Sekeres and Price: Darren Dreger, on the current Vancouver Canucks head coach, Adam Foote. Was he handed a ‘dirty deal?’ What does his future hold?
“Adam Foote was handed a dirty deal. I mean, in terms of the roster that he has, right? You know, when he started the year, I think part of his sales pitch to get the job, to land the job as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks is, ‘Hey, you know, I’m a Quinn Hughes whisperer. So I, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna get Quinn on track here. Everything’s gonna be good. The team is going to be fine.’
Then you run into injury trouble. Then you’ve got the JT Miller trade. Then you’ve got Quinn Hughes, who gets traded, and now Adam put his coaching the worst team in the National Hockey League.
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So you know how much of that is on him, how much of that is the hand that he’s been dealt. And then you pair that with the success of Manny Malhotra inside the organization, and you’re wondering, ‘Okay, well, if the rebuild is still fully in effect, are we better this offseason to make a change that some believe could be inevitable?’
So that’s saying a lot about what could happen, but we don’t know officially what is going to happen.”
Canucks AHL coach Manny Malhotra is NHL-ready
Sekeres and Price: Darren Dreger, on Manny Malhotra being ready to coach in the NHL, be it with the Vancouver Canucks or with a different team.
Matt Sekeres: “On, on, Manny, do you believe there will be interest from other NHL clubs?”
Dreger: “I think there would be. And, and that’s not firm. That’s just knowing what the view of Manny Malhotra was a year ago, and the fact that Manny said that, well, he’s, he’s a coach that we’re keeping an eye on, right?
And when, when you get to that level, that means that other clubs, not just Vancouver, are monitoring, right? And they have their list. It’s no different than players. You know, every team’s got their collection of whiteboards, and these are the players that we believe are in play. Here are the players that, as an organization we feel we should have interest. And they do the same thing with coaches at every level, right?
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And so again, the messaging last year was that Malhotra was on the radar of a lot of teams. And again, just kicking tires morning on with a couple, and that’s why I said earlier, the belief is he’s NHL ready.
And that’s not just Vancouver Canuck sources thinking, based on what they’ve seen, that he’s NHL ready. That’s coming from other teams in the National Hockey League. So maybe Vancouver doesn’t move, somebody else will try.”
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