Contract negotiations between Rick Tocchet and the Vancouver Canucks are taking longer than expected.
President of hockey operations Jim Rutherford confirmed the team wouldn’t be exercising their one-year option for next season, which means the two sides need to agree on a new contract for Tocchet to return.
The Canucks season ended on April 16 and there has still seemingly not been much progress made on a Tocchet deal.
“They’ve been negotiating for a week, not hearing anything close or imminent… that would mean there is still work to do,” Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwal this morning on CHEK’s Donnie & Dhali show.
There seem to be two issues at play. The first is agreeing on the direction of the team, and the second is the financial terms of the contract.
After a difficult season, there are legitimate questions over whether Tocchet even wants the Canucks job. It was clearly a long and tiring year, and the future of this team is murky. However, with Quinn Hughes on the roster and the group having won a division title just two years ago, it feels like Tocchet could be sold on the vision.
The money issue is sounding like more of a roadblock between the team and the coach.
Tocchet “could be seeking” as much as $25 million over a five-year deal ($5 million per season), per a report from ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. That would be nearly double the reported $2.75 million per season Tocchet is making right now, and would make him the NHL’s highest-paid bench boss who hasn’t won a Stanley Cup as a head coach.
There are just two NHL coaches who made at least $5 million this past season, per Front Office Sports.
“The Canucks are going to have to go to a number where they’re uncomfortable,” added Dhaliwal.
Tocchet won the Jack Adams Award as the league’s best coach in 2024 and helped the Canucks navigate tons of adversity this past year. He’s done a good job in the role, and management has never wavered in their desire to bring him back.
There are multiple head coach openings around the league right now. A few of them stand out as possibly being very attractive to Tocchet, most notably the Philadelphia Flyers, where he played for 11 seasons. The New York Rangers job is another that could be of interest.If the Canucks don’t bring back Tocchet, that’ll be four coaches in four seasons for the organization. That’s not ideal for the group. It’s also known that Hughes is a big Tocchet fan, and the head coach leaving could bode poorly for the defenceman staying long term.