Canucks Have One Advantage Nobody Wants to Talk About

I have no idea whether Ryan Johnson is still looking to add another player before the season begins. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. At this point in August, I suspect the Vancouver Canucks are pretty comfortable letting things play out and seeing what happens. Still, if I were running the Canucks, there is one thing I would be watching very closely over the next few weeks: the waiver wire.

The Canucks have an advantage finishing last in the NHL last season.

And this is one of those rare situations where finishing near the bottom of the NHL standings actually comes with a little advantage. The Canucks finished last overall when the 2025-26 regular season ended. That's not something anybody in Vancouver is going to put on a T-shirt. But when the waiver wire starts doing its thing in training camp, that finish gives Vancouver a pretty good position.

The team with the fewest points from the previous season gets first priority on waivers, followed by the next-lowest team and so on. So when some team gets stuck after training camp, a good player might potentially become available because the team has too many forwards or blueliners. If that happens, Vancouver is sitting there near the front of the line.

That happens every preseason, and sometimes solid players can be grabbed.

That's the point of the waiver wire. And teams who are trying to find a needle in a haystack sometimes can. You just never know. But you better be quick, because the decision about whether the player is worth taking a chance on can’t be pondered.

Every September, teams discover that the roster they thought they had doesn't quite fit. Somebody has a surprisingly good camp. Somebody else gets squeezed out because there are simply too many players.

That's when the waiver wire gets interesting. The Canucks don't have to go looking for a player. They can simply sit there and watch. And if somebody they like becomes available, they're in a much better position to do something about it than most teams.

Being first in line at the waiver wire is a pretty good little advantage to have.

Of course, there's a reason Vancouver finished 26th. Being near the bottom of the standings isn't generally where you want to be. But every once in a while, something that wasn't much fun at the time gives you a small benefit later.

This might be one of those times. So I don't know if Ryan Johnson has another move in mind. Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. But if I were the Canucks' GM, I'd have somebody watching that waiver wire very, very closely. You never know what might fall out of it.