On June 1, Manny Malhotra was formally named the 23rd head coach in the history of the Vancouver Canucks franchise by GM Ryan Johnson.
From one portion of the fan base, the announcement was met with great enthusiasm. In Vancouver, Malhotra is a popular person who, in a Canucks jersey, played with actual grit as a face-off expert.
However, the response was not completely Cheers.
@taj1944 put it succinctly in a post that went viral on Wednesday: No one connected to the Canucks’ coaching and management search “is going to be super cheap,” and the club “blown the budget on replacing the coaching staff,” it seems.
That’s a charge worth considering for a bit.
This season, Vancouver ended 32nd in the NHL overall, with a record of 25-49-8. They gave up 316 goals. Their objective differential was -100. Franchise-defining lows, not rebuilding-year figures.
Malhotra has extremely little room for error thanks to Johnson’s hat sheet.
Anyone Johnson hired was going to enter a difficult environment. With a cap hit of $11.6 million, Elias Pettersson recorded 51 points in 74 games this season, finishing at minus-30.
The value of Filip Hronek is $7.25 million. Brock Boeser is also worth $7.25 million against the cap, with a -48 plus/minus rating for the season. A team that went 9-27-5 at home is now spending a lot of money on its roster.
Malhotra has never been a head coach at the NHL level. It is possible to hire a well-liked former player who lacks head coaching experience. It can also go sideways fast, especially when the roster hands you a -100 goal differential on Day 1.
The concern raised in that tweet isn’t really about Malhotra personally. It’s about whether Johnson structured his entire offseason budget around the coaching hire before locking down the supporting staff around him.
A new coach needs a full bench, quality assistants, and a development structure that can actually reach a 27-year-old Pettersson who went minus-30 this season.
Whether Johnson left enough room to build that out properly is the question that won’t go away.
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