The Vancouver Canucks have fired head coach Adam Foote after a single season on the job.
The team made the announcement on Tuesday saying in a post on social media 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, president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford announced he would step down from his role.
The Canucks responded by hiring Hall of Fame forwards Daniel and Henrik Sedin as co-presidents of hockey operations and naming their former teammate, Ryan 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 was no stranger to Vancouver, having 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, giving up the most goals-against per game (3.83). The team also finished with the league's worst home record (7-27-5) and fewest regulation wins (15).
Foote, who hails from Toronto, was selected by the Quebec Nordiques in the 1989 draft.
The defenceman went on to play 1,154 regular-season NHL games for the Nordiques, Colorado Avalanche and Blue Jackets, putting up 66 goals and 242 assists, and helping the Avs to Stanley Cup wins 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 taking over in Vancouver, Foote's only previous head coaching experience came in the Western Hockey League, where he led the Kelowna Rockets for a season and a half before moving to Vancouver to work as an assistant coach.
The Canucks interviewed several candidates to replace Tocchet and were believed to have narrowed the list down to Foote and Manny Malhotra, head coach of the team's American Hockey League affiliate, the Abbotsford Canucks.
Foote was rumoured to be the preferred candidate of then-Canucks captain Quinn Hughes.
Vancouver dealt the star defenceman to the Wild on Dec. 12 for forwards Marco Rossi and Liam Ohgren, defenceman Zeev Buium, and a first-round pick in the 2026 draft.
Talk about 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. "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.”
