More pieces of the Vancouver Canucks‘ 2026-27 season are falling into place.

Filling out the rest of Manny Malhotra’s coaching staff is a crew of very intriguing names. Ryan Mougenel joins Vancouver after eight seasons with the Providence Bruins, five of them as the head coach, and winning the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL Coach of the Year this past season. Jordan Smith receives a promotion from Abbotsford, where he spent his last two years working with Malholtra. As for Jason Krog, he’s been a skills and skating coach within the Canucks organization for the last two years as well.

The common thread here? None of these guys have coached in the NHL in a full-time capacity.

That might strike some people as odd. The easiest explanation for it all is that the Canucks are trying to cut costs in what is shaping up to be a rebuilding year, paying less because they simply don’t need to shell out for expensive coaches with a wealth of NHL experience.

A fresh, completely “inexperienced” staff certainly isn’t par for the course either. A quick look back at some rookie head coaches hired around the league reveals that plenty of first-time NHL head coaches have retained or brought in assistants who have been in the NHL for a good long while.

Logically, aside from continuity reasons, it makes sense to have a veteran NHL bench presence. The NHL is different than most other leagues – there’s no worrying about call-ups affecting the top end of the roster. This is the top of the pyramid, where the best hockey players in the world play and coexist with so many differing personalities. Some are looking to break in and cement themselves as full-time NHLers, others are looking to compete for championships, and some might just be there for a big payday. For a seasoned NHL assistant, they’re someone a rookie head coach can go to for sound advice, both in a hockey sense and a personnel sense. They’re the ones who can provide insight into how things have worked in different dressing rooms around the league and can be a steadying presence through rough stretches and conflicts that the head coach may be navigating for the first time at this level.

We’ve seen firsthand how that balance goes off-kilter, how conflicts spiral, and how off-ice issues become on-ice problems. We’ve seen this very same Vancouver Canucks franchise go into a rough patch that just never seems to end, looking rudderless and directionless. The fear is that, without anyone who has “been through it,” so to speak, Malhotra’s regime could lose the room and the team before it even manages to begin building momentum.

But in a league where rehashes and rehires are so common, where the Old Boys’ Club comes to roost every single year when rumours circulate around who’s landing in which vacancy – this is surprisingly refreshing. Take the Edmonton Oilers, for example, bringing Mike Babcock back from his banishment for yet another “second chance,” or however many that he’s on at this point now. There are notable culture issues wherever he has ended up, and the on-ice products for the teams he’s coached have also been lacklustre.

Even for the Canucks in their own past couple of hires, they’ve gone with experienced NHL staffs that, on paper, should’ve worked. Yet it was only papering over the cracks in a foundation that had gone rotten and spiralled into the abomination that was the 2025-26 season, which forced the hand of ownership at long last.

It isn’t as if any of these hires are bad. They just aren’t proven at the NHL level. But looking through the body of work, this staff has a wealth of coaching experience through juniors, the minors, as well as from their playing days. It gives the impression of a very development-oriented staff, one that has been through the grind, having to adjust to each level as players and coaches, then going on to not only find their niche and role but also win and succeed in them. There’s a winning pedigree in all of their stops, somewhere along the line.

Having a fresh staff for this rebuild is incredibly intriguing. For a long time, the conversation has been dominated by Vancouver’s culture issues, with drama swirling around the team and its environment. The Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin era stoked those flames all that much more, leading to the changing of the guard and Ryan Johnson’s takeover as GM of these Canucks.

Now, more than ever, this franchise needs a culture reset. Who better to bring that than an entirely new staff?

Malhotra and his bench staff have the chance to build a new standard from the ground up. Opportunities like these don’t come around very often, and while their NHL inexperience might be a risk, it also comes with the fact that they can try something new, something that isn’t just a repeat of past mistakes or “the way it’s always been done.”

That alone provides a refreshing frame to this new era that the Canucks are building towards. Things aren’t going to be smooth, and growing pains are to be expected from the on-ice product. Just as much, though, this coaching staff, this hockey ops staff, will be going through those same pains alongside the group of players. The focus on developing the right way, playing the right way, and winning the right way will be central to this group, and as an entire organization, they’ll be able to row the boat in unison.