Bruce Boudreau has been around long enough to know what’s coming.
When the outside noise was so loud, when insiders were actually announcing that Rick Tocchet would be the next Canucks coach, when they were even naming Tocchet’s start date before the outgoing coach was fired, Boudreau knew it was more than likely true.
That’s why Boudreau is coaching the Canucks’ game against the Oilers on Saturday as if it were going to be his last. That’s why he got up after morning skating the day before. That’s why he looked so broken in the third period and so stressed by that coach’s challenge that ended up negating an Oilers goal. So he stayed on the bench after the final horn and looked around Rogers Arena with tears in his eyes, greeting the fans who greeted him.
And so he booked a flight home for Monday night with his wife of 28 years, Crystal, a week and a half ago.
As part of his contract with the Canucks, Boudreau and his family members receive 10 free plane tickets to and from their home in Hershey, Pennsylvania. As the buzz grew, Boudreau booked one-way tickets home. After packing every morsel out of their downtown Vancouver apartment for the past few days, Bruce and Crystal will board a red-eye flight to Seattle with a connection to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, via Atlanta.
“I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Boudreau said with a laugh Monday in an exclusive 45-minute interview with The Athletic. “We figured we could always change it. Unfortunately, we won’t have to. It’s going to be a long day and night of flying but we’ll be home at midday (Tuesday).”
Boudreau had one pretty big stipulation to speak publicly on Monday: He wanted to take the high road. He didn’t want to pile on the mountain of criticism the Canucks received for how this played out.
It was a wild weekend.
On the organizational dysfunction behind Boudreau’s mistreatment:
On his last game:
On what’s next for an organization that needs to rebuild trust among #Canucks fans:
— Thomas Drance (@ThomasDrance) January 23, 2023
There would be no Jim Rutherford or Patrick Alvin ripping, no pissing and moaning about being victimized or humiliated.
He made that clear when asked even about the timing of his dismissal. Instead of simply firing him after Saturday’s game, Boudreau was put through another sleepless night and simply told Saturday night to report with the rest of the coaching staff to a meeting with Canucks management at 9:30 Sunday morning.
“I enjoyed my time in Vancouver and I’m sad to see it end, but there’s no point in repeating it all,” Boudreau said. “I’ll just say it was tough. It was hard not knowing and thinking you were going to be let go and no one telling you anything. No one had to tell me, but just with the speculation and the noise from the outside and the reporters asking every day and reading articles about me being a lame coach and it was just a matter of time, those were the things that were difficult.
“But I mean, nobody should have come right out and said, ‘You’re going to lose your job,’ or that this is when you’re going to lose it.” I think I’m smart enough to look around and see what’s going on.
But, as veteran Canucks defenseman Luke Schenn said over the weekend, Boudreau did his best to enter the locker room every day with the same energy and upbeat style that endeared him to so many players, members of the media and fans in his many coach stops.
Luke Shen’s media availability after the match.@theprovince | #Canucks pic.twitter.com/wHTAthAgWr
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) January 22, 2023
“The thing that kept driving me was that you have to go to work, do your job, do it the same way and with the same passion every day,” Boudreau said. “And because I’ve always been a dreamer and a believer, I believed that, ‘Okay, if we can just pull it off, something good might happen.'” So even though I knew in the back of my mind that something was inevitable, I never you didn’t want to believe it completely. So you just worked harder and the whole coaching staff worked so hard trying to figure out that if we could have won four or five in a row or something, then maybe the noise would have died down a little bit. But that never happened.
That’s why Boudreau was so proud of his players during Saturday night’s final game. They emptied his tank in that third period. The Canucks have been successful this season in overtime and shootouts (7-3), so he thought the stars were aligning when the Oilers missed an open goal, and he managed during the coach’s challenge to keep the deficit level. And the Canucks came close to forcing overtime before an Edmonton goal sealed the deal.
“All these things built up so I felt like it was going to be a storybook ending. But I guess we ripped out the last few pages,” Boudreau said.
