The season hasn’t gone according to plan for Adam Foote and the Vancouver Canucks.
After 23 games, the Canucks rank 30th out of 32 NHL teams. They’ve given up the most goals against per game and have the league’s worst penalty kill.
But you’d never know it from listening to Foote talk to the media.
The first-year NHL head coach isn’t afraid to paint a rosy pictures after a putrid performance.
The Calgary Flames came to town as the NHL’s last-place team, on the second half of a back-to-back. They left with an easy win, beating Vancouver 5-2 on the Canucks’ home ice.
When asked to assess the result post-game, Foote focused on the “good start” his team had, despite getting outscored 2-1 in the first period. He glossed over what happened in the rest of the game.
A day later, the 54-year-old bench boss again refused to criticize his team. Foote was so defiant that he even said he was happy with the Canucks’ defensive structure.
“Am I happy with our defensive structure? Yeah. We allowed 12 scoring chances against last night [at] five-on-five. That’s not a lot… but I don’t want to overanalyze or talk about it, because our young guys gotta learn the game. They’re doing great.”
Hockey players famously don’t like to use injuries as an excuse, but Foote doesn’t seem to have a problem with leaning on that crutch. He gave a simple answer for why the team has been bad defensively this season.
“It’s our injuries. It’s just that simple. It’s logical, right?”
Head Coach Adam Foote meets with the media and discusses what today’s practice was focused on, the upcoming road trip, injury updates and more. pic.twitter.com/4kDQqOkq60
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) November 24, 2025
To be fair to the Canucks bench boss, they were without Thatcher Demko, Filip Chytil, Teddy Blueger, Nils Höglander, and Derek Forbort on Sunday.
But this is a team that touted itself as having the best goaltending tandem in the league. Kevin Lankinen is a goalie they’re paying $4.5 million. All of their top-four defencemen are healthy and in the lineup. So are their top-five highest paid forwards.
You’d expect the team to struggle, but accepting this level of performance really is lowering the bar.
“Everyone thinks I’m just positive, but there’s a ton of things I’m real happy about, but I’m more happy with wins,” said Foote.
“I’m not going to blow up a kid or something being overanalyzed, no disrespect, people that don’t know and they’re just looking at numbers by people that could be in Russia in a basement having cigarettes, cashews, telling the scoring chances. We’re gonna depend on our guys… We gotta keep teaching.”
You’d have to be on some special cashews to be happy with the way the Canucks are defending this season.
It’s understandable that Foote wouldn’t want to blast his young defencemen, 20-year-old Tom Willander or 21-year-old Elias Pettersson, who have struggled at times. But he may be overstating the youth of his team. Aatu Räty (23), Max Sasson (25), and Linus Karlsson (26) may be inexperienced at the NHL level, but they’re not that young anymore. The other nine forwards are 27 and older.
Surely, Foote sees what we see.
Eventually Foote did admit that he’s not always being completely open and honest about his team when speaking to the media.
“There’s moments I’m not going to be happy, but you guys won’t hear about it. That’s the way I believe to do it. We’ve had to take care of some things and we’ll continue to take care of things.”
This is a change from the way Rick Tocchet and Bruce Boudreau conducted things. Two of the most quotable coaches you’ll find, they didn’t shy away from telling you what they thought.
The Canucks have wanted to “quiet the noise” this season, so you can understand Foote’s approach.
“I’m not going to blast a kid for costing us a goal and then the next game he’s nervous to go out there and make a mistake. I’m going to teach him… I like to keep things in-house. There’s accountability, but I like to keep it in-house.”
Let’s just hope that whatever he’s teaching them will translate into better results on the ice.
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