Rick Tocchet was the Vancouver Canucks' Head Coach for 843 days.
January 22, 2023 — the day that Rick Tocchet was hired as Head Coach of the Vancouver Canucks.
April 16, 2024 — the day the Canucks clinched the Pacific Division title, done in their first full season under Tocchet.
May 14, 2025 — the day that Tocchet was named the new Head Coach of the Philadelphia Flyers, parting ways with the team he’d brought to Game 7 of the second round of playoffs only a year ago.
That’s 843 days during which Tocchet was Head Coach of the Canucks. 843 days, all of which came with unexpected twists and turns that kept Vancouver at the top of headlines all throughout his tenure.
Tocchet first joined the Canucks in the midst of a chaotic couple of weeks that saw the team move on from Head Coach Bruce Boudreau and trade former captain Bo Horvat. It signalled a shift in the team’s direction, albeit one that many fans were confused about. Moving Horvat indicated that they were rebuilding, but after Vancouver traded away a couple of high picks for Filip Hronek at the deadline, the team’s direction became confusing once again.
To give him credit, Tocchet’s Canucks certainly tried to be competitive towards the end of their first season with him. They won 10 of 15 in the month of March, but ultimately were unable to catch up to the points deficit they had dug themselves into earlier on in the season. Tocchet exited the 2022–23 season with a record of 20–12–4.
With a full off-season under his belt, Tocchet and the Canucks prepared for the 2023–24 season with something to prove. The mantra was simple: “meet pressure with pressure.” An underdog team with a new coaching staff, new pieces in the lineup, and a new mentality, Vancouver opened the season with a bang, defeating the Edmonton Oilers by a score of 8–1.
Tocchet and this Canucks team continued surging through the 2023–24 season, completing one impressive win after another by what occasionally felt like sheer luck. They collected 13 of a possible 18 points throughout the month of October, following that up with nine wins in the month of November. Their remarkable performances in the fall led Vancouver to first place in the entire NHL by Christmas of 2023.
Vancouver’s start to the season was so impressive — yet shocking — that it resulted in seven representatives being named to the 2024 All-Star Game: Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes, Thatcher Demko, the newly-acquired Elias Lindholm, and Tocchet himself. By this point in the season, Vancouver was tied for first in the NHL with the Boston Bruins, each with 71 points in 49 games.
Despite a bit of a slow-down after the All-Star break and an injury to Demko, the Canucks still claimed the Pacific Division title by the end of the year with a 4–1 win against the Calgary Flames. The title seemed to work in their favour, as because of this, they ended up matching up against the Nashville Predators in the first round of the post-season.
While things didn’t quite go as planned in the crease, Vancouver still managed to win their series against the Predators in six games, bringing excitement to the home crowd during this. It was the first time since 2015 that Canucks fans had experienced playoff hockey at home, and even though it was only the first round, it still got fans excited for what was to come. Vancouver may have lost to the Oilers in seven games, but the Canucks’ magical season was still one to remember.
In their first full season under Tocchet, Vancouver finished with a regular season record of 50–23–9. They tied the Carolina Hurricanes for the seventh-highest goals-for in the league with 279 and registered the fifth-lowest goals-against with 223. Their +56 goal differential put them at sixth in the NHL. For the team’s impressive efforts this season, Tocchet was awarded the Jack Adams Award, beating out Andrew Brunette of the Predators and Rick Bowness of the Winnipeg Jets. The Jack Adams was one of five awards that Canucks representatives were nominated for this year, with Quinn Hughes also taking home the James Norris Memorial Trophy.
The expectations on the Canucks were even heavier heading into the 2024–25 season, which was something that Tocchet leaned on in establishing team mentality for the year. It was early on in the pre-season that Tocchet encouraged players to “embrace the hard” — a slogan that many had a little fun with given its suggestive diction.
What came after that was what some may describe as nothing short of chaotic. In some ways, the season could be best described in Vancouver’s 2024–25 home-opener, in which they established an impressive 4–1 lead against the Flames in the first period, only to surrender four-straight and ultimately face defeat in a 6–5 overtime heartbreaker; all on home-ice. The noise around the Canucks ran at an all-time high throughout the middle of the season after a rift between Miller and Pettersson had been confirmed, and trade rumours circulated around the team like fire.
Despite the overall negative tone around the Canucks in 2024–25, one positive did come from this for Tocchet. He set a new franchise record in his team’s 4–3 shootout win on March 12, becoming the fastest Canucks Head Coach to win 100 regular-season NHL games. His 183 games taken to hit 100 wins was only one game shorter than Alain Vigneault’s 184, which was the previous franchise record.
By the time Tocchet and the Canucks parted ways, the former Head Coach had established a record of 108–65–27 in 200 regular season games coached with Vancouver. His overall points percentage in that span came out to .608%, registering the second-highest in this category in franchise history behind Vigneault (.632%).
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