face the quick-strike Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday at Nationwide Arena. It’s a dangerous matchup for the Canucks, given the pace that the Blue Jackets play with and their ability to attack off the rush.
These are two points that both teams must have. It’s a game with major playoff implications for all involved. It should be a ton of fun to watch.
Before the puck drops, let’s open the notebook and get into the speculation around Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, the club’s plans for Tom Willander, the future of NHL offer sheets and more.
Tocchet speculation and why the team option matters
National media speculation about Tocchet’s Canucks future exploded into overdrive Thursday morning in the wake of the Philadelphia Flyers’ dismissal of John Tortorella.
Tocchet, of course, played for the Flyers. And he’s working through the final year of his contract, signed in January 2024 when he first joined the organization and replaced Bruce Boudreau — although the club has a team option to retain him beyond this season.
The Canucks bench boss, the reigning Jack Adams winner, is highly regarded within the industry and for good reason. While he’s drawn the ire of some segments of the Canucks fan base this season, which is understandable given the disappointing results and popgun offensive production this year, there’s no questioning the structural integrity that Tocchet’s Canucks have played with.
The Canucks have been consistently well organized and tactically thoughtful. Tocchet authored one of the great single-season defensive turnarounds in recent NHL history during the 2024-25 campaign. Among the head coaches in Canucks history, Tocchet trails only Alain Vigneault in career point percentage.
Any number of high-profile teams would be immediately improved by recruiting him — including the Flyers, the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Blackhawks and even the New York Rangers.
Tocchet, however, isn’t a free agent.
This isn’t a lame duck head coach working through the final year of his contract. The club has an option to keep Tocchet for another season, and The Athletic has been told, in no uncertain terms by a team source, that the club views Tocchet as their coach for next season and intends to exercise that option.
It’s clear Tocchet doesn’t want his contractual situation or Canucks future to be a story while his club fights for its playoff life.
“I think it’s better to wait, for me, so we can really sit down and talk, because I have no time to talk about my contract, in the sense that, you know … I’m all in with this team right now,” Tocchet said in a recent radio interview with Sportsnet 650.
“It’ll (happen at) the appropriate time. That’s really what it is. I can’t really concentrate on that stuff. Every day we come in, we’re really concentrated on a lot of different things. I’m very comfortable, and I think they are, too. That when it’s the appropriate time, we can spend some time and really dive in on where we’re going, what we’re going to do, and things like that.”
What’s also clear is that given what Tocchet has accomplished across two-and-a-half seasons in Vancouver, including winning coach of the year and guiding the Canucks to one of the most successful seasons in franchise history, he’s put himself in line for a raise on the $2.75 million he’s reportedly earned the past few years.
The Canucks would prefer to work out an extension over simply exercising their team option this summer. It will be a major storyline once the season concludes and a serious conversation — and negotiation — for the parties involved.
What’s clear for now, however, is that the speculation is mostly noise. The organization intends to keep Tocchet in place.
Will this be Tom Willander’s final year as a BU Terrier? (Brace Hemmelgarn / Imagn Images)
What’s next for Tom Willander after BU’s season ends?
Defenceman Tom Willander’s Boston University Terriers fell behind against Ohio State in the first round of the single-elimination Frozen Four tournament Thursday, but powered back to win 8-3 with an offensive explosion in the third period.
On Saturday, the Terriers will take on Cornell, which upset second-seeded Michigan State in the first round.
The Terriers’ next loss will end Willander’s sophomore season in the NCAA. And, most likely, his collegiate career.
The No. 11 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, Willander is ready to begin his professional hockey career. The Canucks will try to sign him to his entry-level contract promptly once BU’s season concludes.
There are three main items that NHL teams haggle over with drafted prospects playing in the NCAA. The first is whether to sign in the first place.
NCAA players have unique leverage and can take the Justin Schultz/Kevin Hayes route and become Aug. 15 unrestricted free agents, but that path requires the player to play through their senior season and withdraw before graduation. Willander, a sophomore, is two years away from pursuing that route, and in any event, seems to be ready to turn pro.
The second item is the bonus structure of an entry-level deal. The Canucks have been pretty careful about managing the bonus structure of their entry-level contracts during the Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin era — even with top prospects like Jonathan Lekkerimäki, the No. 14 pick in 2023 — but college prospects do have unique leverage to some extent, even if that leverage is muted for a sophomore player.
Generally speaking, No. 11 picks often get at least some performance-based Schedule B bonuses — and regularly get maximum Schedule B bonuses — in their entry-level contract.
The final factor is whether the player immediately joins the NHL roster, burning a year of the entry-level contract in the process, or signs a contract that begins the following season, which permits the prospect to then sign an amateur tryout (ATO) and play in the AHL.
This is where these negotiations get interesting. Especially because it impacts a player’s NHL arrival date.
