Former Vancouver Canucks Head Coach Rips Team

Jake DeBrusk & Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks, look dejected

The Vancouver Canucks' season has been bad, and is getting worse by the day. The Canucks are dead last in the NHL.

But the bad vibes in Vancouver are nothing new in recent years, as former head coach Bruce Boudreau pointed out on TSN's First Up show this week.

Boudreau was the Canucks bench boss for parts of two seasons, as recently as 2023. He's not surprised to see what's happening there today, given the culture that has surrounded the franchise.

Over the past three years, they've traded away Bo Horvat, then JT Miller, and now Quinn Hughes.

"Where's the optimism in Vancouver, in your eyes?", he was asked... And that set Boudreau off on a rant, destroying everything associated with the Canucks franchise.

Well, in my eyes, I can't find it. I can't find the optimism. When I got there, and we went on that run, I think it was 15 games over .500... we had a good team, and it just got dismantled right off the bat... They went and changed 10 players the next year. Then things happened, and I got let go. And the next year, they changed eight more players. But that was a pretty good team that made the playoffs under Rick (Tocchet). And then the next year they changed six more players. And then this year, they've changed so many players.
They can't get any continuity, because they've traded all the good players. So I think every player (still there) is going, 'What's going on here?' That's the problem in Vancouver. Nobody knows what's going on. And they try to fix it with bandaids. I think some changes need to be made, to be honest.

Boudreau was 50-40-13 in his couple of seasons there, for a .549 points percentage.

On Tuesday night, they lost their eighth straight game, 2-1 to the Ottawa Senators (who are woeful in their own right these days).

Vancouver is now 16-25-5 for just 37 points through 45 games. And rest assured, more of those changes that Boudreau talked about are coming.