Canucks Rebuilding More Than Roster in Franchise-Wide Overhaul

The Canucks, by far the NHL’s worst team last season, are attempting to go much further than a traditional rebuilding process.

The club is in the midst of a widespread campaign, on and off the ice, to create an entirely new era, rebuild impaired fan passion in western Canada, and cleanse a tarnished image. Among the Canucks’ ongoing efforts:

• The team is going into the 2026–27 season with entirely new front-office leadership, including promoting former star Vancouver players and Hockey Hall of Famers Henrik and Daniel Sedin from their prior player development roles to co-presidents of hockey operations. Along with the new role for the Sedins, the Canucks also promoted Ryan Johnson, formerly with the Canucks’ AHL affiliate in Abbotsford, British Columbia, to GM and hired Ryan Stewart from the Sharks to be the team’s director of hockey strategy and player evaluation.
• The hiring of a new head coach, Manny Malhotra, who also came from Abbotsford. 
• The development of a new branding campaign, “Van As One,” that will run throughout the team’s media extensions, at Rogers Arena, and elsewhere around Vancouver. 
• The creation of the team’s first-ever Fan Fest, scheduled for Sept. 24–26 at Rogers Arena, just before next week’s start of the 2026–27 season, Part of that event will involve the team’s remade and rebranded fan gathering space, RBC Landing. 

“We’re creating a rally cry to unite our fans,” Canucks Sports & Entertainment president of business operations Michael Doyle tells Front Office Sports. “We’re very aware we were 32nd last year, but we’re embarking on a new era in Canucks history. It’s an entirely new chapter with new presidents, a new GM, and a new coach, and we are trying to tie our community together and bring them into this new generation.”

The Canucks’ 58 standings points last year marked an acceleration of what has been an ugly fall for the club. As recently as the 2023–24 season, Vancouver had the NHL’s sixth-best record, and took the eventual Western Conference champion Oilers to a seventh game in the second round of the playoffs. 

What the Canucks are now doing bears some similarity to large-scale team rebuilds done with sizable fan involvement, such as the Astros and Cubs in MLB. The Canucks are entering the 2026–27 with an average player age of 26.65, sixth-youngest in the NHL, and average league experience of 7.6 years that is the fourth-lowest among the 32 teams. 

“We certainly want to be back in the playoffs, but that’s really a byproduct of the bigger process we’re starting and the connections we’re trying to forge here,” Doyle said.