Canadian coach Rick Tocchet will always remember his first game behind the Vancouver bench.
The passionate – and above all frustrated – ice hockey fans on the west coast by no means took the man who was released from his duties on Sunday Bruce Boudreau welcomed the follower with open arms, but greeted him with a freezing cold booing concert. Just a few effective minutes later, one of the supporters threw his fan shirt on the ice.
And Tocchet himself was in no way to blame for the situation.
What led to the events of early Wednesday morning is arguably the most shameful sequence of events in the 73-year history of the Vancouver Canucks. The owner and the club management embarrassed themselves and the entire club by humiliating the fired coach – and what is noteworthy, this was not the first time this was done in Vancouver.
Skills are lacking
The series of events mentioned above can be seen as having started on the eve of our independence day a year ago. Be that as it may, also at that time a fan shirt of a supporter tired of the club’s constant scowling flew onto the ice of the Canucks’ home arena.
This cut off the Canadian billionaire owner Francesco Aquillini spine: with the same door opening, two coaches left, the GM and the GM’s assistant.
Aquillini, who was operating without any substantive knowledge of professional ice hockey, made the extraordinary decision to hire a head coach for the club on his own, if at all a meritorious one, and only then the club management – some might say that with fatal consequences.
Hired as president of the club Jim Rutherford, the champion GM of three Stanley Cups, did not want Boudreau as the coach of his team, and the public salting of the pilot began immediately. Rutherford’s incredibly unstylish exits followed one another over the past year. The president of the club criticized for criticizing his own head coach.
Everyone understood what was to come.
Hockey reporter John Shannon said on a Vancouver radio show on Tuesday that he had talked with Boudreau before the start of the season. This had already known before the season that he would get into trouble and hoped to see Christmas at work. Christmas was seen by the American coach, but he never received peace of mind or the support of the club management.
On top of everything came public humiliation that reached a completely absurd level. The club management did not fire the pilots of the team who had lost their grip, even though the successor had already been revealed by the insiders of the big media houses. The situation took on a humorous aspect when Boudreau himself – while still in office – spoke of his successor by name.
On Sunday, Boudreau was finally released.
The events of last weekend and more than a year ago were connected by the owner’s inability to pull the plug from the wall. The action turns out to be a styleless humiliation when the entire sports community talks about firings and followers, but the owner does not speak or show up, let alone make a final decision.
The fans didn’t boo Tocchet on Wednesday morning, but the owner.
For the owner who still refuses to start a fundamental rebuild.
From crisis to crisis
The small surface repair machined by Aquillini has been done for nine years without any results.
At the same time, the club is going from crisis to crisis off the field as well.
Coaches come and go, club managers come and go, last summer almost the entire medical staff was laid off.
Coincidence or not, a couple of weeks back striker by Tanner Pearson an innocent hand injury had turned into a serious problem that ended the entire season.
And nobody in the club knew about this until the defender Quinn Hughes spoke in the pre-match interview about how “Pearson’s hand injury was handled somehow incorrectly”.
Only at this point did the owner and club management wake up. The four-to-six-week basic baby had swelled into four hand operations, and the fifth is reportedly expected. How can this be possible at the NHL level? The club is now investigating that.
A few weeks earlier, it turned out that Vancouver had closed the doors of the hall to a long-time Vancouver journalist. The solution is questionable to say the least, and the North American Hockey Writers’ Union also took a stand on it. The owner Aquillini has been after the journalists numerous times over the years.
The culture of hoarding
Behind every Vancouver brawl is owner Aquillini. He appears as a soulless despot whose management methods are from the 19th century. Only those who manage to uncritically buck the owner survive – those who don’t, don’t deserve a stylish departure from the owner either.
Sympathetic club legend Trevor Linden briefly served as president of Vancouver a few years ago, but has since completely cut ties with the club he loved so much. This can be considered an achievement from Aquillini as well.
Aquillini’s construction industry company has been sanctioned by the authorities several times in the 2010s alone for neglecting safety regulations. In total, the company has paid almost three million dollars in fines for neglecting safety issues.
The latest twist from outside of hockey is the accusations of three own adult children in connection with a child support dispute. Aquillini’s three daughters claim that he resents them both mentally and physically. The NHL is also monitoring this situation.
I lived in Vancouver for nine hockey seasons working as an NHL correspondent. For all the years – even the good ones – there has been a strong common consensus in the city about the club’s biggest problem: Francesco Aquillini. The latest nine-year total stomach-churning with off-field scandals has broken the camel’s back for the fans once and for all.
It is pointless for the owner to offer a single GM or coach as a scapegoat for bad results in the future.
That was Wednesday morning’s message from the fans to the club management, even though it was presented through the new coach.