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PJ’s Ponderings: The Canucks’ coach is looking at where his team is going. Also Adam Gaudette on how he found his NHL game again. And how to say ‘Zeev.’
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Published Dec 27, 2025 • 4 minute read
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Vancouver Canucks head coach Adam Foote gestures while standing on the bench behind Drew O’Connor, Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Braeden Cootes during a game on Oct. 13, 2025. Photo by DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESSArticle content
“I like to look forward,” Adam Foote declared Saturday morning, speaking with a gaggle of Vancouver reporters for the first time in more than two weeks.
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On the Canucks’ recent road trip, there were a couple reporters from home, but never a full-on scrum like he faces each and every day when the team is in town.
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And after a few days off, with time to decompress and to catch his breath from what’s been a relentless first 2½ months as an NHL head coach, the former Olympian was in as good speaking form as he’s been all season.
When he and the Canucks hit the road Dec. 12, a flight to the Big Apple, Quinn Hughes was still the captain. By the time they arrived, he wasn’t.
Three new faces landed from Minnesota. And Elias Pettersson, the centre, sat out the entire trip with an injury.
His team battled and, despite being outgunned, managed to scrape together four wins on the road trip. Obviously, for the long term good of the franchise, wins are not what you want right now.
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Foote can’t talk about it, of course, but you know he’s trying to also figure out how to balance those long-term interests with efforts to build a positive team culture with an evolving roster, one which his top boss, Jim Rutherford, has openly said needs a reset.
Canucks defenseman Zeev Buium plays the puck against the New York Islanders in a game on Dec. 19, 2025. Photo by Noah K. Murray /APIt really is ‘Zeev’
Had my first chance to speak with Zeev Buium and I really only had one question: How do you pronounce your name? Had had a couple Jewish friends tell me they understood his name is meant to be pronounced more like “Zev,” so I put it to him.
“Nah, that’s more an Israeli way to say it,” he said. So Zeev, as it reads, is how he pronounces it.
Adam Gaudette pushes the puck past Canucks goalie Nikita Tolopilo in a game on Nov. 28, 2025, in San Jose. Photo by Thearon W. Henderson /Getty ImagesAdam Gaudette’s a player now
Two players on Saturday night were perfect comparisons as to how the Canucks’ organizational philosophy of what young players need has evolved.
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Playing for the San Jose Sharks was Adam Gaudette. For the Canucks, Linus Karlsson. Both were interesting prospects who had a lot to learn if they were going to be successful in the NHL.
Karlsson’s story is well understood by now: A good athlete with a good frame, who figured out each level he’d played at with aplomb, showing off scoring skills along the way. And he’s found his way as a fulltime NHLer this season. He doesn’t play huge minutes, but he’s making smart plays every time he’s on the ice, potting goals, too.
And he credits the time he was given, the space he was given, to find his game first in the AHL, then in the NHL.
Gaudette, on the other hand, ended up being expedited to the NHL.
“I was a little rushed,” he said. After a five-game NHL cameo to close the 2017-18 season, he was supposed to play the bulk of the 2018-19 season in the minors. But then early season injuries to Elias Pettersson and Jay Beagle saw him recalled, and he never really went back to the AHL.
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“I probably could have used a year or two in the AHL to develop, like the two years I spent there a couple years ago.”
The Canucks traded him to Chicago in 2021, where he had a decent start but then landed on waivers early in the 2021-22 season. Ottawa picked him up, but he struggled and found himself having to rethink his hockey career. He spent most of the next two seasons in the AHL, first with the Toronto Marlies — no call-ups to the Maple Leafs — then he landed with the St. Louis Blues. Other than two games in 2023-24 with the Blues, he looked like his NHL career might be done.
But he did score. He scored a lot. In 2023-24 with Springfield, he scored 44 goals. We always knew he could shoot, but it was the rest of his game that was a problem. He worked on it, a lot, he says now with pride.
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“I did it in reverse,” he quips about learning to properly make the NHL in his mid-20s.
And that hard work caught the attention of his old coach. Travis Green was hired by the Senators in the summer of 2024 and when Gaudette found that out, the contract offer his agents received from the Senators made sense.
“Oh, that’s where I’ve gotta go,” Gaudette recalled thinking. “I’ve always liked Greener as a person, and as a coach.”
Last year, Green laughed when the idea that what the former Northeastern University needed most was his old coach to get back in the league. Gaudette laughed, too, when he was told that.
“In the beginning, I think he still had a little bit of a leash on me, and wanted to see (me),” Gaudette said. “I think he realized that I have really matured and come a long way, and then kind of let me go from there. I think I definitely owe a lot to Greener.”
He scored 19 goals for Ottawa last year. He can play in the league. Now he’s in San Jose, doing more of the same.
“I think the player I am now is what you guys were hoping for me to be back then.”
Read More
https://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/nhl/vancouver-canucks/elias-pettersson-says-canucks-move-forward-after-quinn-hughes-trade
Sidelined since October with concussion, Filip Chytil takes part in Canucks morning skate
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