The good, the controversial, and the Kraken: Ranking every NHL coaching hire by tier
The Stanley Cup Final is appointment viewing for hockey fans, but for supporters of the 30 teams that have already headed to the golf course, the lengthy wait between games is also a preview of a long, antsy summer.
Around this time of year, draft coverage and roster hypotheticals fuel rampant speculation over what each club will look like next season.
We might not know where coveted free agents like Sam Bennett or blue chip prospects like Porter Martone will end up, but at least one position is already set for 31 teams: head coach.
When the Dallas Stars canned Pete DeBoer after the Western Conference Final, they added one last vacancy to a particularly chaotic hiring cycle. Nine bench bosses, at least three of them rookies, will take over in new cities next season.
Eight of them are already named, and though we won’t know how their newest employers made out for at least another year or two, we can speculate. Read on for the skinny on every new hire (so far).
The Crown Jewel
The clear-cut top dog among free-agent coaches could have gone anywhere he wanted.
Mike Sullivan, New York Rangers
Seven consecutive seasons without a series win might not scream “Hall-of-Famer,” but Mike Sullivan’s seat never got too warm in Pittsburgh. He had already won two Stanley Cups in that chair when he and the Penguins agreed to part company, championships Sullivan’s old boss Jim Rutherford mortgaged the organization’s future trying to replicate. Since the Louis Domingue incident in 2022, diminishing returns from every key player not named Crosby ensured the futility of Sullivan’s efforts behind the bench. Kyle Dubas’ rebuild ambitions meant that Sullivan no longer had to be a good soldier (good sailor?) on a sinking ship, and off he went.
Sullivan must have enjoyed the high stakes of the 4 Nations Face-Off, because his new gig in the Big Apple is a major challenge with the media scrutiny to match. Like the Penguins, the Rangers suffer from an aging core and a soft blueline. Eight more years of Igor Shesterkin mean they won’t have the same goaltending woes that drove Sullivan crazy in Pittsburgh, though, and if anyone can get the best out of what’s left of Mika Zibanejad and keep J.T. Miller’s head in the game, it’s ‘Sully.’
Rangers’ GM Chris Drury gets extra marks for landing two of the most coveted assistants on the market, former Rangers’ head coach David Quinn and longtime Bruins’ assistant Joe Sacco, as Sullivan’s lieutenants.
High-Risk, High-Reward
Front offices took plenty of heat for hiring these experienced bench bosses, but for very different reasons. They need this to work out.
Joel Quenneville, Anaheim Ducks
It was going to happen at some point. That only became clearer when the Edmonton Oilers hired Stan Bowman last summer. Whether it should have happened is a very different conversation. Bowman and Joel Quenneville got off easy for their part in the organizational sexual assault cover-up that hangs like a black cloud over the Blackhawks’ dynasty, inaction that enabled even more harm after the fact. Coach Q is back all the same, this time with an Anaheim Ducks team that feels very close to competing.
The Ducks have potential franchise cornerstones at all three levels in center Leo Carlsson, defenseman Jackson LaCombe and goalie Lukas Dostal. Cutter Gauthier and Mason McTavish also have huge untapped potential, and veterans Alex Killorn, Radko Gudas, and Jacob Trouba have helped get rid of the daycare vibe the team had in the early days of its rebuild. The 80-point Ducks showed some signs of life last season despite chafing under the draconian rule of erstwhile coach Greg Cronin. With one of the greatest coaches ever behind the bench, this rapidly improving group could vault right into the top three of the Pacific Division.
That probably sums up the elevator pitch GM Pat Verbeek gave Anaheim owner Henry Samueli when he convinced him to sign off on this PR Chernobyl. Is it worth it? The optics couldn’t be worse, and if Quenneville has lost his fastball, he’s not the only person getting fired.
Rick Tocchet, Philadelphia Flyers
When he was announced as head coach, Rick Tocchet’s status as one of the Flyers’ most iconic players was held against him in some corners of the fanbase. Curmudgeons who think Bob Clarke is running the team from behind a crystal ball in South Jersey, mostly. “STUCK IN THE PAST!”
That’s not really fair, though. Tocchet is a good coach despite an iffy overall record (.490 PTS %). He churned out decent results for an Arizona Coyotes team that was so cheap and dysfunctional that it no longer exists. In Vancouver, he won the Jack Adams Award and a playoff series despite awkward locker-room dynamics and front-office sabotage (more on that later). Keith Jones and Danny Briere, Tocchet’s old teammates and new bosses, are betting he can continue the overachieving culture John Tortorella built in Philly without scaring off free agents and ostracizing key players like ‘Torts’ did.
The fit is there, but the terms of Tocchet’s contract are a bit risky. The Flyers are paying ‘Tock’ A-list money for the next five seasons, a major investment for a team that shouldn’t expect to compete for at least another two years. In a league where coaching shelf life is at an all-time low, will his message already be stale by the time Philadelphia has enough horses around Matvei Michkov to compete?
