Canucks Finally Hire MacTavish
Thomas Drance
July 28 2011 09:41AM
Well it has finally happened!
Darren Dreger and TSN are reporting this morning that the Canucks management team will definitely hire Craig MacTavish to be the head coach of the teams AHL affiliate the Chicago Wolves. As of the time of this writing, the Canucks have not issued an official media release - but I will update the post when that happens.
Several reliable, high-profile sources like Strickland and Kypreos tweeted nearly three weeks ago that the MacTavish hiring was imminent, only to have Laurence Gillman back-pedal away from those reports. This led to speculation in this space that perhaps the Wolves were more keen on the MacTavish hiring than the Canucks.
As we've previously discussed - MacTavish seems to be a particularly good fit for the Wolves. He has a winning record in his nine years of past experience as an NHL head-coach, and he notably rode Pronger and Roloson to game seven of the Stanley Cup Final in 2006. He has a good track record of developing young players, and matches lines obsessively much like a certain Canucks head-coach.
Seems like a good hiring to me, and not just because I'm excited to beat the "riding MacTavish" joke into the ground during the upcoming season.
I wonder if a certain Canucks coach faulters out of the gate, if Mac-T would get a shot with the big club. I think inevitably, all NHL coaches, save the obvious few, will be fired. Does this mean we now know who our next coach will be?
@Malcolm
I think AV is pretty well positioned with the Canucks, but certainly there's some internal pressure.
That being said - there are too many variables at play. The Canucks AHL affiliate is a cushy job, and the last 5 who've held it have moved to become head-coaches - so if AV doesn't falter it's very possible that Mac-T will have a job elsewhere next summer.
If i had to bet on it, I'd bet that Mac-T is never the Canucks headcoach.