Canucks Coffee: A special Rick Tocchet brew for Jack Adams Award favourite (2024)

Fan Appreciate Night in this market is a good idea.

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Regular-season tickets aren’t cheap, playoff tickets are pricey, and fan support is large and loud.

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To reward the faithful with a 26-point improvement over last season isn’t lost on anybody.

A 4-1 victory over the Calgary Flames on Tuesday at Rogers Arena to clinch the Pacific Division title, hit the 50-win mark for the third time in franchise history, and still have a shot at the Western Conference crown, is marquee material.

As much as players deserve full credit for the buy-in, resiliency and belief, the guy behind the bench deserves credit. Rick Tocchet is a Jack Adams Award favourite for all the right reasons.

He coaches the way he played. He doesn’t stickhandle around problems. He takes them on in a direct and firm-but-fair manner. It’s why this Canucks Coffee is one big serving of Tocchet.

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He deserves it. So sit back and have a cup or two:

‘In this business, you have to have a thick skin, or you won’t survive’

A former NHL head coach once told this scribe this much:

“I don’t want to be coach of the year, I want to be the coach the next year.”

Heavy is the head that wears the hockey crown. Since Tocchet supplanted Bruce Boudreau as bench boss of the Canucks in January of 2023, a total of 14 head coaches have been let go. That’s not a typo. That’s reality.

It’s a performance-based business where well-paid players carry too much clout and the blame game is the trickle-down effect of hockey operations job protection.

When Buffalo Sabres bench boss Don Granato was shown the exit door Tuesday — the latest to succumb with a sorry franchise that has gone 13 years without a post-season berth — it wasn’t surprising.

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It’s how the dominoes fall and how the finger of blame is pointed.

Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams believed at the outset of this season that his young but inexperienced roster was primed to take the next development step. He’s now searching for the eighth head coach in the last dozen years.

At least the Sabres will have a plethora of possible replacements.

During this season, Stanley Cup champion Craig Berube, Todd McLellan, Lindy Ruff and Dean Evason were among those jettisoned. It left Tocchet in a state of shock.

“It’s tough,” he said Tuesday. “They talk about Jack Adams races and all that sort of stuff, and it changes daily. Berube wins the Stanley Cup. McLellan is a very good coach and you can go down the list of guys. Ruff last year had 112 points.

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“I guess you just rent wherever you go. In this business, you have to have a thick skin, or you won’t survive. You have to be decisive. You have your circle you listen to, but if you listen to too many people, you’re going to be in the unemployment line.

“That’s what I think.”

Tocchet hasn’t been afraid to swing for the fences. In this playoff-starved, hockey-mad market, that meant doing whatever it took to get back to the playoffs. Having support of the hockey ops department to initiate roster changes meant he could hammer a preferred pitch and not get hung up by a slider.

‘There are certain decisions you have to go with. You have to swing for it’

Tocchet knew his club had to be more fit, more focused and have faith in system staples. He knew they had to get bigger on the back end, have more bite up front and commit to change. To get the buy-in said a lot about the players and more about the coach.

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“There are certain decisions you have to go with,” stressed Tocchet. “If you’re wrong and go 0-for-3, then you’re probably one of the guys who’s going to get fired. You have to swing for it. There are certain things I believed in this year to do and thank God they worked out. If they don’t, then you’ve got to answer the questions.

Players have an acute awareness of how coaches function. They don’t want mixed messages. They don’t want mind games. They want an open door and they want to be heard. They can smell fake.

“That’s what I’ve learned the last bunch of years,” added Tocchet. “I’m not going to be wishy-washy. Players can see it. If you’re more decisive you have a better chance of sticking around for a while. I’ve swung the bat on some of our decisions.”

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Maybe Dakota Joshua put it best about a coach who pushed him hard this season to realize potential and reach new personal scoring standards.

“If you’re not doing your job he’s going to let you know about it and that’s the way it should be,” said the Canucks winger. “You want to hear how it really is, not just to make you feel better.

“This is a business of wins. There are no gifts being handed out and you don’t want to let him (Tocchet) or the team down.”

Tocchet is also a realist.

He knows everything went well in the first four months. Then came the February road grinds. Five games in eight days and an impressive 3-1-1 record and then three more in four days — after just two home dates — and it led to an 0-3-0 mark and being outscored 18-10.

“The first 50, we didn’t face any adversity,” said Tocchet. “A lot of things went our way. Bounces. We had good calls. Last 30, we were getting the short end of the stick and not as lucky with bounces.

“We’ve been a resilient team. That’s a good thing going into the playoffs. You can look horrible one game and then win and get right back in the series.”

bkuzma@postmedia.com

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