The Vancouver Canucks have found their next head coach as they name Willie Desjardins the franchises third head coach in as many seasons.
Desjardins spoke of the opportunity and believes that he can bring this team back to Stanley Cup contention once again.
“It’s a big challenge and if I thought I had to do it by myself, it’d be overwhelming. There’s lots of good people involved, we all have the same goal and when you know that, it’s not overwhelming, it’s exciting. [...]
Every time we play, we play to win; we go out, we’re looking for a way and maybe it has to be a little different every night, the opposition is different, but we’ll have an underlying theme that we’re here to play, we’re here to win and that’s how we’re going to approach every game.”
Desjardins replaces John Tortorella who only coached the team for one year and brought them to a 36-35-11 record and missed the playoffs. This is Desjardins’ first stint as an NHL head coach and he is expected to have ample time and understanding as he attempts to get the Canucks back into the playoffs.
Desjardins is known for turning around teams rapidly and was expected to be in the running for the Pittsburgh Penguins job as well. In his past experience with championship caliber rebuilds as he he has won championships with both the Medicine Hat Tigers and Texas Stars in the WHL and AHL, respectively.
It is believed that the first order of business for Desjardins will be convincing Ryan Kesler to stick around Vancouver and not request a trade out of town.
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