Vancouver Canucks fire head coach Adam Foote after one season

Vancouver Canucks head coach Adam Foote, back, gestures while standing on the bench behind Drew O’Connor, front left to right, Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Braeden Cootes during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the St. Louis Blues, in Vancouver, on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

The Vancouver Canucks have fired head coach Adam Foote after a single season on the job.

The team made the announcement Tuesday, adding that assistants Scott Young, Kevin Dean and Brett McLean have also been dismissed.

It’s the latest change for a Vancouver side that fired general manager Patrik Allvin in April after finishing the season last in the league with a 25-49-8 record. Weeks later, the president of hockey operations, Jim Rutherford, announced he would step down from his role.

“It was a challenging year on several fronts, and truthfully, Adam and his staff were dealt a very difficult hand,” general manager Ryan Johnson said in a statement. ”That said, as we head into a rebuild, our group feels new coaching voices are needed to chart the path forward.

“Establishing the proper environment and culture is a vital first step in creating a solid and authentic connection throughout the entire organization. At the start of next season, our coaches will need to do a lot of work with our players to instill in them the traits and habits they will rely on moving forward. The process to bring in a new staff begins immediately.”

The move is the latest in an organizational shakeup that saw the Canucks hire Hall of Fame forwards Daniel and Henrik Sedin as co-presidents of hockey operations and name their former teammate, Johnson, general manager on May 14.

Johnson said at the time that it was difficult to say how Foote performed as head coach, given the slew of injuries and personnel changes the team experienced last season.

“I think everything that went on, there were so many variables that changed the course of the season,” he said. ”So to evaluate Adam just on that is unfair.”

Foote was named head coach on May 14, 2025, after Rick Tocchet announced he would not return to the Canucks. Tocchet was later named head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.

The 54-year-old Foote had served a season and a half as an assistant coach under Tocchet, where he focused on the team’s defensive structure.

Vancouver’s defence struggled last season, allowing a league-high 3.83 goals against per game. The team also finished with the league’s worst home record (7-27-5) and fewest regulation wins (15).

Foote, a Toronto native, played 1,154 regular-season NHL games for the Quebec Nordiques, Colorado Avalanche and Blue Jackets, recording 66 goals and 242 assists while helping Colorado win Stanley Cups in 1996 and 2001.

He retired in 2011, then moved into coaching with the Avs as a development consultant and defensive coach, and was Canada’s director of player development at the 2017 Spengler Cup, where the country captured gold.

Before Vancouver, Foote’s only head coaching experience came in the Western Hockey League, where he led the Kelowna Rockets for a season and a half before joining the Canucks’ staff.

The Canucks interviewed several candidates to replace Tocchet and were believed to have narrowed the search to Foote and Manny Malhotra, head coach of the club’s American Hockey League affiliate in Abbotsford.

Foote was also believed to be the preferred choice of then-captain Quinn Hughes.

Vancouver dealt the star defenceman to the Minnesota Wild on Dec. 12 for forwards Marco Rossi and Liam Ohgren, defenceman Zeev Buium, and a first-round pick in the 2026 draft.

Speculation around Hughes’ future infiltrated the dressing room before the trade, Foote admitted.

“It was hard on Huggy, it’s hard on the players when that’s out in the public. It’s hard to keep those things behind closed doors at these times,” he said after the trade. “We miss Huggy, but as far as going forward with your team, it was a distraction, and you could feel it.”

The Canucks went on a season-high four-game win streak following the trade before tumbling down the NHL standings with one win over their next 13 games (1-10-2).

Vancouver is now searching for its fifth head coach since December 2021.

The Canucks join a handful of NHL teams to make a change behind the bench this year, including the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers, who both dismissed their head coaches in recent weeks.

Foote said this spring he wasn’t paying any attention to the coaching carousel.

“I don’t think about that. I think about the now. We’re playing hockey,” he said before his team’s final home game on April 14.

“That’s just noise that is not in my control. I control what I do here every day, and that’s how I played, that’s how I was raised, that’s how I come to work. So that kind of thing, I just kind of keep it away.”

This report by Gemma Karstens-Smith of The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2026.