Vancouver Canucks Officially Hire New Assistant Coach to Join Adam Foote

Originally posted on Hockey Latest | By Daniel Lucente | Last updated Jun 3, 2025 2:16 PM ET

The Canucks are continuing to fill the vacancies in their front office, as former Bruins and Blackhawks assistant Kevin Dean will be joining as an assistant coach.

The Vancouver Canucks are busy building Adam Foote's coaching staff. Weeks since Foote was appointed head coach , general manager Patrik Allvin revealed the hiring of assistant coaches was already underway.

Now, it appears the first has been put in. According to Thomas Drance of 'The Athletic', the Canucks will hire Kevin Dean, who was an assistant coach with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Dean has worked with the Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins defensemen before, and he's expected to do a similar thing under Foote, something that Foote himself did with the Canucks over the last three seasons.

Dean, 56, played in 331 NHL games with the New Jersey Devils, Atlanta Thrashers, Dallas Stars, and Chicago Blackhawks. He was drafted by the Devils in the fifth round of the 1987 NHL Draft.

Dean was the Bruins assistant for five seasons

Before his three seasons in Chicago, Dean had five years on the Bruins' bench and six AHL seasons with the Providence Bruins, five as an assistant, one as head coach.

The Canucks have not formally announced Dean's hiring. They have only one confirmed assistant on Foote's staff at this point, and that is Yogi Svejkovsky, who transitioned from skills coach to assistant and handled the team's power play last season.

With Dean on the verge of taking over on defense and Svejkovsky manning the power play, the Canucks' next likely addition will be an offensively inclined assistant coach.

Whether they target an experienced assistant or a fairly new coach is still unclear.

This article first appeared on Hockey Latest and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: