With 30 games left on the schedule, the Vancouver Canucks find themselves facing a different kind of finish to the 2025-26 season - not a playoff push, but a pivot toward the future. While the early hope was for a return to postseason hockey, the reality now is that Vancouver is more likely to be jockeying for draft position than chasing a wild card spot. That shift changes everything, from how the team approaches its roster to how minutes are distributed down the stretch.
At the heart of this transition is goaltender Nikita Tolopilo. The 25-year-old has logged six NHL games this season, and while that’s a small sample size, he’s shown enough to warrant a longer look. With the Canucks out of playoff contention and the schedule easing up after the Olympic break, this is the ideal window to see what Tolopilo can do with a bigger workload.
The key variable here is Thatcher Demko. General manager Patrik Allvin has acknowledged the possibility that Demko could be shut down for the remainder of the season, though no final decision has been made.
For the sake of planning, we’ll assume Demko doesn’t return. That would leave the Canucks with a tandem of Tolopilo and Kevin Lankinen - and an opportunity to prioritize development over wins.
Lankinen, who’s expected to represent Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics, will likely carry the load leading into the break. But once the Games wrap up, the calculus should shift.
With the team’s focus turning toward evaluation and growth, giving Tolopilo a larger share of the net makes sense - not just for this season, but for what it could mean long-term. A roughly even split over the final 25 games - say, 13 starts for Tolopilo - would offer a solid test without overloading the young netminder.
And the schedule helps. Post-Olympics, Vancouver plays a home-heavy slate with minimal travel - just four games outside the Pacific Time Zone and only three back-to-back sets.
That kind of setup is tailor-made for a measured goalie rotation. If both Lankinen and Tolopilo stay healthy, there’s no reason the Canucks can’t use this stretch to get a real sense of what they have in their young Latvian goaltender.
This isn’t just about goaltending, though. The Canucks are expected to make moves ahead of the trade deadline, and those deals should open up roster spots for players currently with AHL Abbotsford. That’s another layer of the evaluation process - seeing which prospects are ready to take the next step and which areas still need reinforcements heading into 2026-27.
The final third of the season won’t be about chasing points in the standings. It’ll be about building a foundation.
That means giving young players meaningful minutes, making smart decisions with veterans, and using every game as a chance to shape the next chapter of this franchise. For a team that’s shifting into rebuild mode, how they manage these next 30 games could be just as important as anything they do this summer.