Rick Tocchet will not return as the Vancouver Canucks head coach next season.
The NHL team announced the news on Tuesday, saying Tocchet has chosen to step away after discussions with the team and management.
“I’m choosing to move on from the Vancouver Canucks,” Tocchet said in a statement released by the team.
“Family is a priority, and with my contract lapsing, this becomes the opportune time. While I don’t know where I’m headed or exactly how this will play out for me over the near term, I feel like this is the right time for me to explore other opportunities in and around hockey.”
Tocchet had a 108-65-27 record after taking over the Vancouver bench on Jan. 22, 2023, and his contract gave the Canucks the option of keeping him for next season.
Vancouver’s president of hockey operations, Jim Rutherford, said earlier this month that the team would not exercise that option, but wanted to keep Tocchet behind the bench and would continue negotiations.
“This is very disappointing news, but we respect Rick’s decision to move to a new chapter in his hockey career,” Rutherford said Tuesday.
“We did everything in our power to keep him, but at the end of the day, Rick felt he needed a change. He is a good friend, a good coach, and we can’t thank him enough for all he did for our organization. Toc is a stand-up guy, and we wish him nothing but the best moving forward.”
Tocchet guided the Canucks to their first playoff appearance in four seasons last year before Vancouver was eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in a gritty seven-game series in the second round.
The 61-year-old former NHL winger won the Jack Adams award as the league’s top coach last season and was named an assistant coach for Canada at the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in February.
Season’s struggles
However, the Canucks struggled through the 2024-25 campaign, finishing with a 38-30-14 record and missing the post-season by six points.
Asked at Vancouver’s end-of-season news conference whether he’d like to return, Tocchet said he needed time to work through “a process” before making a decision.
“All year I’ve barely breathed,” he said. “During the time off, I was at 4 Nations, you’re trying to get this team into the playoffs, dealing with a lot of stuff. So I haven’t really thought of myself. … I do have to take a breath and go through it. With respect to both sides, you do have to go through the process. You have to.”
The Canucks dealt with injuries and off-ice drama for much of last season.
Centres J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson both performed below expectations as rumours circulated about an ongoing feud between them. The Canucks attempted to remedy the issue by dealing Miller to the New York Rangers at the end of January, but Pettersson failed to regain his offensive prowess following the move.
WATCH | Rift between star forwards confirmed:
What seemed to be a promising season for the Vancouver Canucks has been upended amid concerns that two of the team’s star players can’t get along.
Star defenceman Quinn Hughes missed 14 games with a series of ailments, and a knee injury kept starting goalie Thatcher Demko out of the lineup until Dec. 10. The star netminder had trouble staying healthy following his return.
“It’s not the season you want,” Tocchet said. “Everybody’s got to look at each other, what could have been different? It’s been a hard year, but it’s also been a year where you can improve from learning these lessons from adversity.”
Rutherford said on April 21 that Tocchet and his staff had done a great job of weathering difficult situations all season, and that the Canucks would like to see him back behind the bench.
Stanley Cup winner
Tocchet played 18 seasons in the NHL as a power forward with the Flyers, Penguins, Kings, Bruins, Capitals and Coyotes, and won a Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 1992.
He later moved into coaching, serving as bench boss with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Arizona Coyotes, and won back-to-back Stanley Cups as an assistant coach for the Penguins in 2016 and 2017.
Canucks winger Conor Garland played for Tocchet in both Arizona and Vancouver, and said he means a lot to him as a person and coach.
“I had him when I was younger, and now I’m 29 with a family, so it’s a different stage of my life and career. And he’s kind of helped me through a lot of the stuff, obviously, on the ice as a player and growing and off the ice,” Garland said.
“I think every player in the league wants to be a key player on a team that wins a Cup or goes deep in the playoffs, not just a team that’s at the bottom of the standings. So it’s a big difference as a player, and he’s one of the major reasons I was able to make that jump.”
