How well has every mid-season NHL coaching change worked this season?

Credit: Perry Nelson-USA TODAY Sports

Every season brings us some early coaching changes that are usually more overreactions to disappointing starts than actual indictments of the coaches themselves. After all, if a team really didn’t like the coach, they would have fired them in the offseason, right? Sometimes the change does pay off, but sometimes it can keep the team in the same spot they were in anyway or even make them worse.

Now that we’re more than halfway through the season and most of the new coaches have had enough time to settle in, let’s take a look at how they’ve done for their new teams so far, as well as look at how each team as a whole has changed statistically since the swap. I won’t be including the Los Angeles Kings since they’re only two games into their change, so we’ll just be looking at the first five teams that fired their coaches this season.

Edmonton Oilers (Out: Jay Woodcroft; In: Kris Knoblauch)

Record: 3-9-1 (31st) | 28-8-0 (2nd)
5v5 GF%: 41.82% (28th) | 59.48% (2nd)
5v5 xGF%: 56.85% (1st) | 57.4% (1st)
5v5 PDO: 95.72 (31st) | 101.32 (5th)

Out of all the teams that fired their coach this season, the Oilers are probably the only one that didn’t actually need to, and a quick look under the hood will tell you exactly why. They were first in the league in 5v5 expected goal share when Jay Woodcroft was fired, and the only reason they were second-last in the league was because their goaltending couldn’t stop a puck and Connor McDavid’s lingering injury had a domino effect on the rest of their offense.

That said, Kris Knoblauch hasn’t exactly been holding the team back either. They’ve performed slightly better in terms of their expected goal share, but there’s two big differences. First, since the hiring, Stuart Skinner has significantly rebounded, tied for the league lead in wins with a 22-6-0 record, fourth among goalies with 20 starts in that span with a .922% save percentage and fifth in 5v5 goals saved above expected with 11.48. And of course, McDavid has returned to his mostly normal self, with 67 points in 36 games. Weird how that works.

Minnesota Wild (Out: Dean Evason; In: John Hynes)

Record: 5-10-4 (30th) | 20-13-1 (8th)
5v5 GF%: 47.85% (20th) | 50.37% (15th)
5v5 xGF%: 49.44% (21st) | 50.63% (15th)
5v5 PDO: 100.3 (15th) | 100.14 (16th)

I’d probably toss Dean Evason more into the conversation of “didn’t deserve to be fired” this year as well. Not only did he have to deal with some terrible goaltending from Filip Gustavsson and Marc-Andre Fleury before his departure, this was also the first season during the Wild’s cap hell era where the roster really felt the blow of almost $15 million tied up into Zach Parise and Ryan Suter’s buyouts. At the same time, the Wild have been a pretty good, but not great team during Evason’s tenure, so I wouldn’t call him a must-keep coach either.

If the firing also brought an upgrade behind the bench, I would have thought this to be a potentially smart decision. Instead, the Wild brought in the most underwhelming replacement possible in John Hynes. Sure, they’ve been somewhat better since he took over in terms of their record, but you always anticipate a bit of a coaching bump, and the underlying numbers have not been much better. Maybe this works out for them, but it also might just waste a bit more of Kirill Kaprizov’s prime in Minnesota.

St. Louis Blues (Out: Craig Berube; In: Drew Bannister)

Record: 13-14-1 (21st) | 15-8-1 (12th)
5v5 GF%: 45.8% (27th) | 44.73% (28th)
5v5 xGF%: 47.22% (27th) | 45.09% (28th)
5v5 PDO: 99.59 (20th) | 99.28 (23rd)

The Blues have been in a perpetual state of middling basically since their Stanley Cup win in 2019. They’ve usually struggled in the playoffs when they’ve made it, and the one time they’ve won a round since then was with a team that was more of a paper tiger. While Craig Berube had caught lightning in a bottle with that 2018-19 team, it was clear that something needed to change in St. Louis after another slow start, and the easiest one for GM Doug Armstrong was to move on from Berube.

Unfortunately, the coaching didn’t seem to be the issue with the Blues. Their play has been just as bad, if not worse than under Berube, only seeing improvement in their record due to a hot power play regressing from the 8.4% it was clicking at under Berube, and they have a .727% win percentage in one-goal games under interim head coach Drew Bannister. Otherwise, this is very much the same Blues team, and likely an indication that it’s the roster that needs some changing. However, that’s not great news for Armstrong, as they currently have 10 players signed until at least 2026, so it doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for changing the core.

Ottawa Senators (Out: D.J. Smith; In: Jacques Martin)

Record: 11-15-0 (30th) | 11-10-2 (18th)
5v5 GF%: 50.23% (17th) | 46.72% (20th)
5v5 xGF%: 47.74% (24th) | 50.48% (15th)
5v5 PDO: 100.26 (13th) | 98.6 (25th)

This was a firing that most of the hockey world had been waiting on for a couple years now. D.J. Smith was a bold hiring for the Senators to begin with, as he made some questionable choices with the Toronto Maple Leafs blueline and penalty kill while he was there as an assistant coach, and then he just never quite made it work in Ottawa. They took a bit too long to fire him, but they finally did and replaced him with a familiar face in Jacques Martin.

And so far, it’s actually worked out somewhat well. There’s some improvement in the Sens actual play, even though they’ve dealt with a bit of bad luck during Martin’s stint, and at the very least they’ve been playing about .500 hockey. They’re still very middling, so I wouldn’t exactly say it’s guaranteed they’ll make the playoffs even next season, never mind this season, but it’s better than what they’ve done under Smith. It could just be Ottawa’s regularly scheduled second half surge though, so if they come out flat next season, there’s definitely bigger issues with the team.

New York Islanders (Out; Lane Lambert; In: Patrick Roy)

Record: 19-15-11 (19th) | 3-3-2 (20th)
5v5 GF%: 49.13% (28th) | 55.77% (10th)
5v5 xGF%: 49.55% (17th) | 49.26% (19th)
5v5 PDO: 100.54 (11th) | 101.65 (10th)

If you didn’t see Lane Lambert’s tenure with the Islanders going poorly from a mile away, you probably need to get your eyes checked. It didn’t take a lot of digging to recognize that most of the Isles’ earlier success in the Lou Lamoriello era was less due to the players he was acquiring, and more because Barry Trotz’ systems were turning manure into diamonds. Low and behold, Trotz is fired and suddenly the Islanders’ defensive metrics go in the toilet, and they only continued to appear like an elite defensive team because of elite goaltending from Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov. That’s less an insult to Lambert and more high praise to Trotz, but I can’t say I’m shocked to see Lamoriello make a knee-jerk reaction and move on from Lambert after only 127 games.

In comes Patrick Roy, who wasn’t exactly known for coaching teams that drove play well, and so far… the Isles have basically been the exact same. The only notable difference is that they’re getting more of the goals at even-strength, otherwise they’ve still been very mediocre, albeit in a very small sample size. Maybe it’ll be a sign for the Isles to finally move on from Lamoriello, as he’s proven to be as mediocre of a general manager as they come since he took over in Long Island.

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