Adam Foote

Now, 75 points would be a remarkable improvement for the Canucks who finished with 58 points last year.

I don't want to dismiss the impact that going from Adam Foote, who for my money was the worst coach, not only in the league last year, but that I can recall in recent memory in the NHL, from him to Manny Malhotra, which is an unproven commodity.

We haven't seen him be a head coach at the NHL level, but I think people speak pretty highly of him.

And at the same time, while I think there's reasons to be excited or optimistic about the Canucks moving in the right direction finally as a franchise, the reality of how little talent is presently on this roster, I feel like is just going to kind of make that a moot point.

So I don't know, maybe Petter- Peterson has a remarkable bounce back to the player we all thought he was two or three years ago.

Um, the way I do things for coaches is I look at each returning player's projected value from the year before the coach and the year after the coach.

And I think I had, like, 60 coaches or so since, like, 2018, and Adam Foote was the second worst or the worst impact of any coach.

So just removing that alone is an unbelievable swing, but it's probably not enough to make that roster interesting.

He had a foot up his ass last year.

Adam Foote did not use him the right way, blah, blah, blah.

A lot of that makes sense, but at the end of the day, it's on him, and I think, I, I, I, I think if he's, uh, uh...

This is bold, but I think if he's, if he's the same player that he was last year, there's a chance that he doesn't make it.

Like, the excuses are running out there.

Again, the foot up the ass was a big thing.

Adam Foote did puck him a lot.

David Kampf was more prioritized than him.

But J.D., he was also a minus 33, one of the worst plus/minuses in the league.

I know some guys don't take as much stock in plus/minus, and I can tell you this, having done a Canucks game, talking to Adam Foote, who's no longer the head coach there, he made Booyam a healthy scratch, and we were very despondent 'cause we're like, "Hey, we wanna kinda, like, feature Booyam," and he's like, "Yeah, no, I, I kinda had to push those guys," meaning upstairs.

And he was like, "He's not, he's not where we need him to be." And he goes, "He's a good kid.

I like him, but we, we need to see some progress." He goes, "What happens is that you're part of these major trades for Quinn Hughes, and everyone says, 'Okay, he's been anointed.

Talked to him a little bit about Vancouver.

You know, said it was a difficult year in the sense that, you know, he was hoping to play more and he was hoping to get more responsibility.

I think, you know, that kind of, that corroborates the story that you were mentioning with Adam Foote, that he needs to learn and, and, and unfortunately you can't be just given all the free rein in the world to do whatever you want.

I think if you are trying to rebuild an organization, you have to teach and, and, and create a culture.

I'm trying to think back to last offseason.

You know, Adam Foote did say it in the first day of camp, I think, but Johnson said, quote, he's prepared himself, he's in great shape, and he's put in the time.

Ooh.

He's had so much adversity and so much change around him, so I just want to give him some consistency to chip away at his game and allow him space to beat Petey.

We don't need that type of vibe.

But I feel like without Quinn Hughes, without, I don't know, just something, I don't know, man.

I feel like, again, when dealing with players, and I was talking to a coach about this, right? An NHL coach? No, a coach at the gym, okay? That I ran into, okay? And he was talking about how, you know, again, we've heard this rhetoric a lot of times, but for some reason it made sense when the coach at the gym was like, yo, like, Pedersen, like, I think he's going to find his game back because, you know, Talkett was hard on him and Adam Foote was hard on him and Adam Foote was a bad coach and all this.

But Manny Malhotra, he's like, I know Manny.

But if you're Aturatu and you truly believe in yourself and you think, hey, all I need is a coach that believes in me, well, he's got that.

In Manny Malhotra, he didn't have that in Adam Foote.

And if Aturatu continues to take strides, again, it's hard to know what the ceiling is for any of these guys, but I just think a lot of the players mentality is like, I am going to get there.

I'm going to become the player that I believe I can be.