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JPat’s Monday Mailbag: The early assessment of Manny Malhotra as the Canucks’ head coach

Jeff Paterson's weekly Vancouver Canucks mailbag.

By Jeff Paterson

Nov 9, 2026, 09:00 ESTUpdated: Nov 8, 2026, 19:11 EST

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As the Vancouver Canucks lurch to the 20-game mark tonight against Rick Tocchet’s Philadelphia Flyers, it’s apparent just how much work remains in front of this organization to climb back to the realm of competitiveness. This is life in the early stages of a rebuild. While the wins are few and far between, the club needs to find incremental growth in individuals and in the overall group. The Canucks played the Oilers hard on Saturday night. However, Edmonton has two of the best players in the league and the Canucks simply don’t have that sort of top end talent. An effort like Saturday against a lesser opponent may yield a better result. That theory may very well play out tonight against a Flyers team struggling nearly as much as the Canucks these days. As we wait for puck drop, we turn our attention to the Daily Faceoff Vancouver mailbox to answer some of your questions in our weekly Monday Mailbag.

Will Anderson

@willanderson393

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Replying to @patersonjeff

What is your assessment of Mannys coaching so far? Obviously the quality of the roster is the most impactful factor, but in terms of match ups, tactical adjustments, maximizing player performance, etc.

7:38 PM · Nov 7, 2026

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When Filip Hronek is logging 12:12 of the third period like he did Saturday in Edmonton, you realize pretty quickly the Canucks simply don’t have many other options with Tom Willander out of the lineup. The young blueliner has missed three games now with a lower-body injury, but is skating with the group again and looks to be an option soon – possibly even tonight against Philadelphia. Against the Oilers, the Canucks went with a patchwork right side of Hronek, left-handed Guillaume Brisebois and Luke Schenn.

After a rough night in Winnipeg last Thursday, Victor Mancini came out of the lineup. Willander is third among the team’s defenders in average ice time (20:25), and in his five-on-five minutes the Canucks have been outscored by just three. Relative to his teammates, Willander’s underlying numbers place him among the best on the team. So absolutely, the club has missed Tom Willander. He’s not a perfect player, nor a finished product. But given the other options on the roster, he is without a doubt one of the team’s top defencemen.

What would the process look like for Canucks management to decide Chytil's health is more important than his desire to play and what steps would they need to help him retire?

— Derek Kwan (@dgk1969.bsky.social) 2026-10-31T18:42:34.795Z

I don’t think there really is a process at this point. Chytil has appeared in just seven of the club’s 19 games so far this season due to a pair of injuries. Trust me, I understand the skepticism of some when the team says both injuries are to Chytil’s shoulder and not concussion-related, given his lengthy and troubling history of head injuries. But without access to the player’s medical records, I will take the Canucks at face value: the original injury was to his shoulder, and the second was an aggravation of that initial injury. When healthy, Chytil was playing and playing a lot (22:13 and 21:26 in his last two appearances) in all situations.

I’ll be curious to see if that continues whenever he returns to the lineup. My best sense of the situation is that the Canucks will give Chytil every opportunity to play the remainder of this season simply because they are so thin at centre. However, his contract is up at the end of the year and I just don’t see a world in which he is offered an extension by this team. I also doubt, given his injury history, that playoff-bound teams would look at Chytil as the kind of piece they’d want to add at the trade deadline. So I expect he’ll play out his deal and the club will thank him for his service and wish him well in his future endeavours. At that point, Chytil will need to find another team willing to take a chance on him.

Cordova Bay

@BayCordova

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Replying to @patersonjeff

What happens to the Canucks goaltender situation when Demko comes back? Who can get traded?

7:27 PM · Nov 7, 2026

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I see and hear this question a lot. Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s worth a lot of discussion until Thatcher Demko is back on the practice ice with his teammates and giving any indication he’s about to be an option to return to play. And so far, there has been no hint that is going to happen any time soon. On the eve of the season, Henrik Sedin said the hope was the Canucks would have Demko back by Christmas. It was just a general time frame and perhaps a wishful one at that. Hypothetically speaking, the Canucks could easily carry three goalies on the roster for the remainder of this season.

That’s probably the simplest solution and one that would allow them to push the bigger picture question to the summer. That would also buy them plenty of time to see if there is a Kevin Lankinen bounce-back and to see if Thatcher Demko can remain healthy. Getting healthy is one thing, staying healthy is a completely separate matter. Leevi Meriläinen will be a restricted free agent after this season and will be in line for a new deal and a significant raise. So that certainly complicates matters. But again, these are discussions for another day. First things first is seeing Thatcher Demko working his way back to game action for the first time since January 10th.

Did Montreal pull a fast one on the Canucks with the Gallagher trade or do you just think he’s just warming up?

— Rob Duckworth (@robduckworth.bsky.social) 2026-10-31T20:52:21.717Z

The Habs gave Brendan Gallagher to the Canucks for free. By any definition, I don’t think that qualifies as ‘pulling a fast one.’ Montreal was ready to move on from the veteran winger and tried to find him a soft landing spot. Gallagher wanted to come to the West Coast and the Canucks could easily absorb the final year of his contract. There are no victims here. At 34, Gallagher is fighting to prove he can still play in the National Hockey League. He’s had a few flashes of the player he used to be, but is still looking for his first goal of the season and it’s fair to ask how much more he has left to give. Of course, his value to the Canucks organization can’t be measured in his counting statistics.

He was brought in to help mentor younger players and use his experience from Montreal’s down years to help push the rebuild along in the proper direction. As the team reaches the 20-game mark, Gallagher has been a healthy scratch on three occasions and surely is destined to be parked for many more. Gallagher has two games to look forward to against his former team, however they don’t come until February and March and you just wonder where his game will be and what the state of the team will be by then. The Habs are in Vancouver on February 1st and Gallagher will have to wait to make his return to the Bell Centre on March 6th. That will surely be a bitter sweet night for him heading back to his only other NHL home, but doing it on a team that will very likely be in the NHL basement.

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