Tocchet committed to Canucks as contract status hangs in balance

VANCOUVER – As the National Hockey League calendar turns to April and the strongest teams are making final preparations for the playoffs and a run at the Stanley Cup, Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet was asked Tuesday whether injured centres Elias Pettersson and Filip Chytil are done for the season, and what his team’s final eight games mean for next year.

Of course, Tocchet was also asked about his contract, which was pushed again to the top of the news by Sportsnet insider Elliotte Friedman’s report that the Canucks plan to hold the coach to the option year in his contract even if he doesn’t agree to an extension in Vancouver.

April 1 was a reminder that the entire Canucks season has been a kind of April Fools’ joke, except no one but the hockey gods are laughing.

A team that started in October with genuine Stanley Cup aspirations needs a miracle finish to make up the six-point deficit between itself and the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.

No, there is nothing funny about any of this.

“It’s been a big swing,” Tocchet said when asked about the plummet from last season’s 109-point peak and second-round playoff appearance. “But… you learn about yourself as a coach, you learn about players. I mean… learn about it as a team, right? So we’ve all got to look at yourself and how do we get better. There’s another conversation down the road, like: ‘What could I have done different?’ But at this point, all I’m thinking about is Seattle. We’ll deal with all that other stuff down the road.”

The Seattle Kraken, one of five non-playoff teams to beat the Canucks over the last five weeks, visit Rogers Arena on Wednesday at the start of a three-game homestand that Vancouver needs to sweep. With eight games to go, the 34-17-13 Canucks probably need to win at least seven times – and even then, 95 points might not be enough for a playoff spot.

Tocchet’s future has topped hockey-talk conjecture since the Philadelphia Flyers, his first and last team as a player, fired John Tortorella last week.

Tocchet said in March that he would delay discussing his future with general manager Patrik Allvin and hockey-operations president Jim Rutherford until after this season.

“It’s private,” the coach reiterated Tuesday. “I’m trying to be as honest as possible. Honestly, I’m thinking, like, trying to get this team in (the playoffs). The direction and all that stuff, that’s for another conversation with Jim and Patrik. I mean, we go way back, so we’ll have those conversations. But right now, I’m thinking of how you beat Seattle. I really am. People don’t believe it; it’s the truth. 

“This is a great city. I walk around the city, it’s a phenomenal city, fans have been great. So, you know, just say that: It’s a great city. But there’s some things that we’ll talk about down the road, and it’s not the right time.”

When the right time comes, the discussion between Tocchet and his superiors won’t be as much about money as the team’s trajectory and what plans Allvin and Rutherford have to retool the lineup after a pile of adversity shoved the Canucks unimaginably off course this season (see J.T. Miller trade).

Whatever fondness Tocchet has for Philadelphia and the Flyers, he is a 60-year-old head coach who desperately wants the chance to win. Tocchet has already endured one monumental construction project with the Arizona Coyotes, who were attempting to build around teenagers Clayton Keller and Jakob Chychrun when the coach arrived in 2017. Tocchet enjoyed that challenge so much he voluntarily left four years later and stayed out of coaching for a year-and-a-half, turning down several opportunities, before Rutherford and Allvin convinced him to take over the Canucks.

Maybe Tocchet winds up in Philadelphia, or maybe he doesn’t. But it’s clear Canuck management holds the trump card in the form of Tocchet’s option year for next season. Not only can he not coach somewhere else without the Canucks’ consent, he can’t speak to other teams.

The next big conversations for Tocchet will be with his own team — and not just with Allvin and Rutherford and owner Francesco Aquilini, but with Canuck players, including the enigmatic Pettersson.

With 15 goals and 45 points in 65 games in the first season of his eight-year, $92.8-million-U.S. contract, Pettersson is an organizational problem that must be resolved, one way or another, before the centre’s no-movement clause activates on July 1.

Although management is anxious to retain Tocchet on a multi-year extension, the head coach still needs to assess his own role in what has happened this season.

“When a team is inconsistent and you say sometimes the team loses focus, you’ve got to look at the coach sometimes,” Tocchet told us last week in New York. “I take it to heart. I will reflect on certain things. I’ve looked at myself and thought maybe I should have been harder on the team in training camp and at the start of the year. But because of last year. . . I didn’t want to keep pushing and pushing. You know, in this day and age, you’ve just got to be careful and you’ve got to pick your spots. 

“This is not the right time, but I will reflect on that. Right now, my focus level is this team. But I will have to reflect on myself and what I could have done differently. Listen, at the end of the day, maybe there’s nothing we could have done. Certain circumstances hit this team and I’m not quite sure anybody could have fixed it. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but we definitely have to do a deep dive, and I have to be part of that.”

That was the same interview Tocchet told Sportsnet: “I’m not a quitter.”

He insisted Tuesday that the option year on his contract has not yet been exercised.

It’s also clear, with how Tocchet views these final eight games, that he is thinking about himself as the Canucks’ coach beyond the next two weeks.

“Who’s all in, and who’s not? These eight games you’re going to see,” Tocchet told reporters. “I’ll give you an example; Dakota (Joshua) is starting to play a little bit better. I mean, these are a big eight games for him; he can use that for going into next year. These eight games are important to me to see who’s all in and who’s not, 100 per cent.”

ICE CHIPS – Tocchet said “odds are against” Chytil playing again this season after the second-line centre suffered the fifth concussion of his NHL career when hit from behind by Chicago Blackhawk Jason Dickinson on March 15. Tocchet said Chytil has good days and bad days but “I talked to him today and he said it was different than his last concussion. The bad days aren’t as bad, so that’s a positive”. . . As for Pettersson, who was playing his best hockey of the season when he sustained an upper-body injury 10 days ago against the New York Rangers, Tocchet said the first-line centre has had only one or two light skates and feels “discomfort.” The Canucks consider Pettersson’s absence day-to-day, but Tocchet couldn’t say if he will play again this season. . . Injured winger Nils Hoglander practised in a non-contact jersey Tuesday for the first time since the Rangers game, but won’t play against Seattle.

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