Following the announcement of Rick Tocchet’s departure, Vancouver Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford met with the media. With such a pivotal decision that was made here and what the potential impact it will have on the Canucks, we thought we would give you the entire breakdown of the availability.
First off, Rutherford started with an opening statement:
“Well, I got disappointing news this morning. As you know by now, Rick Tocchet has decided not to return as the coach of the Vancouver Canucks. And, it’s a little bit surprising. We had a lot of talks over the last four to six weeks, and in those talks, it was sort of general talks like we would normally have at the end of each year. He’s talking about what he’s going to do with the players in the summertime, what he wants to do differently at camp, and what he wants to do with the team next year. So, for the most part, the talks were all about the future, and it appeared to me that he would return.
“So we got to a point here, within the last four or five days, that we said, we’re going to have to bring this to a head as to what the future is. Because one, if you’re not returning, there’s other teams looking for coaches, the Canucks have to go on with their business. And two, you have to prepare for what you’re going to do with the players. Anyways, I got the call this morning from his agent, and then a call right after from Rick explaining why he wouldn’t return. I think you saw it in the press release, but he just expressed that he felt he needed a change. Part of that, for personal reasons, he wants to move back to the Eastern part of the United States and be closer to his family. But obviously, we’re very disappointed. We thank him greatly for the job he did here. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time, and he always will be. He’s a very good coach, and he did a good job here. So we’re very thankful for that.”
Canucks management did not see this decision coming. But now that they’re faced with finding the next head coach, how quickly does that search begin?
“We’ll start to do a short list. I would expect our phones will ring on a regular basis for people that want this job and we’ll narrow it down fairly quick and then start the process from there. But up until now, we really did not talk about it.”
Rutherford laid out some of the details of their negotiation and how the decision left him surprised:
“Well, I’m surprised, because, like I said in my opening statement, all our talks were about what happened during the season, what Tocc wants to do different, what he’s going to do with each player, going to go over to Sweden to check on Petey [Elias Pettersson] in the summertime, stuff like that. But it did get to a point, I would say, probably a week ago, where I started thinking, well, we keep talking about what’s going to go on, but we don’t have the commitment yet. At that point, I started thinking, he’s not quite sure. And I wasn’t sure why, because of how positive everything was going but then when he talked to me today, with him and I being friends for as long as we have, he talked to me about some of the things he’s dealing with, and he just said, for personal reasons, I will have a very tough time doing the job I need to do. So the short answer to your question is, it’s hard.”
Throughout Tocchet’s tenure, this management group has tried to bring in players who would thrive in Tocchet’s system. Now that he’s gone, how will this change the way they construct the team moving forward?
“We’re gonna have to make changes anyway, whether Tocc was returning [or not] – we knew we were going to certainly make some changes with our forwards. But ideally, we know who the coach is, so that the coach can have input on that. It’s important for the coach to get players that he wants, not for the general manager, just to make trades and say, ‘Here’s your guys, you make the adjustment.’ So hopefully, and we really don’t want to do this in a manner that we do it too quick and we make the wrong decision on a coach. We want to make sure that we go through the proper process, but the sooner we get it done, the better it is for the planning for the off-season.”
With Tocchet gone, the new head coach will be the fourth in as many years. Rutherford highlighted how difficult that can be for the long standing members of the Canucks:
“It’s difficult for the guys that have been here. Of course, we’ve made a lot of changes, so everybody hasn’t been under four coaches. I will make the point that I only hired one of them, so they’re not all my coaches, but at the same time, that’s not easy. It’s not easy on an organization. It’s not easy for you guys. You like to know who you’re dealing with over time, not easy for the fans, not easy for the players. So when I look at the history of the Canucks, though there’s not a lot of coaches that coached here for a long time. I know Pat Quinn did. I think maybe [Alain] Vigneault did, if I remember, right. But for the most part, coaches are here 2-3-4 years, and that’s unfortunate, because you like to have somebody longer term.”
This decision might not mean more to anybody more than the Canucks Captain Quinn Hughes. Hughes has gone to bat for Tocchet, expressing how great he has been, even going as far as to say that he was his favourite coach he has ever had. But has Rutherford talked to him after this decision?
“I hope he’s playing golf, because he usually returns my calls right away, and I called him within a half an hour after I talked to Rick so he hasn’t called me back yet. Knowing how he feels about the coach and that he’s a sensitive guy, I would suspect that he feels like I do, that we’re disappointed. But knowing the maturity of Quinn, he will make the adjustment necessary. But they did have a very strong relationship, a very good one, and Quinn had a lot of respect for him, and Tocc had a lot of respect for Quinn. So there will definitely be an adjustment there.”
