Just wondering what Canucks fans thought about their new coach.
He's made a pretty good impression on me thus far, saying all the right things, pushing most of the right buttons so far. I think he's been able to establish to the players probably the most important concept of team building that his two predecessors weren't able to hammer down, and that's accountability. Some fans were questioning his methods of showing a player like Andrei Kuzmenko tough love in asking a player to develop a more complete game when he's already providing plenty of offense to fill the role he's been assigned on the team. Kuzmenko has actually responded to this learning curve if you want to call it that quite well. People don't really criticize Tocchet and the job he's done, but more so the timing of the hire(especially in regard to the team's draft position) as well as how it came in the aftermath of Rutherford calling out Boudreau publicly. I don't want to get too far off topic, but I will add that if Boudreau stayed on as coach, it may have helped the team's draft position, but with the cornerstone pieces already on the roster in Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson, and Thatcher Demko, not getting more results still wouldn't have done any favors to helping them believe that things were going to turn around anytime soon. I think Canucks fans have to pick their poison, either take the higher draft pick and still have a lackluster cultural standard established in the dressing room and on the ice, or begin setting a higher standard that your most important players can believe in but have it come at the expense of a few draft spots. It's going to probably take one more off-season beyond the upcoming one for management to clean up the mess left by the previous regime, so now isn't really the time for Canuck fans to be asking to have their cake and eat it too.
I think his stricter style really fits the team. He brings some good discipline and seems like a pretty good guy overall. We can see the improvement of JT Miller which is nice, but also smaller pieces of the roster like Nils Aman and Conor Garland. Our PK has gotten better and our overall structure as well. I'm happy with him as HC heading into the '23-'24 season.