Vancouver Canucks: 5 greatest head coaches in franchise history

Head coach Travis Green has a promising core of young stars to work with, but will he be as successful as these former Vancouver Canucks bench bosses?

The Vancouver Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup, but they’ve still enjoyed plenty of success throughout their five decades of existence.

This team has reached the Stanley Cup Final three times — 1982, 1994 and 2011. Of course, those runs wouldn’t have happened if the Canucks weren’t blessed with some excellent and successful head coaches.

Now, Vancouverites can only hope that they have the right man in place for another run at the Stanley Cup. They’re already on their fourth coach of the 2010s, after all.

Travis Green became the 19th bench boss in franchise history when the Canucks hired him to replace the fired Willie Desjardins, who lasted three seasons. Green has gone 66-76-22 through his first two seasons, which isn’t all that bad when you consider that he’s been forced to work through a frustratingly long rebuild.

It’s not going to be easy, but Green has the chance to lead the Canucks to their greatest stretch run in franchise history. He has a promising young core consisting of Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, Bo Horvat, Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko.

Only two Canucks head coaches have ever won the Jack Adams Award, but Green just might get his name on it one day. Five years from now, we’ll have a firm idea on where Green stands among Vancouver’s all-time greatest coaches. Here’s hoping he’ll find himself on this list some day.

That’s all for another day. For now, let’s take a trip down memory lane and look back on the five greatest head coaches in Canucks history.