What’s the fallout for Canucks, Predators, Rangers if they don’t bounce back? 

The 2025-26 NHL regular season gets underway on Tuesday night, and while plenty of eyes will be on the contending teams, it could be a formative year for organizations looking for bounce-back seasons. 

With the Vancouver Canucks, Nashville Predators and New York Rangers taking slightly different pathways through the offseason, which one could return to a competitive level in 2025-26?

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton dove into what the season could have in store for those three teams. 

Yaremchuk: I think you can look at the Western Conference and there are a lot of teams that need to have better years than they did last year, but I’m more intrigued to see if some of these teams don’t bounce back. 

The Vancouver Canucks want to bounce back. They made the decision last year. J.T. Miller out, Elias Pettersson stays,  the Quinn Hughes contract thing, and the conversation around him gets very interesting. If they have a poor season this year, and I’m not saying they will, I’m predicting them to be right in the playoff mix, maybe just outside the playoff bubble in the West. But like, if Vancouver doesn’t bounce back, do they have tough decisions to make next summer?

I look at the Nashville Predators, and, obviously, last year was a wildly disappointing season. This year, they’re running it back to some extent, trying to prove that it was an anomaly. But what if it isn’t? What if Nashville is near the bottom of the Central Division again? Do they need to sit and have some hard conversations next summer?

Out east, the New York Rangers hire Mike Sullivan, and Artemi Panarin is heading into a contract year, and you give JT Miller the captaincy. What if it doesn’t work? What if you take another step backwards? What if you don’t get into the playoffs? I’m fascinated to see which way it goes.

Hutton: That is a topic for a lot of teams, too, right? When we talk about those buyers or sellers, right? I thought last year was a year when nobody really sold. Teams were holding on to guys trying to look down the road, and is it going to come back to haunt you as you have expiring players?

The interesting one is Vancouver, because they’re a few years removed from sending five players to the All-Star Game and being in the mix. A healthy Thatcher Demko can be a difference maker, and he’s had a healthy offseason. It will be exciting to see what happens in Vancouver, but that being said, the Pacific Division is absolutely loaded, and there are going to be a lot of good teams. 

You can catch the full segment and the rest of the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live right here…