{"id":179949,"date":"2025-09-30T11:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/179949\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:33:11","slug":"new-vancouver-canucks-coach-foote-is-implementing-a-more-simplified-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/179949\/","title":{"rendered":"New Vancouver Canucks coach Foote is implementing a more ‘simplified’ system"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vancouver Canucks appear to be breathing easier coming into a new season.<\/p>\n

Given what happened last season, that\u2019s no surprise.<\/p>\n

But Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford appears especially optimistic after what he\u2019s seen from his group in training camp and the first four preseason games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team is much calmer and in a much better place,\u201d Rutherford told John Shannon and Daren Millard on the 100% Hockey podcast<\/a>. \u201cThis group appears to be really together and wants to succeed together and support each other. It\u2019s just a total different feel from where we were a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come off winning our division a year ago, I believe that there was a little bit of anxiousness and nervousness of what\u2019s to come for a team that won the division. And a lot of things went wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

J.T. Miller is gone of course, and so is Rick Tocchet.<\/p>\n

Those were moves that management didn\u2019t want to make, but perhaps there is a silver lining in Tocchet\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

Foote appears to have a good relationship with star centre Elias Pettersson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It appears the new Canucks head coach will also have his team playing a different style than they did under Tocchet, too. Rutherford described it as a more \u201csimplified\u201d way of playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like what Adam Foote\u2019s done to prepare this team,\u201d Rutherford said. \u201cHe\u2019s simplified our system for our players. They bought into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canucks struggled to generate offence last season, finishing 31st out of 32 teams in shots on goal and 23rd in goals-for. Despite winning the Jack Adams Trophy in 2024, many fans blamed Tocchet\u2019s system for contributing to Vancouver\u2019s inept offence.<\/p>\n

Goal-scoring is expected to be a struggle this season too, which makes coaching all that more important.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that we\u2019re going to have a skating team with a lot of puck pressure,\u201d Rutherford said. \u201cIt\u2019ll be more of a team that\u2019s going all the time. More the style of play that teams win with now.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about Foote\u2019s inexperience as a first-year head coach at the NHL level, Rutherford compared him to Rod Brind\u2019Amour. The Campbell River native became an assistant coach with the Carolina Hurricanes when Rutherford was the team\u2019s general manager. Brind\u2019Amour went on to become one of the most respected head coaches in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdam Foote is the same. Character. Leadership. Played the game hard. Played to win every game. Won championships. And he knows how to win,\u201d said Rutherford. \u201cHe\u2019s going to be able to take that behind the bench the same way as Brind\u2019Amour did, and be a very successful head coach. Can he learn some things? Sure he can, but so can we all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foote isn\u2019t the only change behind the bench, as the Canucks have three new assistant coaches<\/a>, in Kevin Dean, Brett McLean, and Scott Young.<\/p>\n

Rutherford couldn\u2019t say enough good things about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are very fortunate that we were able to hire the people that we did. These guys are very very good. I\u2019ve watched them here over the last month. They\u2019re so prepared, [they] simply things, explain things very quickly in a simple way that the players get it real quick. We have great drills in practice, we have great tempo practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really believe a lot in our coaching staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vancouver Canucks appear to be breathing easier coming into a new season. Given what happened last season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-179949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}