Being a fan of the Vancouver Canucks and disappointment go together like peanut butter and ants. They’re not a pleasant combination, but they are a classic, time-tested one. Leave one long enough, and the other is inevitable.

So, the fact that the 2024/25 season was disappointing was, really, nothing new to folks in this fandom. But it was the particular strains of disappointment throughout the campaign that really made it stand out as a year to not remember.

Canucks fans are no stranger to disappointment, in general. But these were some all-new, all-different disappointments, and that made them sting like the freshest of wounds.

Two star players deciding that they can no longer work together, resulting in a trade that blew up the team’s top-six? Rumours of off-ice marital shenanigans aside, that’s something that hasn’t happened before.

Seeing multiple Canucks have their seasons ended with cheapshots that went entirely unpunished? Many such cases have occurred before, but never in such sequence and frequency.

The starting goaltender going down with an injury never before experienced by a hockey player? Yup, that’s the very definition of unprecedented.

And now, one more for the road. Another disappointment the likes of which this tragic franchise had yet to experience.

Rick Tocchet is leaving the Canucks. And – more or less – he’s doing so of his own volition.

Tocchet’s departure itself will no doubt draw mixed reactions. Despite his Jack Adams victory last season, not everyone was a fan of his coaching style.

It’s hard to argue with the success experienced by the Canucks in 2023/24, or the specific success of some players like Quinn Hughes, who became a true league elite and a Norris winner under Tocchet’s tutelage. Under his watch, the Canucks became – and stayed – one of the best penalty killing teams in the league.

But then, aside from the PK, all that success came crashing down around the Canucks’ ears this year, and nothing takes the shine off a Jack Adams Trophy like missing the playoffs the subsequent season. It must also be said that, for as well as Tocchet’s style seemed to work for the likes of Hughes and role players like Pius Suter, Kiefer Sherwood, Tyler Myers, Derek Forbort, and more, it didn’t seem to work for everyone, most notably the forward Elias Pettersson.

There were also some practical and stylistic critiques to be heard. Some said Tocchet didn’t always utilize his timeouts the way he should, and some said he didn’t pull the goalie as often as he should have. For many, Tocchet’s style of play was simply boring.

In any case, this article isn’t intended to litigate Tocchet’s tenure as head coach. This section is only to illustrate how, despite mixed opinions on Tocchet the coach, everyone should at least be able to agree on how the manner of his departure should be received.

And that’s, again, with a new kind of disappointment.

Technically speaking, a coach choosing to leave the Canucks – rather than the other way around – is not unprecedented.

Bill McCreary Sr. left to become the GM of the California Golden Seals in 1974. His replacement, Phil Maloney, fired himself after a disappointed 1976 loss, but he was also the Canucks’ GM at the time.

The legendary Pat Quinn relieved himself of coaching duties after the 1994 Finals run to focus on his GM duties instead.

But every other head coach in franchise history has either been fired, not renewed, or quietly ‘let go.’

So, you have one coach who left for a promotion to management elsewhere, and two who gave up the duties to focus on managing the Canucks.

To have a coach be offered a chance to stay, with a reportedly-lucrative extension on the table, and still choose to depart the organization? Yep, that’s a new one, and it can’t help but sting.

Make no mistake: the Canucks wanted Tocchet to remain. They’ve made a lot of effort to rebrand the entire team under Tocchet hockey, focusing on his preferred term of “structure.” Captain Hughes recently gave an interview in which he stated, in blunt terms, that he wished for Tocchet to stay on as coach. Hughes said he believed that “if we get Rick back and add a piece or two, we can be very successful.”

We don’t know the details of the contract negotiations that took place, but we know enough to know that the front office made Tocchet a compelling offer. Most reporting had it pegged as a contract that would have, quite handily, been the largest coaching contract in team history.

But it was not enough, and Tocchet chose to take his leave.

His reasons remain unknown, and probably will for some time, if not forever. The stress of the crumbling 2024/25 season no doubt played a role. According to some reports, so too did the fact that the Canucks are one of only two teams in the entire league without their own practice facility.

And we’ll have to wait and see, but we have a feeling that the potential opportunity to return to Philadelphia, where Tocchet once made a name for himself as a player, may have also had something to do with his decision.

All of that is somewhat secondary. The primary truth at play here is that, for the first time ever, a coach has effectively fired the Canucks.

How could that make a fanbase feel anything other than ‘ouch.’

Even those decidedly in the anti-Tocchet camp would have no doubt preferred a situation in which it was the Canucks deciding to part ways with Tocchet and thus choosing to move in a different direction.

This time around, the Canucks chose to keep going in the Tocchet direction…and Tocchet decided differently. What direction will they go in now? It’s impossible to say, but it is now certain to be a decision that is made more on-the-fly than anyone would prefer.

The end of Tocchet’s tenure could wind up being a good thing for the franchise. It could also wind up being a bad thing. Or maybe somewhere in between.

But that won’t change anything about the sheer disappointment that must be felt through how this all played out.

Disappointment is nothing new. But this is still a new disappointment.