Vancouver Canucks: Is it time to give up on playoff hopes?

It’s easy to write off the Vancouver Canucks after losing their sixth straight on Wednesday night. But should we rule out this team’s chances of making the playoffs this early in the season?

Well, the Vancouver Canucks have had better days.

A return home after that brutal six game road trip — in which they went a horrible 1-3-2 — hasn’t done wonders. The Canucks fell 3-2 at home to the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, then followed it up with an ugly 6-3 drubbing via the Winnipeg Jets on Monday.

Only 12 days ago was this team coming off an 8-5 road win against the Boston Bruins, one of the NHL’s top teams from last season. That put them at 10-6-3, sitting atop the Pacific Division before this six-game losing streak took over.

It’s hard to use injuries (more notably, Brock Boeser, Alexander Edler, Brandon Sutter and Sven Baertschi), as excuses. The Canucks were playing pretty fine hockey, even before the injuries racked up. All of the sudden, they’re struggling in every aspect of the game.

So even though they sit at 10-11-2 with a horrible minus-14 goal differential, should fans already be giving up on this team’s playoff hopes? It’s only November, but should the supporters just start counting down the days until the draft lottery?

Fortunately, the Canucks are sitting third in the Pacific Division right now. 78 percent of teams who held a playoff spot at American Thanksgiving from 2005-2017 got in.

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So if they hold that spot down by Thursday, the Canucks will have history on their side. Look, I’m trying to be optimistic here.

For the Canucks, they need to do just about everything to get better in making the playoffs: Elias Pettersson and Bo Horvat can’t be the only consistent contributors.

The other forwards, as usual, aren’t stepping up enough. Teams in today’s NHL don’t make the playoffs if the secondary scoring is lacking this much. It’d be nice if Loui Eriksson began earning his $36 million, or if the offseason pickups of general manager Jim Benning could do a little more at both ends of the ice.

I’m just not even going to blame Jacob Markstrom, because even Pekka Rinne and Braden Holtby would struggle to win games with this lackluster defensive performance in front of him. The Canucks didn’t make any changes to their blue line this offseason. Why should we surprised that it’s struggling again?

If the Canucks don’t get support from the second-to-fourth lines, and if the defencemen can’t bail out the goalies, Vancouver has no shot at the playoffs. It’s that simple.

But who knows? If the Canucks can play .500 hockey for a while, maybe the playoffs are in reach. The Vegas Golden Knights are showing that their inaugural year was pure luck. The Anaheim Ducks are showing their age.

The Los Angeles Kings are competing for Jack Hughes, not a playoff spot. And oh, the Edmonton Oilers are doing a great job of wasting the greatest player on the planet. Amazingly yet, that team doesn’t seem to understand the need of making changes — on the roster, coaching staff or in the front office. Sorry Connor McDavid.

Next. Vancouver Canucks: Burnt out by the schedule. dark

So even though the Canucks are extremely flawed and banged-up right now, I think it’s too early to write them off for the season. The Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks are the only relevant teams in the Pacific right now, and if that doesn’t change, even a mediocre-looking Vancouver team might get back into the playoffs. It’s not so crazyy.

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