Former Vancouver Canucks head coach Adam Foote may be on his way to finding his next NHL home.

According to a report from Rick Dhaliwal of Donnie and Dhali — The Team, Foote and the Utah Mammoth are “trying to get a deal done.”

Foote and Mammoth head coach Andre Tourigny know each other well. Tourigny served as an assistant coach for the Colorado Avalanche from 2013 to 2015, while Foote worked as a defence development consultant with the team. Foote has openly praised Tourigny for helping him learn the nuances of coaching and skill development at the professional level.

Foote was relieved of his duties as Canucks head coach in May, shortly after the club announced the hiring of Daniel and Henrik Sedin as co-presidents of hockey operations and Ryan Johnson as general manager.

Foote originally joined the Canucks as an assistant on Rick Tocchet’s coaching staff midway through the 2022-23 season after the Canucks relieved Bruce Boudreau of his coaching duties. Foote was responsible for the Canucks’ defence and penalty kill, both of which took demonstrable steps forward that season and the next, when the Canucks surprised the hockey world by winning the Pacific Division and coming within one win from advancing to the Western Conference Final.

After that season, though, things fell apart for the Canucks. The club traded JT Miller midseason following an off-ice rift with Elias Pettersson, and regression hit the Canucks hard in 2024-25 as they were right back to missing the playoffs. That offseason, Rick Tocchet announced he was leaving the Canucks, despite a huge contract offer from the club.

Following Tocchet’s departure, the Canucks promoted Foote from assistant coach to head coach. And if you thought 2024-25 was bad…

The 2025-26 Canucks season was an unmitigated disaster for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons was absolutely Foote and his coaching. Players looked lost in all three zones all season long, and Foote’s defensive zone system just wasn’t a fit for the players he had at his disposal. The Canucks traded Quinn Hughes before Christmas, and launched head-first into a rebuild en route to a dead-last finish in the NHL standings.

The Canucks’ new management regime wasted little time in relieving Foote of his duties and bringing Manny Malhotra up from the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks.

While Foote seemed out of his element as a head coach, nobody complained about him while he was an assistant coach. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Canucks defencemen constantly raved about the work Foote was doing with them, and the on-ice results backed that praise up.

If Foote is hired by the Mammoth, the Canucks will only have to pay the difference on his contract for the remaining two seasons, rather than the full freight of the contract. For example, if Foote’s Canucks contract paid him $1.25 million annually, but his new contract with the Mammoth paid him $500,000 per season, the Canucks would be on the hook for $750,000, rather than the full $1.25 million. If the Mammoth hire Foote for $1.25 million or more per season, then the Canucks would be completely off the hook for his contract. The Canucks saved some money last week as well when the Seattle Kraken hired Patrik Allvin as an assistant GM.