Vancouver Canucks Head Coach Adam Foote Discusses the Elephant in the Room

The 2024-25 campaign is one that the Vancouver Canucks and their fans are looking to put in the rearview mirror and move forward after a year filled with injuries and drama, which led to them missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the fourth time in the last five seasons.

President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford promised back in May that the team will be aggressive this summer on the free agent and trade markets to address some of the needs they have, in order to set up newly-appointed Head Coach Adam Foote for success in his first year as the team's bench boss.

This week, Adam Foote was a guest on Halford and Brough where he touched on a number of different topics including Elias Pettersson and the tough year he had, as well as the disappointing campaign the team had has a whole.

During the interview, Foote mentioned that one area the team needs to improve on next season is the power play, which finished 15th in the NHL, which isn't horrible, but certainly could be better given the players the Canucks have on their first unit including Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes.

Foote said that the power play got stagnant at times throughout the 2024-25 season and he'd like to see the two units get more pucks on net, especially early on with the man advantage rather than slowing it down trying to get too fancy with a passing play.

Along with the power play, the Vancouver Canucks need to score more goals, it's easier said than done, but Adam Foote knows it's an area the team needs to improve on after finishing the 2024-25 season with 236 in 82 games, which had them in 24th place in the entire National Hockey League.

Some of those goals will certainly come from within, especially if Elias Pettersson can get it going, but they're going to need to add someone in the top-six that can score.

With Brock Boeser expected to leave as an unrestricted free agent on Canada Day, the need for a scoring winger is massive and it'll be interesting to see if Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford will be able to address that in the weeks to come.