Canucks President Apologizes to Bruce Boudreau

The Vancouver Canucks put Bruce Boudreau through hell and their organization has taken a huge hit these past few weeks. Needless to say, good luck signing any free agents in Vancouver after this giant mess.

This mess, led to Bruce Boudreau finally being relieved of his duties on Sunday and Rick Tocchet named as the replacement. Canucks President Jim Rutherford made the announcement, and his and Tocchet go way back.

As far as Boudreau and how everything was handled, here's what Rutherford had to say about the whole situation:

I will apologize to Bruce for this: Probably, in my interviews over the course of the season, when people ask me a question, I'm probably too direct and too honest. ... Sometimes that affects certain people. And in this case, it probably did affect him. I'm sorry I did that, and I've learned from it. So I've decided that I need to zip it. I'm not going to talk about the team; I'm going to let Patrik (Allvin, Vancouver's GM) and Rick Tocchet talk about the team. It's not any different than most situations in professional sports, where a team is not winning as much as people would like, and there's speculation that there's gonna be changes. If you go back to the last time there was a coaching change here, there was speculation about it. And the owner was talking to Bruce about coming here before there was a change made. So, there's not a whole lot different other than what I've apologized for. I have had several calls - and I know a lot more than you do - from people that feel that this was really overplayed by everybody.

Two of the Canucks next three games are against the worst teams in the league as Tocchet looks to get off to a good start in his new position.