Not sure what happened to the last blog, but here's a refresh.

Well it's been a strange few weeks.

After getting eliminated, the Canucks seem to be on a track for another wild and dramatic offseason.

During his presser Jim Rutherford mentioned that Hughes has the desire to play with his brothers, so the Canucks have a couple seasons to right their ship and get back on track to make sure Quinn wants to stay. That was right before Coach Tocchet decided to jump ship. Hughes was a huge fan of Tocc, so the "Keep Quinn Happy" campaign got off to a rocky start already.

Ask where his head was, Rutherford said he's not planning on going anywhere.

“I don’t think about it a lot, so I’m not thinking about leaving town,” Rutherford said, after a long pause. “I’m still here for the same reasons, and I don’t feel comfortable with the job that I’ve done. We were on the right track a year ago, we got off that track. I take a lot of responsibility for it. It’s my job. I have the hockey department. We have a lot of work to do to get back on track and at this point in time that’s my focus, to see if we can do it.”

Tocchet ultimately decided to leave for personal reason after the Canucks stepped up their offer. They didn't hold back on the money or term, it was just that Tocchet wanted to move on. Maybe we'll get more insight later... but for now, here's a list of potential candidates for the new bench boss compiled by Drance and Dayal at the Athletic.


Manny Malhotra

Adam Foote

Peter Laviolette

Jeremy Colliton

Mike Yeo

Todd Nelson

Jay Woodcroft

Mike Vellucci

Dominique Ducharme


It may seem like Malhotra has the inside track on the job, not only based on familiarity with the organization/management, but keeping some consistency with how the team plays.

The team wants to find their guy quickly though, as they start to shape their roster throughout the summer. It's a new wrinkle for the Canucks, but hopefully one that makes them a better and more exciting team next year.

“We’ll do a shortlist,” said Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford on Tuesday afternoon. “I’d expect our phones will ring on a regular basis from people who want this job. We’ll narrow it down fairly quick and start the process from there. Up until now, we didn’t talk about it.”

“We have a situation here where we have some star players, impact players, and any time you have them, the coach has to be able to adjust to how you deal with them compared to the rest of the roster,” Rutherford said. “They have to understand that playing in Vancouver, the travel can be tough at times, can they manage the schedule … It’s a bit of a unique situation because of that.

“We’ll break all that down. You have to have some experience, you have to have leadership qualities, you have to have a good structure and system that players can lean on when they’re not playing well.”

We'll see where the team goes from this... who knows, maybe another coach will get axed after their team is eliminated from the playoffs and gets added to the list.

For now, we got comments again.

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