Asked about the stress on his face during the third, Boudreau said: “I was pretty sure it was my last period. No one had said anything, but in my heart I was pretty sure. And then I started thinking, “Okay, if this is my last period, is this the last time I’m going to be behind the bench somewhere I just love to be?” Is this the last time I’m going to be in front of 18,000 people trying to win with a group?
“It kind of caught up with me a little bit. This was my 48th year in professional hockey. Sometimes you start thinking about: What are you doing? What will happen next? And then you still have to stay in the moment because we only lost 3-2. And we really played hard in the third period. And I thought we’d tie it for sure. So sometimes it was a bit difficult to keep those thoughts away from others. Yes, it was a difficult game to coach.”
In 103 games, Boudreau’s .549 hitting percentage (50-40-13) ranks fourth in Canucks history. For coaches with 500 or more regular season games, his .626 hitting percentage ranks fourth in NHL history.
He felt the Canucks became a “really, really good team” and attracted “the crowd base” by the end of last season. It’s been a grind this season, but he felt the Canucks were making progress as a team that was one win over .500 on Dec. 27 lost 10 of its next 12 games.
He’ll never forget the way his tenure ended, but he’s looking on the bright side.
“It’s very rare that coaches in any sport get a chance to say goodbye to their players,” Boudreau said. “I mean usually you get fired, it’s an off day or it’s after the game and the players are home by then. So for me to be able to go in there and thank them for what they did for me and the effort they put in was quite an experience. And then to see the emotion, I’ve never seen anything like it. All of us, almost all the players and myself, were crying in the room. It was crazy. I mean you have to see it to believe it because it’s hard to believe you’re just saying it.
A senior player walked into Boudreau’s office and cried uncontrollably and loudly as she hugged him in front of the assistants. On Sunday, Boudreau received a flurry of text messages from his players, including “the most beautiful text” from the sometimes-maligned JT Miller.
Before his meeting Sunday morning, Boudreau called three of his four children. His son Andy, 33, had already flown to Vancouver from Calgary to spend the weekend with him. Boudreau called Casey, 40, Ben, 36, and Brady, 23, to let them know it would soon finally be official.
“I wanted them to know before everyone else did,” Boudreau said. “Everybody’s been around long enough, whether it’s Crystal or the kids, that they always think when they fire me, ‘Dad’s just going to go somewhere else.’ They hate it when that happens because they are in my corner all the time, but I warned them.
“Like me, they were hoping something miraculous would happen to change it.”
Thank you Vancouver! It’s been a wild 13 months but the city, the fans and the players have been amazing. Bruce and I thank everyone! This is for the memory books ❤️
— hockeymom (@BoudreauCrystal) January 23, 2023
When Boudreau was fired on Valentine’s Day 2020 by the Wild, he told The Athletic how he was blindsided. He was in the final year of his deal, but when he survived the rumors at the start of the season, he was off the radar. He also didn’t know then if he would get another chance to train again.
As it turned out, Boudreau got that chance to coach his 11th hockey team and fourth in the NHL since 1990-91. But now he’s three years older at 68. So while he hopes that’s not the case, he knows very well that it could be.
“That was one of the reasons I got emotional behind the bench,” Boudreau said. “Like, if you ask me, I’m in a better condition to train now than I was three years ago. This was before I had two knee replacements and my body was falling apart. I’m fine now. And I feel invigorated. I had the energy to go out every day, and we were in the office every day between 6 and 6:30, every morning, and we stayed the whole time. I don’t want to sit on the couch and just relax.
“I love that. That’s what gives you meaning when you get a chance to go to work every day and practice in the National Hockey League. The biggest thing maybe is that I thought I could still communicate well enough with the young player. I always got on well with the players. But the communication, I thought, was really good. All that being said, if I was ever offered again, I’d jump at the chance. I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years and I’d do it forever .”
Meanwhile, Boudreau expects to return to the television screen soon.
He has already been offered an interview on Sportsnet’s “Hockey Night…”.
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