Apparently, Bruce Boudreau’s head coaching gig with the Vancouver Canucks was at risk much earlier than we thought.

Boudreau joined Paul Bissonnette and Ryan Whitney for the latest episode of their podcast Spittin’ Chiclets. He touched on his time in Vancouver but also had a story about Canucks’ General Manager Patrik Allvin threatening to fire him at the beginning of the 2022-23 season over his Cameo videos.

“Patrik Allvin comes in and he says ‘and by the way, you can’t do anymore cameos. You do them you’re gonna get fired’”, said Boudreau on the podcast. “To me it was an innocent thing, I never said bad things about anybody.”

Cameo is a website that allows people to pay celebrities for a custom-made video. It’s most often used for birthdays or to celebrate milestones and achievements in life.

Boudreau was on the website during his time with the Canucks, and mentioned that he would only get them once a week. It allowed him to showcase more of his personality that won over Canucks fans during his brief time with the team.

However, Allvin had to step in at one point to put an end to them. While it may sound like the Canucks’ GM doesn’t like fun hearing the story, it’s pretty likely that it was a public relations concern with the Canucks not wanting to risk Boudreau making the franchise look bad. Boudreau cancelled his account shortly after that conversation.

It wasn’t long after that Boudreau would get fired, as he was relieved of his duties later that season. After being hired on December 5th, 2021, to replace Travis Green, it took just over a year for Boudreau to be fired himself and replaced by current Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet in a manner that didn’t go smoothly for the organization. Boudreau finished his Canucks tenure with a 50-40-13 record in 103 games.

Bruce has since coached Team Canada at the 2023 Spengler Cup, and he occasionally appears as an analyst on NHL Network.