Rick Tocchet Replaces Bruce Boudreau As Head Coach Of The Vancouver Canucks

The Vancouver Canucks face the Chicago Blackhawks tonight.  This will be the first game with new Head Coach Rick Tocchet.  Bruce Boudreau was fired following a 18-25-3 start to the season.

            Boudreau was hired by the Canucks prior to the 2021 season.  He brought in plenty of NHL experience.  He previously coached Washington, Anaheim,  and Minnesota.  For those franchises, his teams earned a playoff spot 10 times.   Boudreau never was able to advance his teams to the Stanley Cup Final. 

            Last season, Vancouver fired Travis Green 25 games into the season and hired Boudreau.  They stood at 8-15-2.   Vancouver thought a new Head Coach would lite a fire in the team and help them earn a playoff spot.  Well, it didn’t.  The rest of the season, Boudreau went 32-15-10 behind the Canucks’ bench.  They missed a playoff spot for the 2nd year in a row.  This year there was pressure for the Canucks to get off to a great start. 

The Canucks decided it was time to cut ties with Boudreau. Boudreau, though, knew his firing could come at any time and that hurt the performance of the team.  According to ESPN.com, Boudreau said, “Every morning we’d go in and we’d look to see if this was the day that the shoe would drop. When we didn’t hear from it, we’d just go back to work. It was a different scenario than getting caught by surprise. The only surprise was when was it gonna happen. Then everything got leaked out and the whole world knew that the other night against Edmonton was gonna be the last game I’d coached for them.”

            The Canucks replaced him with Rick Tocchet.  Tocchet has been a coach in the NHL before, but he hasn’t been that successful. He was with Tampa Bay from 2008 to 2010 and Arizona from 2017 to 2021.  In that time, he had an overall record of 178-200-60.  His teams earned a playoff spot once, in 2020 when he was with Arizona. They were beaten by the Colorado Avalanche in the 1^st-round in 5 games.

            Tocchet is in a tough position.  Sure he is the Head Coach of an NHL team.  The problem is they have high expectations.  If he can’t improve the team to be in the playoffs this year or next, he might be gone.  Vancouver must let him have at least 3 full NHL seasons.  This would give him a better chance to help this franchise go to the postseason.  Otherwise, it could be another coaching failure for Vancouver.