Patrick WilliamsTheAHL.com Features Writer
Manny Malhotra he had an extensive hockey resume long before he ended up managing the Abbotsford Canucks.
Drafted seventh overall by the New York Rangers in 1998, Malhotra played 16 NHL seasons, totaling 991 regular season games. He won the Calder Cup with the Hartford Wolf Pack in 2000. Shortly after retiring as a player, he went straight into coaching and development. First came a development coaching role with the Vancouver Canucks in 2016 before three seasons as an assistant coach. Then it was on to the Toronto Maple Leafs for four more seasons as an assistant coach.
That resume lacked one big line on it: head coaching experience.
That’s where Abbotsford stepped in two years ago. Malhotra left Toronto to take the head coaching job at Abbotsford on May 24, 2024. Thirteen months later, he once again laid his hands on the Calder Cup. And a little more than two years after taking that Abbotsford position, he’s back in the NHL again.
This time he is a coach. Vancouver general manager Ryan Johnsonwho was promoted to Abbotsford last month, announced Monday that Malhotra was his first NHL head coaching job.
Malhotra packed a lot into his two seasons behind the AHL bench, going 72-61-6-5 with Abbotsford. In his first season in charge of the club, he made a mid-season change and took over the midfield in a difficult second half. From there, Abbotsford advanced to five rounds of the Calder Cup Playoffs and defeated the Charlotte Checkers in six games in Vancouver’s first Calder Cup championship. On the way he sent guards Victor Mancini again Elias Pettersson and the frontrunners Arshdeep Bains, Linus Karlsson, Aatu Räty again Max Sasson among others they went to Vancouver.
But it was his second season that provided a very different learning experience. Off-season moves, injuries, and roster promotions in Vancouver hit Abbotsford hard. With a largely revamped roster, Abbotsford went 3-12-1-2 in the first quarter of the season. Those early setbacks left Abbotsford in deep trouble, standings, and the team was never in contention for a return to the Calder Cup Playoffs. Dealing with an ever-changing lineup, Malhotra ended up using 52 different players, including six goals.
What Abbotsford was able to do, however, was stay competitive. After that disastrous first quarter, the team went 25-25-3-1 and caused some trouble in the Pacific Division in April to finish 6-1-1-0.
The Johnson-Malhotra combination has been successful at Abbotsford on both the development and winning fronts. The hope in Vancouver is that success can extend to the parent group. Vancouver finished last in the NHL this season with a record of 25-49-8, 14 points behind the 31st place Chicago Blackhawks. That eventually led to the firing of the general manager Patrick Allvin and the head coach Adam Foote and assistant coaches Kevin Dean, Brett McLean again Scott Young.
Johnson took over for Allvin on May 14. Legends of the Franchise Daniel again Henrik Sedin are Vancouver’s new presidents of hockey operations; both have experience working with prospects in Abbotsford as well. Jim Rutherfordformerly the team’s hockey president, will step into a senior advisory role. With all this change, Malhotra’s promotion means Vancouver will have three coaches for as many seasons.
Malhotra’s playing career featured parts of three seasons with Vancouver, including the team’s run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in 2011. There is a lot of work to be done to make Vancouver a winning club again. That work continues later this month in the NHL Draft, where the Canucks have 10 picks, including four of the top 41 picks.
“I think one thing we’ve experienced at Abbotsford is that commitment to daily improvement is something that has helped our team get to where we are over the course of the year,” Malhotra said at a press conference Thursday in Vancouver. “And I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why this is such a special opportunity.”
Indeed, that poor start made it clear early in the season that Abbotsford’s playoff chances looked very dim. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be a lost season. With the proceeds from Abbotsford, Malhotra and his coaching staff took on the teaching job for the second year. He had to rebuild the team’s foundation almost from scratch, and he did. At the end of the season, Abbotsford was a team capable of handling opponents chasing Calder Cup Playoff spots.
That same approach will need to continue in Vancouver with a rebuilding NHL team.
“You heard [Johnson] talk about building and building that foundation of what this team needs to be about and talk about that same message every day,” Malhotra continued. “For me and our coaching staff, it’s going to be about those incremental improvements every day. Today’s workout needs to look better than yesterday’s workout. The level of execution needs to be better than yesterday, and I think by improving that mentality with the boys, now you start to see the growth of each individual. Now you see a collective growth in the group. and that is where we will begin to take action.
“The opportunity to instill those things from day one is one of the things I’m most excited about.”
Malhotra emphasizes the concepts of body language and maintaining positive energy. Even during a sophomore season at Abbotsford that he called “humbling,” he stuck to those ideals. Bad times in any walk of life are what one makes of them. Those struggles can escalate and cause more problems. A losing team can turn sour and send players to different personal plans. Even those difficult times can build resilience and provide lessons for moving forward.
Malhotra wanted to take a difficult season and do something useful with it. This was not the joy of pushing into the Calder Cup Playoffs and chasing the title. A very different challenge has tested him this season.
“You have to live,” he explained of staying true to those ideals even when circumstances test that commitment. “You know, it’s so easy to be in a good mood when things are going well, and you’re winning the playoffs, and everybody’s on a high level. The ability to find that energy and present the right body language when things aren’t going well. And for us as a staff, we knew we were in a very different situation, but our focus was to keep the same level of emotion and the same level of preparation every day.
“I think the message got through to the boys.”
In the American Hockey League for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams and currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor to SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for the league’s top scorer in 2016.
