Ryan Johnson Named Canucks GM as Adam Foote Is Fired
Ryan Johnson was named the Vancouver Canucks’ new general manager on Thursday, and Adam Foote was fired by the new regime. Johnson will report to co-presidents Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin as the club pushes through a management reset after a season that cost it 32 points in the standings.
The change came with a blunt assessment of where the club stood after a year that featured heavy injuries, a damaged blue line and a collapse in results. Johnson said during his introductory press conference that evaluating Foote off last season is "pretty unfair" and difficult to do.
Johnson Takes Over
Francesco Aquilini announced the move on Thursday, putting Johnson in charge of hockey operations at a time when the Canucks are still sorting out the next layer of leadership. Daniel Sedin immediately left to watch the world championships in Switzerland, while Henrik Sedin and Johnson began internal talks with the staff they inherited.
The Sedins are also stepping back from important player-development roles, which leaves the organization with a larger staffing job than just filling one front-office chair. The club needs development help and someone to run the farm team in Abbotsford, two jobs that now sit inside Johnson’s scope.
Foote, Tocchet, and the Slide
Foote’s exit lands just a year after Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin hired him to replace Rick Tocchet. That decision was one of the biggest Rutherford and Allvin made, and it is now part of the same reset that ended with Allvin being fired before the Canucks’ final game.
The season that followed was hard to ignore. The Canucks bled scoring chances and goals, suffered from a lack of centre depth, and were swamped by injuries that drowned starting goalie Thatcher Demko.
The result was the worst single-season decline in franchise history, with the club dropping 32 points in the standings. Quinn Hughes sat at the center of a team that never found enough stability around him.
Abbotsford and the Next Decisions
Johnson’s job now reaches beyond the NHL bench. Cammi Granato and Emilie Castonguay also need to know whether they will be part of what comes next, and Manny Malhotra remains a leading candidate to replace Foote in the minors while other teams have interest in him.
That makes the first stretch under Johnson less about a single hire than about finishing a broader reshape of the hockey department. The Canucks have already changed the top of the chart; the harder work is figuring out who fills the spaces underneath it.
