Manny Malhotra prepares for new challenge behind Canucks bench

EDMONTON — Manny Malhotra can be forgiven for not remembering much about his first National Hockey League game as a player, because it followed the memory that dominates from that New York Rangers training camp 28 years ago. 

“Gretz took me out to dinner on Day 1 or 2 of training camp,” Malhotra recalled for Sportsnet in an interview last week. “I don't think I said a word the whole evening other than to answer his questions. But I was just so excited, like, ‘I’m sitting at dinner with Wayne Gretzky.’ I was in awe of him. My first year was Gretz's last, and just being in the same room as Wayne, sitting beside him, I was just starstruck and not really processing everything that was going on around me.”

Malhotra was an 18-year-old draft pick from Toronto, chosen seventh overall by the Rangers in 1998 and projected to be a star first-line centre. Gretzky was 37 and, well, the greatest who ever played, and about to start his final season in the NHL before retiring in the spring of ’99.

“Training camp was in Vermont, and I was alone in my hotel room,” Malhotra explained when pressed for details about dinner with Wayne. “My roommate had gone out with some of the older guys, but he was a massive Gretzky fan. That's all we talked about. He wanted to talk to Gretz, just wanted to be around him. I got a call in my hotel room, and I picked up. ‘Hi, is Manny there?’ And I knew right away who it was. ‘Hey, Manny, it's Wayne. You want to go to dinner tonight?’ 

“Uh, yep. He said, ‘Just grab your roommate and meet me in the lobby at 6.’ But my roommate was gone all afternoon, so he didn't get a chance to go. So I called a guy that I knew from playing (in the Ontario Hockey League), Wes Jarvis. I said, ‘Jarvey, what are you doing for dinner? You want to go to dinner with Gretz? He's like, ‘Shut up!’ I said, ‘No, for real. He just invited me and my roommate, but my roommate’s not here. So if you want to go, we can go.’ So we went to dinner with Gretz.”

About a month later, Malhotra played his first NHL game, logging 17 minutes in a 7-1 road loss to the Montreal Canadiens.

The roommate who missed out on dinner was Andrew Proskurnicki, a rugged defenceman from Hamilton who had been an eighth-round pick of the Rangers in 1996 and whose professional career consisted of 87 games in the minors.

A second-round Rangers pick in 1997, Jarvis split three years between the American and East Coast Leagues, then played four seasons in France and Britain.

Malhotra went on to play 991 NHL games for seven teams, extending his career to 17 seasons after former Vancouver general manager Mike Gillis, fearful for his player’s well-being after Malhotra suffered a gruesome eye injury in 2011, told him nine games into the 2012-13 season that he would no longer be allowed to play for the Canucks.

Malhotra and his wife, Joann, wept at the news.

Malhotra never met the lofty projections attached to him as a seventh-overall draft pick, but he did build a noble career as a dependable matchup centre valued for his hockey IQ, tradecraft and character. 

All of this was part of the foundation on which Malhotra, 46, has built a coaching career that has him Tuesday night behind the visitors’ bench in Edmonton, working his first game as an NHL head coach for the same Canucks organization that tried to end his career as a player.

He'l be up against the Oilers, who once belonged to Gretzky but are now Connor McDavid’s team.

“No, that wasn't on the radar,” Malhotra said when asked if he could have envisioned in 2012 eventually coaching the Canucks. “I was definitely jaded. Having something taken away from you is never an easy thing. But the fact that I continued my career after that (with seasons in Carolina and Montreal), you know, that for me was the determination of ... just focusing on what I needed to do to continue to play. And as far as, in your words, poisoning my desire to want to be a coach, I always knew towards the end of my career that I really enjoyed the teaching part of it. So it was definitely something that I wanted to continue.”

Malhotra and his newly formed coaching staff picked their first team on Monday — 23 players who are widely expected to finish near the bottom of the league again after last season’s last-place finish tilted the Canucks into a rebuild and regime change.

