By Andrew Chernoff

August 24, 2025

The Vancouver Canucks have had an enjoyable 2025 summer break, undergoing some strategic changes in the organization, including the players and coaching staff.

This part of the Canucks post-mortem of the 2025 post-season will explore the new head coach and his assistants, along with the plan the Canucks have regarding introducing a change in the culture of accountability and rebuilding trust across the lineup and management structure. The noteworthy departures and the Canucks 2025 NHL entry draft class will be noted as well.

On May 14, 2025, Vancouver officially promoted Adam Foote as the 22nd head coach in franchise history of the Canucks, who takes over from the departure of Rick Tocchet on April 29th of this year.

The decision by Canucks management of promote the new coach from within the organization was seen as an attempt by Vancouver to maintain, rather than completely overhaul, the team culture (a foundation for success through teamwork, communication, respect, and accountability) and tactical system (game plan and style, including player duties, set plays, forward lines and defence pairings) that had been established during the Tocchet’s leadership.

Foote, is a Stanley Cup champion winning two Stanley Cups with the Colorado Avalanche and Olympic gold medalist.

After retiring from the NHL, Foote was hired by Colorado as a defensive coach from 2011 to 2017. In 2018, he became the head coach for the Kelowna Rockets of the Western Hockey League until February 2020.  On January 22, 2023, Foote was hired as an assistant coach for the Canucks upon the midseason hiring of head coach Rick Tocchet.

It is expected that Foote will build on the best of what he learned under his former head coach, incorporating his own ideas and those of his assistant coaches into the 2025-26 season lineup, aiming for a successful season and a spot in the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.

All of this is predicated on the belief by Canucks management, the coaching staff and development coaches that the team’s challenges last season were not due to a “flawed system” but instead due to an “internal cohesion and player mindset” problem.

From what I have discerned about internal cohesion, it is “the sense of unity within a sports team, which is strongly influenced by players’ individual mindsets, as a cohesive mindset emphasizes collective goals, open communication, mutual trust, and a willingness to support teammates even through challenges.”

And from what I was able to learn, “positive individual mindsets, such as self-compassion, perceiving oneself as a valued member, and having a collectivist orientation, promote cohesion, while negative mindsets like individualism, fear of mistakes, and low self-confidence can hinder it.” 

Finally, “teams with strong internal cohesion demonstrate better performance, stress resilience, and adaptability because players feel psychologically safe and empowered to contribute.” 

Links: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3761725/ ; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10690513/ ; https://thementalgame.me/blog/building-mental-strength-and-team-cohesion-for-better-athletic-performance ; https://efulhamgroupdynamics.weebly.com/cohesion.html

As for accountability, Head Coach Adam Foote has declared publicly that the Canucks are not his team. “It belongs to the players.”

Does Foote really believe that the players will buy into a collective accountability led by a core of player leadership types, with him and the assistant coaches off in another room joking, chatting, and drinking water?

His hope for the team’s veteran core is that they will enforce the standards set by management and the coaching staff. So, do the players decide the standards if it’s their room?

If Foote believes a self-policing environment is essential for championship success, I hope it was tried and true in his playing days and his previous coaching assignments, because these guys have egos, and they are sensitive and have feelings. Don’t they?

Canucks captain Quinn Hughes has publicly voiced his support for Foote, and most likely will leave the organization for a Stanley Cup, like other Canucks of past teams have done, rather than “Once a Canuck, always a Canuck”. After all, hockey is like any other job, but family, well, it’s everything. Right? Oh, I forgot about the Stanley Cup.

Canucks management would have the fans and media believe that everything that has been done during the offseason and will be done in the coming days and weeks is designed to stabilize the team’s leadership structure and mitigate narratives of a star player’s potential dissatisfaction (i.e. Quinn Hughes).

While Foote has been a head coach at the major junior level in the Western Hockey League, that is a league of boys and young men. This breed in the NHL is a different type to motivate from the vantage point of a “Head Coach” and he will find that out quickly I think.

It is one thing to be just a defensive and penalty-kill coach like he was under Tocchet. Still, he had better have an exceptional and deep understanding of human psychology and motivational techniques along with lip-smacking communication skills, to turn the opening lineup for the 2025-26 NHL season into a juggernaut of a team that will be powerful and overwhelm opposition teams on their way to that elusive 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Complete Coaching Staff

The on-ice direction is set by the coaching staff, which is responsible for executing the tactical vision and managing player performance.

• Adam Foote, the Head Coach, is leading the team’s on-ice strategy.
• Kevin Dean and Brett McLean hold Assistant Coach roles, assisting with tactical and player development responsibilities.
• Scott Young holds a dual role as an Assistant Coach and Director of Player Personnel, a position that links the on-ice product with the broader scouting and player assessment operations.
• Marko Torenius is the Goalie Coach, focusing on the specialized development and performance of the team’s goaltenders.

Player Development

The Canucks Player Development department supports the growth of prospects at all levels, a move that signals a serious commitment to improving a historically questionable area of the organization. Assistant General Manager Cammi Granato and Senior Director of Player Development Ryan Johnson oversee this department. The staff includes former players who bring a wealth of experience to the organization.

• Henrik and Daniel Sedin serve as Player Development Coaches. The twins, who previously served as Special Advisors to the General Manager, now work daily with young players both on and off the ice in Vancouver and Abbotsford. Their role is to pass on their wisdom and knowledge as two of the most skilled and disciplined players in franchise history.
• Mikael Samuelsson and Mike Komisarek have also joined the player development staff. Samuelsson, a former teammate of the Sedins, and Komisarek, a former player development coach for the Buffalo Sabres, will primarily work with prospects throughout the organization.
• Chris Higgins remains in his position as Assistant Director, Player Development.

