The Vancouver Canucks’ head coach got emotional talking about his job security on Friday. He’s expected to be fired within days
What a way to treat a human being.
Asked Friday morning about how much he values being a head coach in the National Hockey League, Vancouver Canucks bench boss Bruce Boudreau got so emotional he couldn’t answer.
He’s expected to be replaced within days, most likely by Rick Tocchet, the ex-NHLer who has been working for TNT’s NHL telecasts and who has served as head coach of the Arizona Coyotes and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Boudreau, who has generally been on the ice for morning skates decided not to join his team on Friday, as they prepared to face the Colorado Avalanche at Rogers Arena.
He didn’t address his team either about all the noise, though he said he may do so on Saturday, when the Canucks face the Edmonton Oilers.
“They know,” he said about what’s going on. “There’s a lot of media here.
“I’ve got my wife calling me saying ‘you’re not on the ice is everything okay?’ So you guys are getting it out all over the country. It’s tough not to feel it but I mean, you just love it. You love it. You want to go do it,” he said of pressing on, despite everything.
With this in mind, here are some numbers from Boudreau’s illustrious coaching career.
20
Boudreau is 20th all-time in wins. Going into the weekend he sat tied with Jaques Lemaire on 617 wins.
He’s three victories shy of Bryan Murray for 19th all time.
15
Boudreau has been an NHL head coach for 15 seasons.
Before being hired by owner Francesco Aquilini halfway through the 2021-22 season, Boudreau had coached the Washington Capitals, Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild.
Boudreau’s coaching longevity is the 29th most seasons in NHL history.
Los Angeles’s Todd McLellan and Dallas’s Peter DeBoer have also coached for 15 seasons in the NHL.
2
Of the 22 coaches who have won more than 600 regular season games in their career, just one has a better career points percentage: Scotty Bowman.
It took Boudreau 1,049 games to get to 600 wins. It took Bowman 1,002 games.
53
Boudreau’s best run as a coach were his three full seasons in Washington, from 2008-09 to 2010-11.
His Capitals took 53 per cent of the even-strength shot attempts.
In that era teams hadn’t quite gotten their heads around the power of defending shots from the slot, so simply outshooting your opponents was a very simple metric to track likely future success.
Things have become a little more nuanced, as teams have become more adept at defending the slot and thus taking away the most dangerous shots.
9.4
Boudreau’s teams have always impressive at finishing.
This season, the Canucks are scoring on 9.4 per cent of their shots taken at five on five.
That’s fourth best in the league and is in keeping with Boudreau’s historical record.
In his three full seasons in charge in Washington, the Capitals had shot 8.5 per cent at five on five, good for fourth best in the league.
In his three full seasons in Anaheim, the Ducks had the fifth best five-on-five shooting percentage in the league at 8.3 per cent.
Even in Minnesota his team was in the top third of the league, scoring on “just” eight per cent of their shots, but still ninth best in the NHL.
2
Boudreau has been a head coach since 1992, when he made debut behind the bench for the Muskegon Fury of the old Colonial Hockey League.
In the three decades he’s been a head coach, leading teams in the old International Hockey League, the East Coast Hockey League, the American Hockey League and the National Hockey League, he had just two losing seasons before this one.
In his third year coaching he was let go as head coach of the IHL’s Fort Wayne Komets, a year after leading the Komets to the Turner Cup final. (His son Ben now coaches the Komets, who play in the ECHL these days.)
The Komets had a losing record when he was let go.
The only other losing season on Boudreau’s resume was his first season in charge of the AHL’s Lowell Lock Monsters, but his team still made the playoffs that year, losing in the second round.
