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Rick Tocchet stepped down on Tuesday as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, who declined to exercise the contract option for next season but said they had offered the veteran coach a new long-term deal.

Tocchet was only one season removed from earning the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year, when Vancouver won the Pacific Division and later lost to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals.

The Canucks failed to make the playoffs this season, going 38-30-14 (90 points) and finishing six points behind the St. Louis Blues for the second wild-card berth.

“I’m choosing to move on from the Vancouver Canucks,” Tocchet, who turned 61 on April 9, said in a news release through the team. “Family is a priority, and with my contract lapsing, this becomes the opportune time. While I don’t know where I’m headed, or exactly how this will play out for me over the near term, I feel like this is the right time for me to explore other opportunities in and around hockey.”

Tocchet thanked the entire Canucks organization, including team president Jim Rutherford.

“After a very long and thorough process, unfortunately Rick has decided to leave the Vancouver Canucks,” Rutherford said in the news release. “This is very disappointing news, but we respect Rick’s decision to move to a new chapter in his hockey career.

“We did everything in our power to keep him, but at the end of the day, Rick felt he needed a change. He is a good friend, a good coach, and we can’t thank him enough for all he did for our organization. Toc is a stand-up guy, and we wish him nothing but the best moving forward.”

Rutherford had said on April 21 that the Canucks would not use their option on Tocchet’s contract for the 2025-26 season, but that they instead offered him a new and more lucrative deal. Tocchet said he needed time to think about plans for the future.

“We don’t feel it’s right to have somebody here that may have his mind somewhere else,” Rutherford said at the time. “I’d say that about anybody. This is not just about Toc. We believe that — and I believe that — Toc and his coaching staff did as good a job coaching this team this year, as they did the year before when he was coach of the year.”

The veteran coach has multiple options to remain in the league, as seven other NHL head-coaching posts are open: Anaheim, Boston, Chicago, the New York Rangers, Philadelphia, Seattle and, as of Monday, Pittsburgh. The Bruins, Blackhawks and Flyers finished with interim head coaches.

Tocchet had previous head-coaching stints in Tampa Bay (2008-09 to 2009-10) and Arizona (2017-18 to 2020-21). He replaced Bruce Boudreau behind the Canucks’ bench in January 2023.

He has a career NHL coaching record of 286-265-87 in the regular season and 11-11 in the postseason. He was 108-65-27 in Vancouver, plus 7-6 in the playoffs.

–Field Level Media