Vancouver Canucks announce they’ve parted ways with PP coach Jason King
1 year ago
Early Thursday afternoon, Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced that the club has parted ways with assistant coach Jason King. King was responsible for the club’s power play and managed to remain on the coaching staff through both the firings of Travis Green and Bruce Boudreau.
At his end of season media availability, head coach Rick Tocchet raved about his coaching staff, and has always been very vocal about how much he likes his staff, now made up of Adam Foote, Mike Yeo, and Sergei Gonchar behind the bench alongside Tocchet.
Tocchet didn’t necessarily hint that a change could be coming, but did say that he and management would evaluate the coaching staff, which Tocchet further explained was standard procedure around the NHL.
One thing the announcement from the Canucks today didn’t do was name King’s replacement behind the Canucks’ bench. And that’s where this gets a bit interesting.
On Wednesday, a report from a Russian website stated that Mike Yeo was leaving the Canucks’ staff and that Ilya Vorobyov would be hired in his place. Here’s the article, translated from Russian:
Vancouver included Ilya Vorobyov in the list of candidates for the post of assistant head coach. The Canucks are looking for a replacement for Mike Yeoh and have included Vorobyov on the shortlist, according to Match TV .It is noted that he could be recommended by Sergey Gonchar , who holds the position of development coach at Rick Tocquet’s headquarters.The 48-year-old specialist, who recently left Metallurg , has Russian and German citizenship and speaks English.Forwards Andrey Kuzmenko and Vasily Podkolzin play in Vancouver , with whom Vorobyov crossed paths in SKA.In addition, there are 7 Russian-speaking hockey players in the Canucks system at once. In addition to Kuzmenko and Podkolzin, these are Ilya Mikheev, Vitaly Kravtsov, Kirill Kudryavtsev (all from Russia), Danila Klimovich (Belarus) and Artur Shilov (Latvia).At Metallurg, Vorobyov worked with several North American specialists – Paul Maurice, Mike Keenan (they were the head coaches of Magnitogorsk), Tom Barrasso and Mark French (they were part of the headquarters).
On Thursday, a Canucks spokesperson confirmed to CanucksArmy that there will be no replacement coming in for King behind the Canucks’ bench, meaning Tocchet’s assistants will be Foote, Yeo, and Gonchar heading into the 2023-24 season.
It is unclear at this time what the roles will be, or who will take over the power play coaching duties in King’s place.
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