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The Vancouver Canucks have three different head coaches on their payroll for the rest of the season

By Ian Oland

 1 Comment

January 23, 2023 1:53 pm

The Vancouver Canucks fired Bruce Boudreau on Sunday after a long song and dance that left the former Capitals bench boss the most sympathetic figure in the NHL. The Canucks announced the hiring of Rick Tocchet, who reportedly had to give four weeks’ notice to TNT to get out of his TV analyst deal.

Boudreau, who is one of the best personalities in hockey, was cheered and revered by Canucks fans as he was pushed out the door by Canucks brass. Boudreau ended his tenure with the second-best points percentage in Canucks’ history (50-39-13; .554%).

The Canucks are paying for their mismanagement in more ways than one.

In accepting the deal, Tocchet signed a three-year deal that will pay him $2.75M per season. The Canucks will finish the year paying for three different head coaches, two of which have been fired.

Per The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun, Tocchet, Boudreau ($2M), and Travis Green ($2.75M) are all on the ledger for the rest of the season, meaning the Canucks have $7.5 million tied up to the position.

Green was fired on December 6, 2021, as the Canucks were languishing in last place of the Pacific Division. They had a 9-15-2 record and were amidst a 3-9-1 stretch of bad hockey. Green’s firing brought in Boudreau who eventually gave way to Tocchet a little over a year later.

The Canucks have fired seven coaches and had one other resign over the last decade.

The contract situation could explain why Boudreau’s firing was potentially slow-rolled. If he were to quit or resign, the Canucks would not have been required to pay out the rest of his contract.

Looking closer at the Canucks roster, the team is also paying Braden Holtby and Jake Virtanen to not play for them this season and are $4.7 million over the $82.5 million cap due to two players being on long-term injured reserve.

This is all to sit in 27th place in the NHL with no hope in sight.

President of hockey operations, Jim Rutherford, and general manager, Patrik Allvin, officially introduced Tocchet to the media on Sunday afternoon. Canucks brass was unable to wrestle back much of the narrative during the 50-minute press conference and continued to look small to the public.

Rutherford was asked about why this situation went so poorly. Rutherford blamed the media and said he will be less honest and forthcoming in the future. There’s also an apology in there “if I’ve offended anybody in the process.”

This was how the hiring/firing process played out according to Rutherford.

Jim Rutherford: I’ll do the abbreviated form of how it was handled. About a month ago — well there are different meetings throughout the season. But leading up to this decision about a month ago, Patrik and Bruce and I had a meeting. We talked about where the team was at. We had some of our top players having really good seasons, the bottom half of the team seems to have declined even to the point of some of our younger players. That was a concern about how do we go forward and get all of these players on board and playing to their potential.

We had that meeting and we talked about a bunch of things. I talked about our schedule and where we were at. We’d really like to get through the year as coach and then make a decision at that point and we’d like to see some progress.

Two weeks later, we had a follow-up meeting, part of the due process, walked through a bunch of things again. There wasn’t any improvement in any of the areas we were hoping for. So then it got to the point where Patrick started to zero-in on it and felt at that point we had to make a change.

Part of this process, and I will apologize to Bruce for this, is probably in my interviews over the course of the season, when people asked me a question, I’m probably too direct and too honest. And so that goes back to my comment about team playing with more structure and things like that. I’ve done that my whole career, I’ve tried to be honest, I’ve tried to answer the best I can. Sometimes that affects certain people. In this case, it probably did affect him. I’m sorry I did that. I’ve learned from it. So I’ve decided to zip it. I’m not going to talk about the team. I’m going to let Patrick and Rick Tocchet talk about the team and just stay away from those things.

Unfortunately, it turned out the way it did. Nobody takes great pride in this. I’ve known Bruce for a long time — he’s been a friend — and I feel very bad about it. If I’ve offended anybody in the process, I apologize personally on behalf of the Canucks.

It played out in a way that was out of our control. We can only do our business [the way] we see fit. We can’t change our business based on speculation. So there’s all kinds of speculation out there. It’s not any different than most situations in professional sports where a team is not winning as much as people would like and there’s speculation that there’s going to be changes.

If you go back to the last time there was a coaching change here, there was speculation about it and the owner was talking to Bruce about coming here before there was a change made. There’s not a whole lot different other than what I apologized for, for maybe being too direct with my comments during the course of the season. But you can talk about executives around the league and you can always find people that are going to go against something. I’ve had several calls and I know a lot more than you do from people that think this was really overplayed by everybody and by agents. As a matter of fact, agents feel really comfortable in the direction this is going.

Tocchet arrived in Vancouver with his own controversy that he didn’t own up to. Tocchet had a Twitter account where he had questionable behavior online.

Per The Daily Hive:

One tweet liked from Tocchet’s account was from late actress Kirstie Alley explaining her vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 American presidential election, claiming “he gets things done quickly and he will turn the economy around quickly.”

Tocchet had also liked a TMZ article from 2014 suggesting pop musician and actress Miley Cyrus could be starting a career in pornography, just one of several, er-, adult-focused Tweets he’d liked over the years.

Tocchet deleted it on the day of his hiring.

“I had it, when I was on your side with TNT, it was more to promote and stuff,” Tocchet said. “Now as a head coach time to get rid of it, you know?”

As for how Tocchet would coach in Vancouver, he said that he’d like to create “a safe environment where once you hit the locker room, guys feel safe and trusting.”

He added, “It’s a big part of what I want to do. Build relationships. The guys that I brought with me, I’m a relationship guy.”

As the Vancouver Canucks try to move forward, they will also continue to deal with the fallout from former analytics analyst and assistant to the video coach, Rachel Doerrie, who claims the team fired her for discriminatory reasons in September 2022.

Doerrie published an open letter to Boudreau on The Hockey News, where she praised his leadership and how he treated her.

There was never a moment where I felt you didn’t have my back. In the toughest of moments, you were willing to go to bat for me, a new staff member with almost no experience. That says more about you than any forecheck or DZ coverage ever could. I took many lessons from you and the staff, but the most important one was this: No matter how tough it may be, you must stand up for what is right. You cannot back down because the situation may be inconvenient or confrontational. It is more important to have compassion and support your colleagues than it is to fall in line. That is something I will carry with me forever.

Watching this process unfold from afar, powerless to help or support you, has been tough. In a way, I feel I let you down. You had my back when I needed it most, and I could not return the favour. Seeing you tear up in pressers or on the bench on Saturday night pained me. You deserved the chants and the ovation from the fans. Canucks fans, they’re smart. They recognized you deserved better, and I hope their outpouring of appreciation is your lasting memory from the past few months.

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