It's a mixed bag for Tocchet teams out of the gate in past seasons
Last season, it took the Vancouver Canucks eight agonizing games to post their first victory. The year before that, the Canucks stumbled to a 1-2-1 start before cleaning house with a dismal 8-15-2 record at the 25 game mark. If that wasn't enough, in the all-Canadian North Division season of 2021, the Canucks won just one of their first four games and were 8-11-1 and had removed themselves from playoff contention by the 20 game mark.
Enough is enough. With star centre Elias Pettersson vowing to take a wait and see approach to his contract extension talks with the organization and the hockey club needing to take strides in the Pacific Division and Western Conference, the stakes are sky high for the Vancouver Canucks this season. And that will start with the start of their schedule.
The team opens the season October 11th at home against Edmonton and will then launch a five-game road trip with a rematch against the Oilers three nights later in the Alberta capital. From there, it's off to Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, south to Sunrise, Florida and the trip winds up in Nashville.
All told, the Canucks play 11 of their first 20 games on the road including a pair of road trips through the Eastern Conference. A fast start won't be easy.
However, the Canucks feel they have addressed key areas of concern through free agency this summer. The hope is that the 36-games Rick Tocchet coached last season will lay the ground work for the Canucks to hit the ground running after training camp and the preseason.
Tocchet's head coaching history is a mixed bag when it comes to the way his teams have started seasons. In Tampa Bay in 2009-10, his Bolts stumbled from the starting blocks with a 0-2-1 record, but recovered to go a respectable 8-5-7 by the 20 game mark that season.
In Arizona, Tocchet endured a brutal start to his coaching career with the Coyotes as his 2017-18 Desert Dogs opened the season 0-10-1 with nine straight regulation losses at one point. That team won just two of its first 20 games (2-15-3).
A season later, the Coyotes won just one of their first five games and were shutout in three of them. However, that team regrouped to reach the 20-game mark with a 9-9-2 record.
Tocchet's best record 20-games into a season came in the 2019-20 campaign when his Coyotes were 11-7-2 picking up 24 of the first 40 points available to them. But even that year got off to a difficult start with the team dropping its first two games before gaining some traction.
In the 2021 West Division season, Tocchet's Coyotes limped out to a 1-2-1 start but righted the ship to reach the 20-game mark with a respectable 9-8-3 record. That stretch of a strange season included seven straight games against the St. Louis Blues.
The only time in Tocchet's head coaching career that he has guided his team to the post-season was the 2020 bubble summer when -- like the Canucks -- the Coyotes were invited to participate in an expanded playoff tournament. That year, 11th seeded Arizona knocked off Nashville in four games in the play-in round before bowing to Colorado in five games in the opening round of the playoffs.
Last September, the Canucks all talked up the importance of a fast start to their season, but failed to back up their words with a disastrous 0-5-2 opening to their schedule. And by the 20-game mark, the Canucks at 7-10-3 were once again left to wonder where things had gone so wrong.
This time around anything less than 10 wins in their first 20 games will likely put the Canucks in the chase pack when it comes to pushing for a playoff berth. And as fans in Vancouver have seen far too often in recent years, the National Hockey League is a tough league to play catch-up. So the importance of a fast start should be crystal clear to Rick Tocchet and his players. Soon it will be on them to go out there and make it happen.