With Tocchet moving on, what does that mean for the rest of his staff? Rutherford also covers the possibility of Manny Malhotra drawing consideration for the next head coaching gig:
“Based on the job he did there, the experience he has in the league, he will certainly be on the short list and will be a guy that will be considered. As for the other guys, we were kind of waiting to see what Tocc was going to do and what he wanted. He actually talked about wanting to bring in another assistant coach for a certain area that he wanted to deal with, which I had already approved and said, ‘That’s fine. We can do that.’ I would say the organization respects the other guys, and they will be guys that we will want to keep. But at the same time, if you bring a new coach in, he may want to bring one or two of his own guys. So we’re going to have to tread lightly here for a little bit, even though those guys are going to want to know. So we’ll just have to see how that plays out.”
With all the dysfunction that surrounded the Canucks this season, Rutherford was asked about bringing in another coach who could help develop the leadership group. He admitted that this was not something he had thought about before, but is now willing to consider:
“I will say that there are coaches presently in the league that were not head coaches in the NHL, that’re doing a good job with some teams. So my quick thought for part of your question is not necessarily having to have NHL experience, but you have a good point about somebody with experience to help the leadership, which I will have to put more thought into. But that also goes along with it’s not just about coaching in the NHL. What experience do people have as leaders of their teams when they played, for example, or were they captains? Or what experience, so but it’s a great point that I have to think about a lot, a little bit more.”
Rutherford was then asked about his future within the organization, and if the decision today changed his mind at all:
“I don’t think about it a lot. So I guess I’m not thinking about leaving town. 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 this year. I take a lot of responsibility for it. It’s my job. I had the hockey department, and we have a lot of work to do to get back on track. At this point in time, that’s my focus: to see if we can do that.”
He was then asked about the possibility of bringing somebody in whom he is familiar with, more specifically, two coaches he’s won Stanley Cups with in Mike Sullivan and Peter Laviolette:
“Well, when you’re familiar with somebody, you know how they work and you know they’re they’re positives and negatives. I know my good friend, Mike Sullivan, does not want to leave the East. He’s a real good family man. I talked to him yesterday – not about coming here, but talked to him when he left Pittsburgh – and I know he wants to in the East. As for Peter, we had some success together. I like him as a person and a coach. Haven’t got that far yet, but certainly having someone you’re familiar with helps, but I’m not the guy on a day-to-day basis that deals with the coach and does the day-to-day work. Who does Patrik Allvin deal with? And he did not work with Peter Laviolette. So, I wouldn’t want to take him off the list at this point. He’s had a lot of success in the league, and it’s a good name.”
With there being so many coaching vacancies out there, what does Rutherford think will be something that draws them to Vancouver?
“I think for some people, they want to get an NHL head coaching job, right? So they may not analyze it and look into it quite as deep as what you’re looking for. But from the Canucks point of view, they probably want to come here because they like where we practice,” Rutherford smirked. “They might want to come here because they see what our defence is and what our goalies are. They could see what we all talk about: we have to make our forwards better. We have to have more balance. I believe around the league, people feel that it’s a good and working relationship within our hockey group here. So, there’s lots of reasons to come here. And as for where we practice, they do want to make the point that we really don’t use a practice rank as much as other teams. I think we were only at UBC like eight or 10 times after November. But again, we’re working towards getting that facility done, but it’s going to take time.”
The difficult situation the Canucks found themselves in at the beginning of the season was brought up as how this may have led to Tocchet deciding to move on. Rutherford addressed it and how it plays a factor in finding the next coach, as well as how that coach will have to help get some of the club’s top players going again:
“I mean, that coach is the guy that leads the team every day. [He] makes a lot of decisions, makes a lot of in-game decisions that can determine whether you win or lose games. As for the major issue we had to deal with in the first half, it wore really hard on everybody, players, coaches, and managers. It was tough, but we can’t talk about that forever. It’s behind us now; whether we did the right thing or we didn’t do the right thing, it’s behind us. It was a decision that I don’t think we had a choice to make based on all the information I had. We did what we had to do. We have to move on from that. Now it’s about getting those, the top players. And when I say that, I don’t refer to Quinn. He’s a phenomenal player. We don’t worry about him, but getting the top players to perform the way they have to. You have to have your impact players win games for you, not just be one of the guys. And that’s part of the job of the coach, and that’s something that the new coach is going to have to figure out.”
The conversation ended with a detour off the coaching vacancy and shifted to Tom Willander and why he has yet to be signed:
“In short, we have a structure for our draft picks, and this isn’t just about Tom Willander. It’s about what goes forward. Who are the guys to be drafted after them? How do they slot in? How do you pay them? You can’t be all over the map and be helter-skelter when you’re doing these contracts. But at the end of the day, he’s going to have a decision to make at some point whether he comes to camp, plays, turns Pro and makes a few million dollars over the next couple years and burns one or two years of free agency towards being unrestricted or go back to college and start two years from now. I mean, what I just laid out wouldn’t make any sense for a player to make that decision. So Emilie [Castonguay] still continues to work on a regular basis on the contract, and we hope to get it done sooner or later. We’re fine with him being over at the World Championships; he’s playing, and he’s getting his development time, which is good. But at some point, Tom and his family are going to have to make a decision on some of those things that I just mentioned.”
You can watch the entire media availability here:
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