The NHL’s coaching market could heat up sooner rather than later

The NHL coaching market is slowly but surely starting to fill up. Once with eight teams on the market, we’ve now seen Mike Sullivan get picked up by the New York Rangers and the Anaheim Ducks hire Joel Quenneville. Now that leaves us with six teams, as the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks all remain in search of a new coach.

The market also has plenty of options for a new head coach. You have the sought after option in Rick Tocchet, the experienced coaches in Peter Laviolette, John Tortorella and Jay Woodcroft, some rebound options like Dallas Eakins, Gerard Gallant and Derek LaLonde, and some new candidates like Adam Foote, Mitch Love and Todd Nelson. If a team is looking for a specific type of coach, they’re probably going to find it.

But how long until we start to see the market unfold and watch as teams finalize their hires. Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli talked about the current state of the coaching market, and how we may see teams make up their minds in short order, on Daily Faceoff Live.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Still six vacancies across the NHL right now, I’m going to say one of these gets filled by Friday.

Frank Seravalli: I think we could have three of these filled by Friday. I think there’s a lot happening, percolating behind the scenes. I think there’s lots of teams that are starting to get a little bit antsy as the music begins to slow down.

And Rick Tocchet is the lynch pin for the market. Once Rick Tocchet decides, I believe there’s gonna be some decisions made in very short order.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Yes, you dubbed him the shot caller of the group of free agent coaches.

You can watch the full episode here…