Say what you will about those individuals who have been relieved of their duties over the past few years in Vancouver, and how those individuals had performed said duties, but few of them have had to wait around very long for their next job.

Rick Tocchet was hired to be the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers approximately two weeks after being let go by the Canucks. Patrik Allvin joined the Seattle Kraken as an Assistant General Manager less than two months after losing his gig as the Canucks’ GM. And now the latest reports have outgoing head coach Adam Foote set to join the Utah Mammoth a couple of weeks after his own firing, presumably as an assistant on Andre Tourigny’s bench staff.

Believe what you want about these people, their coaching and managerial abilities, and whether or not they’re good hires for their new organizations. The fact of the matter is that their landing jobs so soon after leaving Vancouver is an unmitigated positive for the Canucks themselves.

Coach and manager contracts are a lot like any contracts in the sport of hockey – they’re hard to get out of. Even when a coach or manager is “relieved of their duties,” any contract they have signed remains in effect and must be paid out, unless the firing was an outright contract termination with cause, which is rare.

This had been a topic of some conversation and consternation earlier in this offseason surrounding the Canucks. We’ve heard from a few sources that ownership might be looking to tighten up the spending budget during these first few years of the rebuild, and that led to some chatter about the collection of fired staff the Canucks had begun to pile up. When it was announced that the Canucks were letting first Allvin, and then Foote and his entire staff, go, there was some speculation that this would have to lead to the Canucks spending less in other areas, since they still had all those people on their payroll.

Some even went as far as to suggest that these budgetary concerns had something to do with the dissolution of talks between the Canucks and potential new GM Evan Gold.

But there is a bit of a loophole in all this – or, if not a loophole, then at least a way out. A fired coach or GM’s contract and salary stay on the books until they’re hired by a new organization, at which point it becomes a question of equivalent value.

In short, when a coach or manager is hired by a new team while still under contract, their old team is only responsible for any salary discrepancy. If the employee makes less than they did on their former contract with their new team, their old team pays the difference. If they make the same or more, their old team is off the hook entirely.

(Note that contracts work both ways, and that teams don’t have to give permission to those under contract to seek employment with new organizations. See: how Vegas prevented coach Bruce Cassidy from interviewing with certain teams after firing him this year. However, in most cases, there’s no reason not to let them leave and get them off the books.)

We should mention that this is not actually a factor with Tocchet, who was technically out of a contract at the time he left Vancouver. The Canucks had the option to extend his contract by a year, but chose to let him go freely instead. The same goes for the assistant, Yogi Svejkovsky, who followed Tocchet to Philadelphia. Both were effectively already off the books at the time of their departure.

Tocchet’s other assistant, Foote, obviously had his assistant contract upgraded into a head coach contract, and reporting had that at a three-year deal, starting with last season. Coaching salaries aren’t as public as player salaries, but most agree that Foote’s was somewhere in the range of about $1.5 million a season.

That means that the Canucks are still on the hook for about $3 million to Foote over the next two years. Or that they are until Foote inks that deal with the Mammoth to join their staff. Going from head coach to assistant will probably mean a pay decrease for Foote, but at least some of that money will no longer be the Canucks’ responsibility, and that will help with any of those budgetary restraints.

The situation is similar with Allvin. He was signed to a three-year extension of his own back in January of 2024, and thus had at least a full season left when he was fired this past April. Managerial salaries are even harder to pin down than coaching salaries, but suffice it to say that he’s probably making less in Seattle as AGM than he was in Vancouver as GM. All the same, the bulk of his salary is surely now paid by Seattle, and the majority of it is off the books for the Canucks, further alleviating financial strain.

In the end, we are talking about millions of dollars here. The equivalent of an average NHL player’s contract. It’s not for nothing.

The Canucks have a few others they’ve let go who are still looking for jobs, including Foote’s assistants Kevin Dean, Scott Young, and Brett McLean. But when and if they land new opportunities with other NHL coaching staffs, their salaries should also be effectively taken care of in a similar fashion.

All of which is a roundabout way of getting to the conclusion that the concerns raised earlier in the offseason about all the extra coaching and managerial salary sitting on the Canucks’ books were mostly a temporary issue and may have been a bit overblown. At the very least, it seems like much less of an issue here now, a few months down the road.

All of these folks getting hired elsewhere is undoubtedly a benefit to the Canucks, or at least to their ability to spend freely. And we know we’re throwing a lot of ‘at leasts’ out there at this point, but if the Canucks don’t spend as freely throughout these next couple of years of the rebuild, then at least the salaries of fired individuals can’t be held up as much of an excuse for it.