VANCOUVER — Had he stayed as Vancouver Canucks coach, Rick Tocchet planned to visit Sweden this summer to spend time with Elias Pettersson in order to strengthen their relationship and set expectations for next season.
Tocchet’s decision this week to leave ensured it never came down to a choice between the coach and the player whose conditioning and underachievement were among the many factors that sank the team.
But Tocchet was willing to work with Pettersson and, although it’s harder to know what the private centre thinks, we believe Pettersson still respected the coach and is determined to be better for next year.
While Pettersson didn’t drive Tocchet away, the frustration the coaching staff had with the Canucks’ highest-paid player isn’t going to lighten the pressure on Pettersson to show up and perform next season for a different coach.
More players on the team than just J.T. Miller were disappointed with Pettersson, who will need to earn back a lot of trust in order to finish that eight-year, $92.8-million contract in Vancouver. And as general manager Patrik Allvin said at his year-end press conference two weeks ago — “I would be, I guess, stupid not to keep my options open” — a Pettersson trade before July 1 is still possible. It’s not a likely outcome or the preferred one for the Canucks, but neither was a Miller trade.
Neither was Tocchet choosing to leave.
With a new head coach the first and most important domino in a critical off-season for the Canucks, the sooner they hire Tocchet’s replacement, the easier it will be to make all the other decisions facing management. But with another six weeks remaining in the Stanley Cup tournament, Allvin and team president Jim Rutherford may not be able to proceed as quickly as they would like.
Ottawa Senators assistant Mike Yeo should be a coaching candidate in Vancouver. It was Yeo, a former head coach in Minnesota and St. Louis, who was chosen by Allvin and Rutherford three years ago to assist previous Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau and try to bring some tactical structure to Vancouver.
The first half of the 2022-23 season was a disaster, but Yeo survived the coaching change and, by all accounts, thrived and impressed as Tocchet’s assistant during the 109-point season two years ago, before management balked at rewarding the 51-year-old with more than a one-year contract extension. The team did not want its obligation to Yeo to extend beyond the one guaranteed season remaining on Tocchet’s contract, so Yeo also chose to leave and landed a multi-year deal to assist Travis Green in Ottawa.
Glen Gulutzan, a former head coach in Dallas and Calgary who also did a three-year tour as an assistant in Vancouver, is widely respected for his work on the Edmonton Oilers’ staff the last seven seasons and could also be a person-of-interest for the Canucks. Gulutzan, obviously, has experience handling superstar players.
There certainly will be other NHL personnel, still working, whom Allvin and Rutherford want to speak with.
Internal candidates for the Canucks job include top assistant Adam Foote — although he is expected to follow Tocchet to an eastern-based NHL team — and minor-league coach Manny Malhotra. Hired a year ago by Canucks assistant manager Ryan Johnson with the approval of Rutherford, who as GM of the Carolina Hurricanes signed Malhotra as a free agent from Vancouver in 2013, the former centre has had an excellent first season coaching Abbotsford and developing players in the American Hockey League.
Eclipsed by the Tocchet news, the most perplexing issue so far in the Canucks’ off-season is the team’s failure to agree with top prospect Tom Willander on an entry-level contract that would allow the highly-regarded defenceman to start his professional career.
The 20-year-old Swede, drafted 11th overall by the Canucks two years ago, is eager to turn pro after a couple of solid seasons at Boston University, and the NHL team obviously wants him. But Willander is currently with Team Sweden ahead of this month’s world championships because he and the Canucks have been unable to agree on basic “Schedule-A” performance bonuses, according to CHEK-TV’s Rick Dhaliwal.
It’s understandable that the Canucks have an internal pay scale for bonuses and may feel they shouldn’t set a precedent by accommodating a defenceman chosen towards the middle of the first round like they would, say, a top-five pick who projects as a scorer. And with the impressive development in Vancouver this season of defence prospect Elias (Junior) Pettersson and the acquisition of Victor Mancini, there is not the urgency for the Canucks to try fast-tracking Willander to the NHL like there would have been a year ago.
But given Willander’s importance to the Canucks as a right-shot, top-four defence prospect, this isn’t the best way to start what both sides want to be a happy, long-term relationship. It’s possible the risk to the Canucks outweighs their principles in this case.
“We have a structure for our draft picks, and this isn’t just about Tom Willander, this contract,” Rutherford explained near the end of his Tuesday press conference. “It’s about what goes forward, who are the guys to be drafted after him? How do they slot in, how do you pay them? You can’t be all over the map and helter-skelter when you’re doing these contracts.
“At the end of the day, he’s going to have a decision to make at some point whether he comes to camp and… turns pro and makes a few million dollars over the next couple of years — and burns one or two years (towards free agency) — or goes back to college and starts two years from now. I mean, what I just laid out wouldn’t make any sense for a player to make that decision.”
There was so much news packed into Tuesday’s announcement and press briefing about Tocchet leaving that a very human, revealing moment for Rutherford was largely overlooked.
Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini coaxed Rutherford out of retirement three and a half years ago, and the Hall-of-Famer cited in his introductory press conference the lure of building a team around young core players like Hughes, Pettersson, Miller and Thatcher Demko.
The 2021-22 season when Rutherford arrived, and Boudreau replaced Green as head coach, the Canucks finished with 92 points. Three years later, and after what seemed like a breakthrough last season with 51 wins, a Pacific Division title and 13 playoff games, Vancouver finished in April with 90 points. Miller has been traded and Tocchet just left.
Asked about his future with the Canucks, the 76-year-old Rutherford said Tuesday: “I don’t think about it a lot, so I guess I’m not thinking about leaving town. I’m still here for the same reasons (to win), and I don’t feel comfortable with the job that I’ve done, okay?
“We were on the right track a year ago. We got off that track this year. I take a lot of responsibility for it. It’s my job; I head the hockey department. And we have a lot of work to do to get back on track. And so at this point in time, that’s my focus, to see if we can do that.”
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