Vancouver Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau. Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports

Canucks end embarrassing saga, finally announce coaching change

By Adam Gretz | Last updated 1/22/23

The Vancouver Canucks announced on Sunday that they have fired head coach Bruce Boudreau and replaced him with Rick Tocchet.

Tocchet had been working as an NHL analyst on TNT's TV broadcasts.

It ends what has been an awkward and embarrassing saga over the past couple of weeks when it became obvious the Canucks were going to fire Boudreau without actually firing him. Team president Jim Rutherford acknowledged a week ago that he was talking to potential replacements, while it had been widely reported in Vancouver that Boudreau was going to be fired sometime this week.

It led to an emotional week of press conferences for Boudreau that nearly brought him to tears several times.

Canucks fans were rightfully unhappy with the organizations' treatment of Boudreau, and spent his last two home games cheering "Bruce, there it is!" during the games. That continued after Boudreau's final game on Saturday night

After the buzzer sounds, the Vancouver crowd and players salute an emotional Bruce Boudreau pic.twitter.com/TtvT8pAkO2
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) January 22, 2023

That chant became popular during Canucks games a year ago when Boudreau helped turn the season around and nearly took them to a surprising a playoff berth.

Boudreau has been one of the NHL's most successful coaches over the past two decades. He made consistent playoff appearances with Washington, Anaheim and Minnesota during his stops with each team.

Despite that he did not even get a full season to prove what he could do with the Canucks, only coaching the team for the second half of last season and the first half of this season before he was fired.

Tocchet has spent parts of six seasons as a head coach in the NHL with Tampa Bay and Arizona. His teams have made the playoffs just one time, and that was during the 2019-20 season when the league expanded its playoff field to 24 teams. Under the normal playoff format they would have not been good enough to qualify for the playoffs that year.

Kicking a successful NHL coach to the curb the way the Canucks did for a coach with that resume is certainly an interesting choice.

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