Moving on to noteworthy departures. In addition to roster moves discussed in Part 1 of the post-mortem of the 2025 post season, the Canucks saw several players depart.

On July 17, 2025, forward Dakota Joshua, a fan favourite, was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for a 2028 fourth-round pick.

Canucks management also saw fit not to resign several players, who became unrestricted free agents on July 1, 2025. Pius Suter, Phillip Di Giuseppe, Noah Juulsen and Cole McWard were deemed unworthy of return to the Vancouver organization due to not fitting into the team’s long-term success.

Management has been unapologetic about their moves during the 2025 postseason, and very disappointed and frustrated with how the past season unfolded and turned out.

The fans are frustrated as well.

According to a https://canucksarmy.com/ article titled, Canucks rank 26th on The Athletic’s front office confidence survey, “the Canucks front office seems to have lost the backing of their fan base after a lacklustre season in which they fell six points out of a playoff spot. Vancouver fell from fifth to 26th in this year’s rankings.”

The article also has this quote: The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn wrote about the rankings:

“After an extremely turbulent season, it’s no shock the Canucks dropped further in these rankings than any other team, going from the top five to just outside the bottom five.

“The big error in many fans’ eyes was how the franchise handled the Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller feud. It’s not often that a spat like that becomes public to such a high degree midseason, and it created a sideshow that distracted an on-the-rise team toward missing the playoffs.

“The end result — trading Miller — is also a reminder that this management group effectively chose Miller over Bo Horvat two years earlier, only to see the team move both. While the Canucks ended up with one of the league’s best back ends as a result, it was at the expense of the center depth, which now looks like a major weakness. The peculiar departure of Pius Suter, given the cost, only adds to that.”

According to canucksarmy.com, the management team of Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford “will have a lot of work to do to work their way back up to the top half of The Athletic’s confidence rankings next season. The Canucks only ranked behind the Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Seattle Kraken, Boston Bruins, Nashville Predators and Buffalo Sabres in the front office confidence rankings.”

Believing strongly that change is necessary, the Canucks realized a new focus was needed, and a fundamental shift in approach was required, with rebuilding trust paramount.

But what to do?

Well, much of it has been mentioned before about accountability, and the need for culture of change, and for it all to somehow translate successfully for on-ice success and the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.

If the 2025 offseason has shown anything, it clearly has demonstrated that the Canucks have made a pivot away from prioritizing talent acquisitions, without ironically considering the cultural impact.

This attitude is nothing new to the organization, as past Canucks management and coaching staffs have gone in that direction, and not successfully for the most part.

The current strategy is to stay with the team going into the 2025 training camp in Penticton, B.C., building an NHL season starting lineup with those from the training camp competition. I’m looking for a more resilient and unified team from that bunch, with players from last season who did not fare well, to have a bounce-back season.

The thing is, what I am unconvinced and unsure about, is whether that new season starting lineup is going to buy into this supposed “new culture of accountability” and this goal of “rebuilding trust” from the management level to the players to the media and to the fans, can actually happen this season, and if not, when will it?

The Canucks got rid of one high-profile player in J.T. Miller. Rick Tocchet got rid of the Canucks.

The most embarrassing example of the Canucks getting rid of a player in an effort to make the team better was the trading of Cam Neely.

The most embarrassing example of getting rid of a player who came back was Trevor Linden.

Sometimes the right change comes at the cost of a high-profile player. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Just saying.

At the 2025 NHL Entry Draft in Los Angeles, the Canucks selected six players. The organization’s focus was clearly on building up their forward depth, with five of the six picks being offensive players.

The selections included:

• Braeden Cootes (F): Selected 15th overall (Round 1). He was signed to a three-year entry-level contract on July 9, 2025.
• Aleksei Medvedev (G): Selected 47th overall (Round 2). A 17-year-old, 6’3″ goaltender from St. Petersburg, Russia, who won the OHL’s J. Ross Robertson Cup and the Memorial Cup with the London Knights.
• Kieren Dervin (F): Selected 65th overall (Round 3). An 18-year-old forward who posted 92 points in 61 games at the high school prep level.
• Wilson Björck (F): Selected 143rd overall (Round 5). A 19-year-old forward from Sweden who recorded 67 points in the J20 Nationell.
• Gabriel Chiarot (F): Selected 175th overall (Round 6). An 18-year-old forward who posted 35 points in 66 games in the OHL.
• Matthew Lansing (F): Selected 207th overall (Round 7). An 18-year-old USHL forward with a solid points-per-game record, who also won a bronze medal at the 2025 U18 World Championships.

The Canucks’ selection of Aleksei Medvedev in the second round is particularly noteworthy.

While the team already has a strong NHL goaltending tandem in Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen, and an AHL-affiliated goaltender in Nikita Tolopilo, this pick takes on heightened importance in the context of other offseason moves. 

Just weeks after selecting Medvedev, the Canucks traded away one of their most promising goaltending prospects, Arturs Silovs, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. This sequence of events suggests that the selection of Medvedev was not a coincidental choice but rather a premeditated move to restock the pipeline with a high-end prospect before trading a more established one.

Medvedev’s impressive performance in the OHL, included a Memorial Cup championship and being named to the First All-Rookie team. He has the potential to be a future NHL starter. By selecting him and then trading Silovs, the organization utilized an asset management approach, effectively replenishing their elite goaltending prospect pool while using a high-value asset to acquire a player and a draft pick that better fit their immediate or future needs. Hopefully it doesn’t backfire.

In Part 3 of 3, I look at the 2025 Canucks training camp and who might surprise, who is expected to surprise and who is expected to hit the ice with a sense of purpose, drive, and a chip on their shoulder.

Until then, hockey fans.