Canucks paying more money to three coaches this season than to Horvat
The Vancouver Canucks are paying three men to coach — or not coach — their hockey team right now.
You would have to assume that any team spending the money to pay three different head coaches should be among the league’s top squads, with a wealth of over 1,800 combined NHL games of coaching experience to draw on.
That, of course, is not the case, with the Canucks sitting 14 points out of a playoff spot, sixth in the Pacific Division and 27th in the league.
The organization is currently on the books for the salary for all of Bruce Boudreau, Travis Green, and as of yesterday, officially, new head coach Rick Tocchet.
Hearing Rick Tocchet’s salary is $2.75M per year, signed through 2024-25 season. Canucks also still paying Bruce Boudreau $2M this season and Travis Green $2.75M this season.
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) January 23, 2023
Green’s salary, a holdover of his previous contract as he was axed in December 2021, is worth $2.75 million this year, per TSN’s Pierre LeBrun.
That number, added to Boudreau’s salary of $2 million and a pro-rated Tocchet salary of $2.75 million for the 36 games he’s on the hook for the rest of the season, comes in at around $5.93 million that Vancouver is spending this year on the head coaching position alone.
And you know who’s making less than $5.93 million this season?
Canucks captain, one-foot-out-the-door-due-to-the-fact-the-team-can’t-fit-him-under-their-salary-cap-next-season Bo Horvat.
Horvat is in the final year of a six-year deal with Vancouver, making $5.5 million per season as he’s set to his unrestricted free agency for the first time this summer.
While most NHL head coaching salaries are unknown, the largest reportedly publicly available figure is Los Angeles’ Todd McLellan, making $5 million per season, per CapFriendly.
With Vancouver reportedly having made their best contract offer to Horvat (which president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford all but confirmed last week), it seems inevitable a Horvat trade will come before the March 3 trade deadline.
We’ll take a step back: Horvat’s salary for this year — or next year — isn’t directly impacted by what Vancouver is paying Tocchet, Green, and Boudreau.
While there is a salary cap on players, there is no such cap on coaches. The reasons Horvat isn’t likely to stick around in Vancouver have much more to do with their commitments to other players and unwillingness to meet his contract demands on the heels of a career year.
“I believe we have taken our best shot, and the contract that we have on the table for Bo right now, I think, is a fair contract for what he’s done up until this year. But it’s certainly under market value for what he’s done this year,” Rutherford said last week. “He’s had a career year, a career run, and he’s looking for his money. He deserves it. I don’t blame him.”
But for an organization that seems like they’ve spent the last decade being hyper-focused on turning things around in the short term, it doesn’t seem like the best form to be paying three separate people to do one job.
The optics of being unable to afford your top-line centre while simultaneously paying three coaches and still being miles away from contention or even a playoff berth? Well, it’s certainly not the best.
It begs the question: was firing Green, hiring Boudreau, firing him, and then bringing in Tocchet even worth it in the first place? As fun as portions of last Canucks season may have been under Boudreau, the team still finished five points out of a playoff spot and are now in the midst of the biggest media circus the franchise has seen in decades.
Surely the Canucks could’ve managed to be 27th in the NHL or better with Green at the helm and let him run out his contract until this offseason before finding a replacement.
The media and fan scrutiny and the speculation would’ve been something else, but it’s hard to imagine it being any worse than the vibes around the team right now.
Follow Channels and Categories