Malhotra and new general manager Ryan Johnson have wisely avoided setting competitive targets — or a timeline for the rebuild — but have vowed the team will be closer, better structured and harder to play against this season.

“First and foremost, for us, it's about the energy that we bring to the game and the tenacity that we play with,” Malhotra told reporters on Monday. “And within the game, we realize structurally there's going to be breakdowns, there's going to be mistakes made on the ice. But I never want those mistakes to be for lack of effort. We want our team committed to being hard to play against, being heavy in puck battles, and ... willing to get to net fronts. For us, it's about the effort that we put in every day.”

This is the start of the Canucks' most ambitious rebuild since they joined the NHL in 1970.

“There's an understanding of what comes with being in a Canadian market,” Malhotra said in his interview with Sportsnet. “Knowing the fan base ... they want to be able to have pride in the way we play and the on-ice product. I’m not saying that shapes what we're trying to do, but there's an understanding that the quality of hockey needs to improve, the level of intensity needs to improve. But before we get to the wins and losses and wanting to get to where we want, it's about playing like a team that the fans can be proud of.”

The most notable thing about the Canucks during training camp and the pre-season was the palpable energy and excitement emanating from the team. 

As goalie Kevin Lankinen told us Saturday night, after Vancouver’s only pre-season win: “We have a good chemistry, a good group of guys here. Of course ... it's going to be a roller-coaster like any other year. But the most important thing is we're pulling the same rope. Everybody's on board, and we're having fun doing it.”

Music to the ears of the rebuild architects.

As Canucks players, Malhotra essentially replaced Johnson in 2010 as a veteran-leader type of centre who killed penalties, won faceoffs, could defend against the opposition’s best players and was an excellent teammate.

By 2016, Johnson was working in the Canucks’ player-development department when the organization, under GM Jim Benning, hired Malhotra as a skills and development coach. Malhotra soon became a full-time coaching assistant on Travis Green’s staff, which earned him an elevated coaching role with the Toronto Maple Leafs for four seasons.

After Johnson became the Canucks' assistant GM, in charge of their American Hockey League team, he targeted and recruited Malhotra in 2024 to be the head coach of the Abbotsford Canucks.

Under Johnson and Malhotra, Abbotsford won the Canucks franchise’s first Calder Cup in their initial season. When new co-presidents Henrik and Daniel Sedin promoted Johnson to NHL GM in May, Johnson named Malhotra his head coach.

“Manny has only been a head coach for two seasons in the American Hockey League,” Johnson said Monday. “But I don't see that as inexperienced. He's got a life full of experience, but also a set of foundations and values that make him extremely successful in this position.

“His experience in the game, both as a player and as an assistant coach, obviously set him up to know what he wants to be as a head coach. And apart from that experience, he's an extremely high-quality human being. He knows how to walk the line of being relatable and communicating (with players), but at the same time holding a level of accountability within that.”

Malhotra doesn’t remember much about his first game as an NHL player, and said he isn’t especially nervous about his first game as an NHL head coach.

“As a player, I felt like you have an opportunity to impact the game,” Malhotra explained. “Your physical play on the ice, you're going to be touching the puck, you're going to be doing things on the ice that influence the game. As a coach, you want things to go well, and you plan. You hope that the guys have picked up on what you're talking about, and they're learning what you want them to learn. But other than that, other than encouraging or correcting whenever I can, there's no actual influence on the game. I'm dependent on everybody else. So it's a different type of nervousness.

“But just like a hockey player, (coaching) is taking the next step and growing and wanting to do the next thing and take on the next responsibility. I’m very cognizant of the fact that I'm fortunate to be one of only 32 (NHL head coaches). It's not lost on me. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work with the people that I'm working with. But when I do look at the macro picture, I can't do this without my family's blessing, right? My wife's blessing, like, ‘Hey, you're going to chase the dream, let's go.’ We were all in it together. So there's definitely an acknowledgement that there are people around me that are helping me and allowing me to do this. Day to day, there's definitely been moments where I’ve said, ‘Holy smokes, I'm coaching in the National Hockey League.’”