According to virtually all sources, the Vancouver Canucks pulled out all the stops when it came to attempting to extend head coach Rick Tocchet.

Their final offer was reported to be somewhere in the range of $5 million per year over a term of five years. That’s truly top-tier salary, even among the premium ranks of NHL coaches. The recently-fired-and-now-hired-again Mike Sullivan was believed the have the highest coaching salary at $5.5 million.

Even Tocchet’s agent, Steve Mountain, said that the Canucks “stepped up [and] made the decision hard.”

But, in the end, that decision was made all the same, and it was for Tocchet to depart for another, presumably-immediate, coaching opportunity.

Tocchet’s reasons are, at this time, largely unknown and likely multifaceted. There’s no doubt that the dreadful circumstances of the 2024/25 campaign played a role. Nobody was happy with how this season played out – on or off the ice – and the impetus to walk away from the situation is quite understandable.

It’s also possible that Tocchet isn’t happy with the general direction of a team that seemed to take a clear step backward this year.

And, of course, if Tocchet does go on to coach Philadelphia, as is widely speculated, one can’t ignore that the siren call of the franchise he played his own best hockey for. The chance at a homecoming is no doubt part of the appeal.

But in all this wondering over why Tocchet chose not to extend with the Canucks, one can’t help but wonder: if they couldn’t convince him to stay, how are they going to convince another coach to sign on?

What do the Canucks have to offer to another coaching candidate?

The first, and most obvious answer, is a job. And the money that comes with a job. The Canucks might not be willing to offer $5 million to any ol’ interviewee, but they are clearly willing to pay a fair compensation.

So, they’ll land a coach, eventually. There are enough folks looking to coach in the NHL to make that more than certain.

But landing a coach of their choosing, or even the kind of coach they’re looking for, might be a challenge.

Unfortunately, this, too, is a question of supply and demand. There are only so many top coaching candidates available. And there are a lot of coaching vacancies.

As of this writing, eight NHL teams are without a coach: the Canucks, the Flyers, the Rangers, the Penguins, the Bruins, the Ducks, the Kraken, and the Blackhawks.

It sounds as if the Rangers are hiring Mike Sullivan (and perhaps John Tortorella, as well, not that he was ever coming back to Vancouver, or ever really came to Vancouver in the first place.) If we assume that Tocchet is going to Philadelphia, that still leaves five other vacancies for the Canucks to compete with.

And that’s just for right now. Other coaches are on the hot-seat following early playoff exits, including Los Angeles’ Jim Hiller and maybe even Tampa Bay’s John Cooper.

So, if Vancouver has a list of, say, three top candidates, they still have to convince one of those candidates to choose them over one of the many other vacancies. And it’s kind of hard to see them doing that in the present moment.

What’s on offer from the Canucks?

The chance to coach Quinn Hughes must be appealing. He’s already one of the greatest defenders to ever skate in this league, and not every team has a talent like him already on the roster.

Beyond Hughes, the state of the rest of the blueline might also reasonably be called a selling point. The Canucks have a top-four, and maybe even a top-six, relatively locked in for the next couple of seasons. That’s something that most teams don’t have on hand.

But then there are the downsides. Though many have faith in an Elias Pettersson bounceback campaign, who really wants to be the coach responsible for that? Right or wrong, Pettersson is earning a reputation for being difficult to work with, and until he turns it around, his prominent presence on the roster might be called a deterrent to any new coach.

Past Pettersson, that centre depth is a little ghastly, pending Filip Chytil’s return to action. The top-six right now consists of Pettersson, Chytil, Jake DeBrusk, probably Conor Garland, and then…? Jonathan Lekkerimäki? Dakota Joshua? Nils Höglander?

We’re not saying there’s not potential there. But it’s definitely not a selling point, and quite the contrary.

There still isn’t a practice facility, nor a concrete plan to build one.

But by far the biggest detractor to a coach coming to Vancouver has to be the expectations.

This isn’t a situation in which a coach would be coming in to take a competitive team to the next level, or to start building a new system from the ground up. This is a team in a somewhat desperate situation, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Everyone is aware of Hughes’ dwindling contract. This next season will be the second-last in his current deal, meaning he’ll be eligible to sign an extension following it…or not. That means a lot is riding on the 2025/26 season. It’s not really an exaggeration at all to say the future fate of the franchise is resting on the 2025/26 campaign and, specifically, how Hughes perceives it.

And given that the biggest change the team projects to make this offseason is to its coaching staff, that means a lot of that is resting on the new coach’s ability to make a difference.

Everything will be under a microscope this upcoming year, in a market that always has the zoom cranked up, regardless.

The job at hand is to take the NHL’s most disappointing team in 2024/25 and turn them around within the span of a single season.

Who really wants to sign up for that amount of pressure, when there are other, less-pressure-laden options?

Really, this can go one of two ways for the Canucks. On the one hand, if they do land a coach of their choosing, it will mean that said coach both understands and accepts the challenge at hand. Maybe it’s their competitive flair, maybe they desire the difficulty, maybe they’ve already got a plan to fix the Canucks. That’s definitely an exciting prospect.

The other way it can go, however, is compromise. That means that the Canucks don’t necessarily land one of their top candidates, and must instead accept someone who’s just looking for those first couple of things they can offer – a job and a salary. This likely means a coach low on experience.

Which isn’t necessarily doomed to failure, of course. But either way, one wishes that the Canucks were set up better to pursue their coach of choice – and not set up to so readily scare them off.