Better luck next year: Do the Vancouver Canucks also have a coaching issue?

What actually IS a good coach?

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Vancouver Canucks.

Before I dig into the Vancouver Canucks season I am going to start off with something I think more of us in the hockey community should be willing to admit — I am not entirely sure I know what good coaching actually looks like.

I have some ideas.

We all have ideas on it.

I think I know it when I see it.

I also think I know bad coaching when I see it.

But I am also not entirely sure I am right. I don’t think any of us are unless we are actually in the room where it is all happening and have first-hand knowledge of what is going on with the team, its coaches and its players.

Is it simply measured by wins and losses? Is it a team that exceeds arbitrary preseason expectations? Or a team that fails to meet them? Is it all about tactics and X’s and O’s? Their ability to manage players?

Obviously it is ALL of that, but what takes priority? And how much priority? How do you measure some of that and assign the proper credit and blame?

We usually associate a great coaching job with a team that entered the season with low expectations and ended up performing at a much-higher level. In most cases, the success of those teams actually comes down to goaltending. When that suddenly levels off, the coach of the year suddenly forgot how to coach and they get fired before the Jack Adams award is even out of the box.

I remember a couple of years ago when the Florida Panthers hired Paul Maurice, I mentioned on Twitter that it was kind of an uninspiring move because he seemed like a typical retread NHL coaching hire that hadn’t really had consistent success or won much of significance in a very, very long career. Almost immediately somebody that worked in an NHL front office reached out and went into detail telling me that Maurice was actually an excellent tactician, had great ideas and was a really smart hire by the Panthers.

Then they went to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals and won the whole damn thing.

So …. I mean …. *shrugs shoulders* …. hell if I know.

I bring this up because I am not sure there is a bigger disconnect in the hockey media landscape right now than the overall opinion people have for Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, and what Rick Tocchet’s teams have actually done in the NHL.

There is almost universal praise for him as a head coach. Everybody loves him. He is not only mentioned as a top candidate for almost all of the biggest vacant jobs (specifically the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers), but also a candidate that should be at the top of every team’s wish list.

And I keep coming back to the same question when I see it.

Why?

Tocchet has been a head coach in the NHL for parts of nine seasons, including seven full seasons.

His teams have qualified for the playoffs only two times (the 2019-20 Arizona Coyotes and the 2023-24 Vancouver Canucks).

One of those was the 2019-20 season that was cut short and took 24 teams into the field. If it would have been a normal season with a normal playoff, they would not have been close to the postseason.

His teams have won a single playoff round in those nine seasons.

Aside from the lack of results, his teams have never really had any sort of strong underlying numbers in terms of driving possession, shot attempts or scoring chances. Any limited success he has had has mostly been the result of strong goaltending. Or in the case of the 2023-24 Canucks, an outrageously high team-shooting percentage that topped the league.

When this year’s Canucks team saw a regression in those percentages (which should have been expected), the success disappeared.

Even worse than the regression was the fact the entire Canucks season just seemed to be a mess.

The team’s best and most important forward, Elias Pettersson, had the worst season of his career, and there was such a rift between him and the second-best forward on the team, J.T. Miller, that the organization was forced to trade one of them (Miller) and almost traded both of them.

As a team, the Canucks were 19 points worse than they were a year ago and missed the playoffs by six points and only managed 28 regulation wins (23rd in the NHL).

How does none of that fall on the coach? How does he escape the blame?

Some of it has to fall on him.

Right?

This is not meant to sound overly critical of Tocchet. He has obviously had a great career in hockey. He had a lot of success in Pittsburgh as an assistant coach. But being an assistant is not the same as running the whole show. And I can not help but think so much of the push for him to keep getting new head coaching jobs is just the simple fact that people really like him.

I am open to being proven wrong. Maybe he does have success in a different environment with a different team and a different roster. Maybe he just needs the right team.

What coach doesn’t? The natural defense of Tocchet is going to be that his Tampa Bay and Arizona teams were not particularly talented. Maybe they weren’t.

But this Canucks team isn’t exactly full of scrubs and bums. He’s got a top-five defenseman. He started the year with two guys that have topped 100-points in the NHL. There’s another guy that’s scored 40 goals. One of the goalies finished in the top-10 in Vezina voting two times, including one year as a runner-up.

It’s not a Stanley Cup roster, and there were some injuries to deal with, but it’s also not a situation where you just say, “well this is hopeless and nobody has a chance here.”

The reputation and praise are not matching up with the results in any of his stops.

Tocchet has an option in his contract that is not being picked up, but the Canucks are still hoping to bring him back on an extension. It remains to be seen if that will happen. If it does not, you will hear Tocchet’s name connect to teams like the Rangers and Flyers. He might even get one of those jobs. I would be fascinated to see how it works. I will be equally fascinated to see what happens with the Canucks and some of their individual players.

Now onto the other stuff with the Canucks’ season.

What went right this season