EDMONTON — Two years ago, the Vancouver Canucks won 50 games. Thursday, they finished the 2025-26 season with 25 wins — and 49 regulation losses.

No matter how accustomed we have become to the team’s historic retreat this season, the numbers are still halting.

How much has changed for Vancouver in the National Hockey League was reinforced by its final-game 6-1 humiliation against the Edmonton Oilers, the Stanley Cup contenders the Canucks forced to Game 7 in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs just 23 months ago.

The Canucks did not come close to competing Thursday in the same building where they nearly took down the Oilers in 2024.

“I was thinking about that,” longest-serving Canuck Brock Boeser said after the team’s funeral march finally ended. “It's hard to imagine. I don't even know what to say, really, right now. It sucks. I’ve still kind of got to get my thoughts together about everything that happened.

“But this is obviously a direction we had to go with the moves that were made. We’ve got to restart.”

Shots Thursday were 35-12 for the Oilers, who needed a point to guarantee themselves a home-ice start to this year’s playoffs. That urgency was exemplified by Connor McDavid, who seemed to make it his mission not to let the last-place Canucks steal a game that would make it harder for Edmonton to begin another........

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