The Vancouver Canucks announced that they have hired Manny Malhotra to be their next Head Coach. Malhotra will replace Adam Foote, who spent one season behind the bench and led the Canucks to their worst single-season performance this century.

Malhotra spent time as an Assistant Coach for both Vancouver and Toronto before winning the Calder Cup with Abbotsford in his first season as a Head Coach in the AHL.

After a 58-point season and trading both J.T. Miller and Quinn Hughes within less than a year of each other, the Canucks are headed for a rebuild. What happens with their top players who are still on the roster – Elias Pettersson and Jake DeBrusk come to mind – will not be known until later in the offseason. Maybe they stay, maybe they're traded, but whatever happens next, the team will be Malhotra's to guide through some lean seasons in the next 1-3 years before hopefully returning to prominence.

A week ago, Ben Kuzma wrote a piece on Malhotra's coaching style and two things stuck out to me immediately: Malhotra preaches relentless forechecking and puck possession. Let's start with puck possession.

Per Evolving Hockey, the 2025-26 season saw the Canucks finish with an expected goal share of 43.5% at 5-on-5, and they had a -5 shot differential every 60 minutes. To put those numbers into perspective:

• There were nine teams with a 5-on-5 expected goal share under 47.5%. Of those nine teams, one (Boston Bruins) finished with a positive goal differential, and they were also the only one of those nine teams to make the playoffs.
• At 5-on-5, there were eight teams who had a -2 shot differential (or worse) per 60 minutes. None of those eight teams made the playoffs, and they averaged 77.3 standings points.

Whether by expected goals or just straight-up shots, the Canucks cannot be this bad with their 5-on-5 puck possession and hope to win games. Even with some improvement they probably won't be a playoff team. There is a long way to go, and if key pieces are removed from the roster, the hill they need to climb will only get higher.

As for the forecheck, we're seeing that importance play out in the 2026 NHL postseason. The Carolina Hurricanes lead all playoff teams by takeaways per 60 minutes (as tracked by the NHL) and the Vegas Golden Knights are fourth. The top-5 teams in the regular season were Carolina, Nashville, Buffalo, Ottawa, and Anaheim. Just one of those teams failed to qualify for the postseason. For the record, Vancouver finished 23^rd.

There are a lot of other (and better) ways to measure forechecking, but just watching the Hurricanes and Golden Knights playoff runs makes this point obvious: being able to force the opponent into a misplay, if not an outright turnover, creates more offensive possessions for your team and fewer for the opposition. It feeds into the idea of maintaining control of the puck, so the idea of Vancouver having a relentless forecheck is very much related to the idea of Vancouver having more puck possession.

For now, this doesn't really matter for fantasy managers. As a Habs fan, I like to think of their arc with Martin St. Louis behind the bench. When he took over as Head Coach, he had to change the way Montreal played, which isn't dissimilar to the way the Canucks have to change. St. Louis got Montreal to focus on creating better quality chances by maintaining possession of the puck – not in an expected goal or shot differential way, but actually having the puck on their sticks. Their exact approach has varied over the last few seasons, but Montreal’s emphasis on not throwing the puck away remains. That transformation took four years and draftees like Juraj Slafkovsky, Ivan Demidov, and Lane Hutson to turn into key offensive pieces. This parallels what Vancouver needs to get from Braeden Cootes, Zeev Buium, and whomever they take 3^rd overall in this year's draft, without mentioning the other under-25 players who can take steps forward.

Malhotra seems to be heading for a similar trajectory as St. Louis, and that means growing pains. What the Canucks roster looks like in September will give us a better idea of what to expect, but this is Year 1 of a 3- to 5-year project to change the way the Canucks play. If the roster is stripped down, the growing pains will be more severe. Malhotra's job right now is to instill the skills and beliefs he thinks will get the Canucks back to relevance in 2030, not in 2026. It is very possible that this is a good long-term hire for Vancouver and also doesn't really change much for fantasy managers in 2026-27.