Are the Vancouver Canucks the most cursed franchise in NHL history?
Fans in Vancouver might think so, considering a pretty significant string of bad luck dating back to the spin of a wheel that cost them a Hall of Famer. Then again, there are a number of teams that simply do not exist anymore, whether because they are defunct or got relocated, so one could argue that they’re a little bit more cursed than the Canucks.
But among active teams, the Canucks have a pretty good argument to be the most cursed, with no Stanley Cups in their entire franchise history despite twice getting to Game 7 in the Cup Final.
So, how do the Canucks break the curse? Perhaps with another, entirely different curse.
Enter the NHL 25 cover.
Quinn Hughes is a cover-of-a-video-game level star
There’s no better sign that an athlete has “made it” than getting on the cover of a video game. With that in mind, Quinn Hughes has definitely made it.
The Vancouver Canucks’ captain will be on the cover of EA Sports’ NHL 25 alongside his younger brothers, Jack and Luke Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. It’s the first time more than one NHL star has appeared on the same cover since they moved from in-game action shots to cover athletes starting with John Vanbiesbrouck on NHL 97.
The uniqueness of the cover, which has been in the works since the 2024 All-Star Game, was not lost on Hughes and his brothers, who grew up playing the game against each other.
“We feel incredibly honoured to be on the cover of NHL 25,” said the elder Hughes. “Being featured alongside my brothers is the sort of thing you dream about as a kid but could never imagine happening in real life.”
But the honour comes with some superstitions, as some have argued that the athletes who appear on the cover of EA Sports’ NHL games are cursed.
Is there an EA Sports NHL cover curse?
EA Sports’ Madden NFL games have what’s known as the Madden Curse, as the athletes often suffer a serious injury after being featured on the cover or see their careers sharply decline. For instance, Michael Vick suffered a fractured fibula less than a week after the game’s release when he was featured on the cover of Madden 2004, which is definitely the thing he’s most known for now.
Does EA Sports’ NHL series have a similar curse? Maybe.
The NHL’s cover athletes haven’t been known to suffer catastrophic injuries but hockey culture has always been more about the crest on the front of the jersey rather than the name on the back. With that in mind, the NHL cover curse seems to affect the team rather than the individual player.
While the series was initially sold with action shots from games on the cover, it switched to individual cover athletes with John Vanbiesbrouck for NHL 97.
Since then, of the 29 NHL stars featured on the cover, just three have made it out of the first round of the playoffs in the season the game was released — four if you count Joe Sakic, who replaced Dany Heatley on the cover of NHL 2004, who himself had replaced Joe Thornton.
Just one athlete has won the Stanley Cup the season after appearing on the cover of an EA NHL game and it was Patrick Kane with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010, which is its own unique brand of cursed for Canucks fans.
13 of 29 stars saw their team miss the playoffs entirely after they were featured on the cover. In other words, 44.8% of the time, the cover athlete for EA’s NHL games doesn’t even make the playoffs.
Is that a curse? After all, in today’s NHL, 50% of the league misses the playoffs. But one would hope that a team featuring a superstar worthy of a video game cover would be more likely to make the playoffs rather than less likely. Consider that 25% of NHL teams get to the second round of the playoffs each season compared to just 10.3% of cover athletes and things start to look a little more cursed.
A little Canucks’ history with the EA cover curse
Canucks fans get a little extra cursed along the way, aside from Kane and the 2010 Blackhawks being the lone exception to the supposed curse.
Before there were individual cover athletes, the cover of NHL 95 for Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo featured the New York Rangers’ Alexei Kovalev scoring a goal on the Canucks’ Kirk McLean during Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final. That’s a little bit extra salt in the wound for Canucks fans, who might have hoped for better treatment from the franchise considering EA’s NHL games are made in Vancouver, their own backyard.
The one time a Canuck was the cover athlete for an NHL game was Markus Näslund for NHL 2005. That game was released on September 14, 2004, two days before the start of the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 NHL Season.
When the NHL returned for the 2005-06 season, the Canucks missed the playoffs by three points. It was the end of the West Coast Express era, as Todd Bertuzzi was traded to the Florida Panthers as part of the trade for Roberto Luongo after the season.
Now, Quinn Hughes will be the second-ever Canuck on the cover of an NHL game, albeit accompanied by two Devils.
Will the curse, if it exists, get Hughes and the Canucks? Or will multiple Hugheses diffuse the curse, spreading it between two teams on opposite sides of the continent? And how will the cover curse affect the already cursed Canucks?
Can the Canucks transfer the very real, very serious curse to the Devils?
Sports curses are fickle beasts, so it’s hard to say what the interaction will be between the two curses. But one way to get rid of curses, at least in fiction, is to pass the curse on to someone else, like in The Ring, It Follows, or Drag Me to Hell.
So, what if the unusual circumstance of the Hughes brothers all appearing on the same cover allows the curse to pass from the Canucks to the devilishly-named Devils?
One might ask how that would work, considering the Devils missed the playoffs last season. They seemingly have nowhere to go but up after finishing 13th in the Eastern Conference, ten points out of a playoff spot.
But the Devils are a popular pick to significantly improve next season, as they made some big additions in the off-season, in particular trading for Jacob Markstrom to be their number-one goaltender. In fact, according to PlayNow, the Devils have the fourth-best odds to win the Stanley Cup next season at 13-to-1, just behind the Edmonton Oilers, Florida Panthers, and Dallas Stars.
In fact, the Devils, despite winning just one playoff round since 2012, have better odds than the Canucks, who are 16-to-1 to win the Cup.
Certainly, the Canucks seem like a likely candidate to regress after so much went right for them to finish first in the Pacific Division. It’s not that they’ll necessarily be a worse team than last season but they might not be able to match their 50 wins. It’ll especially be tough if their number-one goaltender isn’t 100% and their backup has a bad knee.
But do the Devils really have a better chance of winning the Cup next year than the Canucks?
That’s the kind of hubris and pride that typically leads to some kind of curse — perhaps a Canucks curse more than five decades in the making, passed along via a video game made in Vancouver?
Not that Hughes would wish that fate on his brothers but he would just be an innocent bystander in this curse transference. It wouldn’t be his fault. It would be the fault of NHL 25.
Or maybe the curse wouldn't need to be transferred at all. Consider this: a curse is a negative, that much is clear. In mathematics, if you multiply a negative by another negative, the result is positive. So, if the Canucks' general accursedness is multiplied by the NHL cover curse, that should result in an overwhelmingly positive result for the Canucks. Right?
What would it be like for the Canucks to be curse-free? Maybe we’re about to find out.
