The Vancouver Canucks move to dismiss Adam Foote as head coach should not have come as a surprise to anyone paying attention. Foote became the whipping boy for the team’s awful season, ending with a disappointing NHL Draft Lottery.
But beyond the obvious motivations behind the decision to jettison Foote, there’s a broader issue at hand. As insider Elliotte Friedman has pointed out, the Canucks firing of Foote shows a major organizational misstep.
The problem lies in firing Foote after just one season. One year is not nearly enough time for a new head coach to turn an organization around. While it’s plausible to take an underachieving team back to the playoffs, the Canucks put Foote in a tough spot.
The organization asked Foote to take over a dysfunctional system that eventually blew up in everyone’s face. In particular, the chatter last season suggested that Vancouver chose Foote over Manny Malhotra in hopes of appeasing Quinn Hughes.
The move clearly didn’t work as Hughes wanted out anyway. Now, Foote is gone, too, and Malhotra will likely become the next bench boss in Vancouver.
Canucks Dysfunctional for a While
The Canucks have been a dysfunctional organization for a while now. Several of the team’s poor decisions set the wheels in motion for the demise that was the 2025-26 season.
After the Canucks got to the second round of the 2024 playoffs, it seemed like there was hope for the club. Vancouver pushed the Edmonton Oilers to seven games in the second round, coming within inches of a Western Conference Final appearance.
That offseason, the Canucks didn’t really do much to upgrade the roster. They rolled back everyone, hoping that the club would take the next step. Former GM Patrik Allvin can’t be blamed. The team had shown plenty of promising signs.
But then, internal issues began to manifest themselves. The public feud between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller led to the Canucks trading Miller. Ideally, the organization should have traded Pettersson, but no one was going to touch his onerous contract.
Miller was the easiest to trade, and so off to Broadway he went.
The team kept Pettersson, and, well, his contract is aging poorly without about five years still left on it.
Meanwhile, the goaltending situation has been awful, with Thatcher Demko unable to stay healthy. Even with his health situation, the Canucks signed him to a massive three-year extension.
The internal mess led to Rick Tocchet bolting for Philadelphia. Tocchet turned the Flyers into a playoff team, while Foote was stuck with the check.
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Vancouver Committing to Full, Total Rebuild
Now, it seems the Canucks have committed to a full and total rebuild. It started with dumping Allvin as GM. Ryan Johnson took over, while ownership hired the Sedin twins to oversee the broader aspects of the organization.
The next step was to move Foote out and likely bring in Malhotra. It’s worth pointing out that the move should not surprise anyone. Johnson and Malhotra built a winning team in the AHL, taking the Abbotsford Canucks to a Calder Cup victory last year.
All of that signals that the organization missteps that the Canucks once took are in the past. With a more youthful staff in place, it seems that Vancouver could return to contention at some point down the line.
Canucks Firing Foote Shows Major ‘Organizational Misstep’