The Vancouver Canucks haven’t had a player lead the team in scoring in back-to-back years in a decade.
The last player to lead the Canucks in scoring in back-to-back years was Daniel Sedin in 2014-15 and 2015-16.
That’s actually somewhat unique in the NHL. As pointed out by hockey analytics content creator JFresh on Twitter, the Canucks have the longest active streak without back-to-back scoring leaders.
It’s an interesting list of players. For ten seasons, from 2006-07 to 2015-16, the Canucks were led in scoring by one of Daniel or Henrik Sedin: five times by Daniel and five times by Henrik. They took over from Markus Näslund, who led the Canucks in scoring in seven straight seasons.
The three subsequent scoring leaders were the young forwards expected to take the torch from the Sedins: Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser, and Elias Pettersson. Then J.T. Miller arrived and led the team in scoring every other season, with Pettersson and Boeser interspersed until the Canucks’ best player, Quinn Hughes, led the team in scoring this past season.
Now, the question is whether Hughes can break that streak?
The Canucks had better hope he doesn't.
I’m not saying that Hughes is incapable of leading the Canucks in scoring in the 2025-26 season. It’s just that recent history tells us that wouldn’t be a good thing.
Last season, Hughes was one of two defencemen to lead his team in scoring, along with his fellow Norris Trophy nominee Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets. While both defencemen had phenomenal seasons, neither was able to lead their team to the playoffs.
You have to go back a couple of seasons to find other defencemen who led their team in scoring. In 2022-23, Erik Karlsson led the San Jose Sharks in scoring, while Roman Josi led the Nashville Predators. Both teams missed the playoffs.
The last time a team led in scoring by a defenceman made the playoffs was Josi with the Predators in the previous year, 2021-22, when he had 96 points in 80 games. That was enough to beat out the Vegas Golden Knights for the final Wild Card spot in the West.
The Predators were subsequently swept in the first round.
All that is to say, it’s not normally a good thing when a defenceman leads your team in scoring. Generally speaking, that means something else has gone wrong in the construction of your team. Most likely, your team isn’t going to make the playoffs and, if you do, you’re not going to last long.
As Canucks fans are well aware, a lot went wrong for the Canucks last season.
As well as Quinn Hughes played, he shouldn’t have led the Canucks in scoring with 76 points. But Elias Pettersson had the worst season of his career, managing just 45 points in 64 games, while the team’s top-scoring forward was Brock Boeser with just 50 points.
That can’t happen again next season. But one concern for the Canucks is that they really only have one forward who could realistically outscore Hughes next season: Pettersson.
Boeser’s career high in points is 73. Conor Garland and Jake DeBrusk can pretty consistently put up between 40-50 points per season, but can’t be expected to score much more than that. The newly-added Evander Kane has never put up more than 57 points and just missed an entire season to injury.
In other words, the Canucks aren’t going anywhere without Pettersson putting up points.
That said, I don’t think any Canucks fans will be upset if Pettersson has a 100-point season and Hughes scores 101 points. At that point, fans can hope that the Canucks are like the 1993-94 New York Rangers, who were led in scoring in the regular season by defenceman Sergei Zubov, followed closely by Mark Messier.
Canucks fans are well aware of how that season ended.
