Can Tocchet’s system work for Canucks?

Bruce Boudreau is out, Rick Tocchet is in, and the Vancouver Canucks have an awful lot of work ahead of them.

Now that hockey’s clunkiest head coaching termination in recent history is behind us, focus turns to a new-look coaching staff and an organization under pressure to turn the proverbial ship around.

Vancouver’s management team introduced Tocchet on Sunday. I heard two points regularly from president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and the rest of the Vancouver brass: they want to tighten things up defensively and believe a coaching swap can better serve them as it pertains to player evaluation.

The notion, of course, is players struggling under two (in some cases, three) head coaches and multiple different systems may mean a heightened focus on roster-building efforts. If the team just isn’t as talented as they believe, the front office must consider how to break it down and rebuild it.

Whether or not you were a Bruce Boudreau fan, Tocchet as his replacement is a fascinating hire.

On one hand, Tocchet brings some defensive pedigree – his teams historically have been fiercer and more physical defensively than your average team. On the other hand, Tocchet’s teams have by and large struggled in his previous stops in Tampa Bay and Arizona. What I wanted to do was get a feel for how Tocchet’s teams looked year to year, and examine how that may impact Vancouver’s playing future over the next couple of seasons.

First, Tocchet’s track record: 438 games behind the bench at a 77-point pace, with one playoff team – Arizona in 2019-20 – over six seasons:

Tocchet’s two previous stops couldn’t be more different. In Tampa Bay, Tocchet did have access to talent and the team generally underperformed, leading to his termination in 2009-10. Guy Boucher would take over behind the bench and in his first season, took the Lightning to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Years later, Tocchet earned his second job in Arizona – a mountainous task with a franchise routinely cash-constrained and, not infrequently, challenged by a lack of talent across the lineup. Tocchet’s Arizona teams were never particularly competitive, but a feather-in-his-cap moment came in 2019-20, where the Coyotes rode a white-hot goaltending tandem of Darcy Kuemper and Antti Raanta to the playoffs.

Let’s break out each of these six teams and grade them relative to their peers in the playing year for a better understanding of where Tocchet’s teams were strong, and where they were weak.

I have segmented the statistical measures by the three game states:

Even grading Tocchet’s Coyotes reign on a curve (and I very much think you should), the data is relatively clear over his six-year career: Tocchet’s teams are dreadful offensively, closer to league averages defensively, and generally reliant on great goaltending play when they do win games.

In Vancouver, Tocchet will have plenty of access to scoring talent in a way that he certainly didn’t in Arizona, but how much that’s worth is anyone’s guess.

Now let’s look at special teams. One would guess based on the even-strength profile that Tocchet’s teams couldn’t score on the power play and were better on the penalty kill, and one would be correct:

The Coyotes penalty-kill unit under Tocchet was one of the better stories in the NHL not so long ago. It played with absolutely frenetic pace and was dangerous on the counterattack. There were stretches spanning weeks where the Coyotes were outscoring their opponents even down a man – players like Brad Richardson, Derek Stepan, Michael Grabner, and Niklas Hjalmarsson (and, of course, the goaltenders) were instrumental in the penalty kill’s success. If Tocchet can repurpose even some of this in Vancouver, it’s immensely valuable.

But as Tocchet closes in on 500 games behind the bench, I think the most important question to answer is whether Tocchet’s system can still work in a heightened scoring era. It has been increasingly difficult for teams that can’t generate offence to qualify for the postseason, and none of Tocchet’s teams have been able to fill the net.

It’s a real concern, and it’s something the Canucks’ front office will be evaluating going forward.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey