VANCOUVER — Wistful excitement in imagining the Vancouver Canucks as the next Anaheim Ducks is tempered by the time — seven years — it has taken the Ducks to become what they are.

They are finally a playoff team again, but not yet one ready to actually win anything. They have tremendous speed and are a riot to watch because the Ducks attack exuberantly in waves, often at the expense of their own defensive well-being.

Tuesday against the Canucks, the Ducks surrendered a couple of leads before surviving a late surge by Vancouver and winning 5-3 on Troy Terry’s empty-net clincher.

It was a far better game for the Canucks than what they offered their home crowd Saturday against the St. Louis Blues (3-1 loss) and last Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning (6-2 loss) but was still Vancouver’s third straight defeat at Rogers Arena, and its fifth in seven games during a marathon homestand that ends Thursday against the Los Angeles Kings.

But the Ducks were also a lot more fun for the Canucks to play than St. Louis or Tampa, which each limited Vancouver to just 10 shots through two periods. The Canucks’ 30 shots on Tuesday — the Ducks had 34 — equalled their second-highest total in the last 18 games.

“I thought it was a better effort,” Canuck winger Jake DeBrusk said after opening the scoring. “But I still thought we gave away way too many Grade-As (scoring chances). I think they had five breakaways, and a couple two-on-ones in there. So it wasn’t necessarily our best game by any means, but I definitely liked our effort and the pushback.

“(The Ducks) have obviously gone through a lot of growing pains. Got a lot of younger guys, some older guys mixed in there. I like the way they play; I think they play hard. Obviously, they’re known as a run-and-gun team because they can score goals, but I like the speed. I think that’s the biggest part of their game. They probably want to clean up some things (defensively), but they’re leading our division right now for a reason. And I think it’s because they’re starting to learn how to play a little tighter.”

Asked Tuesday morning what lessons the Canucks could take for their rebuild from the Ducks, Vancouver coach Adam Foote hesitated long enough for the Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings to actually make the playoffs.

Foote could have said: “Miss the playoffs for seven straight seasons and be so bad during a four-year period that you draft three times in the top three.”

Instead, after measuring his answer, Foote talked about surrounding good young players with some carefully chosen veterans who give the prospects space. But he also noted, as many do not, that the Ducks are still a work in progress and need to learn “not” to play run-and-gun each game.

He also could have said “be patient,” although that is hardly news to anyone who has followed the painful, years-long rebuilds in places like Anaheim, Chicago and San Jose, as well as the excruciating, interminable ones in Buffalo and Detroit, where the roster construction has frequently looked like failure.

The Ducks, at least, have more or less shown progress in a rebuild whose foundation is drafted core players Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Beckett Sennecke, Jackson LaCombe and Lukas Dostal, and acquired-in-trade sniper Cutter Gauthier.

Still, after nine straight losses, the Ducks were a not-so-mighty 21-21-3 on Jan. 10 when coach Joel Quenneville convinced them to start defending better.

They are 19-6-1 since and have allowed three or fewer goals in 18 of those games. A few times when they’ve been porous, the Ducks’ speed and talent have allowed them to outscore their deficiencies. They’ve also been buoyed by an 8-0-1 record in overtime and shootouts the last two months. For what it’s worth, Anaheim hasn’t lost any of its eight shootouts this season.

Whether this makes them a playoff threat is doubtful, but right now they’re definitely a playoff team. Not only are they winning the Pacific Division pillow fight, they’ve built a 10-point cushion in the wild-card race. So they’ll be returning to the Stanley Cup tournament for the first time since 2018.

“I think the one thing we said was, ‘Hey, listen, we’ve got to look at this differently,’” Quenneville said Tuesday of the Ducks’ mid-winter turning point. ‘We’ve got to play games where we’ve got to be more stingy. It’s not about making plays every single time we’re out there, expecting a score. We’ve got to play games that are going to be tight the whole way and build off of checking.’ And, you know, different guys were stepping up, scoring some big goals and some timely goals, but it wasn’t pretty. Basically doing everything we could to win that game and play the right way.”

The Canucks will miss the playoffs for the second straight season — and the ninth time in 11 years. Will it be five more seasons before Vancouver sees a playoff game?

Well, if it is, few of the players and none of the staff who are with the Canucks now will be around to see it.

No wonder the players, especially veterans like DeBrusk who know what may lie ahead, are trying to stay focussed on the present — trying to be better next game than they were this game.

“I grew up in Edmonton,” DeBrusk said. “Trust me, I know first-overall pick after first-overall pick doesn’t mean success. It doesn’t. You need a lot of things to go right in this league. You need a lot of good veterans and a lot of good luck. You need health. But, you’re right, it’s taken Anaheim a long time. I think if you look at a rebuild in general, you know, the position we’re in, we’re just looking for any improvements. Competing every night is pretty much our jobs as players. That’s all we can control.”

DeBrusk, Brock Boeser and Drew O’Connor scored for the Canucks. A pair of power-play assists by Elias Pettersson gave him 500 points in 533 games with Vancouver.

Mikael Granlund scored twice for the Ducks, while John Carlson and Leo Carlsson combined for five assists. Besides being the faster team, the Ducks are also, on average, 12 pounds heavier than the Canucks and outhit them 21-13.

“I just liked the way we stuck with it and we pushed real hard,” Foote said.

They will need to continue that for a while.