12:27 p.m.: Vancouver made Foote’s hiring official in short order. General manager Patrik Allvin had the following statement:
Adam is a strong leader, good teacher and person who knows what it takes to build a great culture and winning attitude. His past experiences on the ice have translated nicely into a coaching style that fits our organization’s goals and vision. He has worked extremely hard the past few years, gaining our players respect and trust for his strong communication and honest straight forward opinion. He knows this group better than anyone else we interviewed and has inside knowledge and understanding of what it will take to get us back to where we want to be. Adam brings structure, accountability, and a detailed oriented approach to his coaching, a process that will send a clear message to our group about the way we want to compete, practice, and play hockey. We are very happy to have him take over as the new Head Coach of the Vancouver Canucks.
11:50 a.m.: The Canucks will promote assistant coach Adam Foote to fill their head coaching vacancy, according to Darren Dreger of TSN. Foote’s deal will run for three seasons, per Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK.
Foote joined the Canucks’ bench midway through the 2022-23 season, hired alongside Rick Tocchet – the man he’s replacing as bench boss in Vancouver. It was his first NHL coaching job in a sparse staff resume since ending his playing career in 2011. Before being hired by Vancouver, Foote’s only behind-the-bench experience came with some of the Avalanche’s youth programs in 2014-15 and the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets from 2018 to 2020.
The 53-year-old Foote’s duties under Tocchet, who’s now landing a head coaching role with the Flyers, mainly revolved around team defense. Of course, Foote was a top-20 rearguard in his prime for the Avalanche around the turn of the century, routinely averaging upwards of 25 minutes per game and leveraging his 6’2″, 220-lb frame to be one of the league’s most effective two-way defenders. As for his success in Vancouver, the Canucks played an extremely low-event style this year – but it did yield above-average results defensively.
While Vancouver ranked 18th in the league with 3.06 goals against per game, other metrics were quite promising. Their 82.6 penalty kill percentage this year ranked third, and they also ranked in the top 10 in shots, shot attempts, expected goals, scoring chances, and high-danger chances against per game at 5-on-5.
Generating enough offense was the Canucks’ biggest issue last season, making a defense-focused hire in Foote an eye-opening decision at first glance. It seems they’ll do the heavy lifting to fix that problem later in the summer with player personnel changes, not coaching staff ones.
With the Canucks promoting Foote, four coaching vacancies remain ahead of the 2025-26 season: the Blackhawks, Bruins, Penguins, and Kraken.
Image courtesy of Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images.