The Vancouver Canucks were the first NHL team eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention in 2026. Some of their former players, however, are continuing to make a big difference in their new teams’ playoff pushes — with the ex-Canucks specifically being big factors in the Vegas Golden Knights and Montréal Canadiens’ Game 1 wins on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
The first big performance came from ex-Canuck Nic Dowd during Vegas’ 4–2 Game 1 win against the Colorado Avalanche. Though he only ended up playing 13:18 minutes during this game, the seventh-most among forwards on Vegas, Dowd’s difference-making moment came when he beat out two members of the Avalanche on a non-icing call to slap the puck into the empty net and seal the win for the Golden Knights. Easing up on the play would have likely been detrimental to Vegas, who’d faced an onslaught of offence from Colorado during those final couple of minutes.
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Dowd also won 62.5% of his faceoffs during this game, including the one that led to his empty-net goal.
The next day saw another former Canuck make a big difference in his team’s victory, though his performance came off-the-ice rather than on it. Montréal took a surprising 6–2 win against a Carolina Hurricanes team that had not surrendered more than five goals in a single series throughout this year’s playoffs up until that point. Post-game, Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis gave a shout-out to one particular ex-Canuck’s work in helping them prepare for this series.
“We knew for a long time that if we got through Buffalo, we were playing Carolina. Obviously, our analytics people, but Alex Burrows does a lot of that grunt work for us, and he worked hard while we were trying to close out the series against Buffalo,” St. Louis explained to reporters.
Burrows, a longtime Canuck, was formerly an assistant coach for Montréal but stepped down from the role in July of 2024. Since then, he has remained with the Canadiens organization as a player development coach. He has been with the organization for eight seasons, working both with the AHL’s Laval Rocket as well as the Canadiens during that span of time.
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The Conference Finals of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs resume tonight at 5:00 pm PT, as the Avalanche will host the Golden Knights in Colorado for Game 2 of their series. Montréal and Carolina will face each other on Saturday at 4:00 pm PT.
May 20, 2026; Denver, Colorado, USA; Vegas Golden Knights centerNicDowd(26) celebrates after scoring during the third period against the Colorado Avalanche in game one of the Western Conference Final of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Ball Arena. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images
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