According the team source, the Canucks’ preference is to have Willander sign an entry-level contract that begins during the 2025-26 campaign. That would preserve an additional year on Willander’s entry-level contract, and it means that Willander wouldn’t join the Canucks’ NHL roster on the conclusion of his college season. Instead he would join the Abbotsford Canucks and be eligible to compete in the Calder Cup playoffs.
The sense I’ve got is that the club feels confident about getting the Willander deal done quickly after BU’s season ends and about having him join Abbotsford this season.
While there is some benefit for a young player in getting through their first NHL contract as quickly as possible, from a long-term development perspective, logging major minutes at the American League level while adapting to the demands and pace of professional hockey tends to be the most beneficial path. Especially given the blue-line dynamic the Canucks are currently juggling.
The Canucks are confident Willander could contribute usefully at the NHL level right away, if required. The problem is that the Canucks are in a tooth-and-nail race for the second wild-card spot in the West, and are already rotating a pair of young defenders in Victor Mancini and Elias Pettersson on the third pair. On most nights, Pettersson and Mancini are playing less than 15 minutes.
Willander, if he were to join the Canucks at the NHL level immediately, would be fighting to get into games and would be looking at 12-15 minutes per night.
It will be a different story if Willander starts his professional journey in the American League. He would play a top-four role, log major minutes and could compete in the Calder Cup playoffs. By leaps and bounds, he’d get more useful reps in Abbotsford.
The goal for both sides, after all, isn’t for Willander to make his NHL debut as soon as possible. It’s for Willander to position himself to be an NHL regular right from the get-go next season.
It should go without saying that things can change rapidly over the course of a negotiation that won’t even begin until the Terriers are eliminated from the tournament. The organization’s preference, however, is for Willander to play in the American League this spring to accelerate his path to full-time NHL duty next season.
Dylan Holloway and the future of offer sheets
The Blues looked to be dead in the water in the third period Thursday in Nashville.
Trailing 2-1, the Blues had no legs. They were barely able to break out of their own zone as the Predators exerted suffocating down-ice pressure. As time ticked down, the Blues had no answer but to repeatedly ice the puck and rely on backup netminder Joel Hofer to hold them in a one-score game.
Then the play flipped. Cam Fowler scored a lovely game-tying goal. Moments later, Dylan Holloway — who else? — finished a spectacular individual effort. Within 22 seconds, the Blues extended their win streak to eight games and again dented Vancouver’s playoff odds.
All we needed was 22 seconds to go from trailing to taking the lead. #stlblues pic.twitter.com/y0KAQ0K0qJ
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) March 28, 2025
Holloway has taken over the Western Conference playoff race. The 23-year-old forward is riding a nine-game point streak that has powered the Blues into a commanding position in the wild card. No player in the Western Conference has more five-on-five points since the Four Nations Face-Off break than Holloway.
And, of course, Holloway was acquired by the Blues from the Edmonton Oilers this summer by way of a clever predatory offer sheet tendered by Blues general manager Doug Armstrong (who also offer sheeted slick defenceman Philip Broberg in the process).
Now the Blues are riding high and Holloway is the face of their late season push for a playoff spot. In a copycat league, could this Blues run ultimately unlock the offer sheet as a viable route for adding talent to NHL rosters?
I polled a few NHL executives about this topic on Thursday, and most responded affirmatively. It’s taken far too long, but industry opinion seems to be turning on the usefulness of offer sheets.
There seems to be a genuine feeling that a correlation of forces, from the salary cap going up, to a relatively weak unrestricted free-agent class, to the success the Blues have had with Broberg and Holloway, could legitimately serve as a perfect storm driving teams to try and utilize offer sheets more freely and efficiently than we’ve traditionally seen during the hard cap era.
If that does come to pass, it could make the offseason more interesting for fans, more complicated for executives and more lucrative for younger players.
Is the joylessness behind the Canucks?
It’s been striking to watch Vancouver compete over the past week and to contrast it with some of the lackadaisical efforts that characterized so much of this campaign back in the fall.
One moment stood out in particular from Wednesday night’s victory on Long Island: when Pius Suter passed off a clear shot on an empty net to feed Kiefer Sherwood for his second goal of the night.
Suter is a pending unrestricted free agent and is sitting at 21 goals. With an opportunity for another tally to boost his case for a massive raise this summer, Suter instead deferred the glory to a regular linemate who is chasing the 20-goal milestone for the first time.
It might seem like a small gesture, but it was selfless. And the reaction of the Canucks players on the ice spoke volumes.
There can be no question that this group is competing for one another, in a way that the Canucks too often didn’t earlier this season.
Perhaps it will prove to be too little too late for this team to make the playoffs, but that’s not assured. Opportunity is still knocking, even if this incredible Blues run is proving to be extremely inconvenient.
Beyond the results and the outcome, given what this team has dealt with and the noise and fitful transformation that was foisted upon the organization as a result of broken internal dynamics earlier this year, it’s been a welcome development to simply watch the Canucks compete as a team again.
(Top photo of Rick Tocchet: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)