Right Guy, Right Time
These rookie head coaches have parlayed strong developmental CVs into jobs with teams at crossroads.
Marco Sturm, Boston Bruins
It was a strange coaching search for the Bruins, who never had to work this hard to get their man during nearly two decades as the NHL’s gold standard. The B’s failed to recruit star D-man Charlie McAvoy’s father-in-law Mike Sullivan, who chose the rival Rangers over his hometown team. Rick Tocchet lost interest due to the uncertainty surrounding the future of GM Don Sweeney, his old teammate in Boston.
Marco Sturm emerged as the frontrunner by May 27, and, though it took another two weeks for the German to take the podium beside Sweeney, Boston fans shouldn’t feel let down after the long wait. The former Bruin raised the profile of Germany’s national program with a Silver Medal finish at the 2018 Olympics. As the head coach of AHL Ontario (California, not Canada), he mentored key prospects, including Quinton Byfield and Brandt Clarke, without ever missing the postseason in three seasons.
Sturm’s developmental experience makes him an encouraging selection for a team that’s trying to find out how young guys like Fraser Minten and Mason Lohrei will fit around the core of McAvoy, David Pastrnak, and Jeremy Swayman in the long term. He’s also the first coach Boston has hired without Day 1 Cup or Bust expectations since Claude Julien. That turned out OK, and the Bruins might end up counting themselves lucky the Sharks didn’t snap up Sturm last year.
Dan Muse, Pittsburgh Penguins
Where the Bruins fully expect to contend again during Pastrnak and McAvoy’s prime, the Pittsburgh Penguins don’t have much to sell prospective coaches save for a last chance to work with Sidney Crosby. Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are legends too, but they’re playing out the string. Everyone else under contract beyond 2026, even Erik Karlsson, can be had if the price is right. It’s unsurprising, then, that they went for an under-the-radar hire.
Dan Muse might not have popped up in as many different coaching searches as Mitch Love, Todd Nelson, or Crosby’s old pal Tocchet, but he has some legit defensive chops; in five seasons of running an NHL PK, his teams have finished lower than 11th just once. The most intriguing bits about Muse’s resume for the Pens, though, were his youth (Muse is 42) and successful developmental stints at the USHL (Chicago Steel, USNTDP) and International (Team USA U17, U18) levels.
Dubas got sideways glances from Crosby, Malkin, and indeed Sullivan when he shipped off Jake Guentzel and Marcus Pettersson during his first two seasons at the helm in Pittsburgh. In Muse, Dubas has a coach who is far more likely to see things his way when it’s time to commit to a proper youth movement. Could the nuclear option, a Crosby trade, become possible with Sullivan out of the way?
Okay, Sure
They’re not disappointments, but you won’t find anyone too excited about them, either.
Jeff Blashill, Chicago Blackhawks
It’d be a copout to say we don’t know much about Jeff Blashill after 537 games as a head coach in the show, but … we don’t know much about Jeff Blashill. The Detroit Red Wings aged out of contention and embarked on a scorched earth rebuild shortly after he took the (winged) wheel in 2015. Keeping a job for seven years under those conditions speaks to Blashill’s ability to keep morale high, but it’s tough to glean insight about the X’s and O’s behind a 17-49-5 team like the 2019-20 Wings.
Here’s what we do know about Blashill: he has glowing reviews from former colleagues including Lightning bench boss Jon Cooper and Panthers’ GM Bill Zito; has led teams to Calder Cup (AHL) and Clark Cup (USHL) victories as head coach; and ran the sixth-best penalty kill in the league over three seasons as Cooper’s assistant in Tampa. Take away the NHL record, and Blashill’s got a better resume than either Sturm or Muse.
Blashill does have an NHL record, though, and it’s not pretty (204-261-72). Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson is taking a big gamble on Blashill’s redemption. Franchise centerpiece Connor Bedard is still waiting on his breakout season, and, with other young stars like Frank Nazar and Sam Rinzel joining up, the Hawks are expecting to take the next step sometime soon. A losing culture is hard to shake, though. Just ask Detroit.
Adam Foote, Vancouver Canucks
Our star forwards hate each other, and locker room leaks are up on every hockey site in North America? Call a presser, we’re going to confirm them all. We tried to trade a beloved pending UFA and will surely lose him for nothing? Press conference, now. Rick Tocchet is on the first train out of this mess, and we can’t track down Quinn Hughes to tell him? Call a press conference! By the way, I hear he really wants to play with his brothers, who are already teammates 1,000 miles away. Go ahead and … well, you get the point.
As you can imagine, enrollment rates are down at the Jim Rutherford School of Crisis Management. He and vice-principal Patrik Allvin, who moonlights as GM of the Canucks, must know the city will burn (again) if they trade Hughes, their captain and one of the 10 best players in hockey. They also know they’re running out of time to show Hughes the ‘Nucks are building something worth shirking his brothers for when his contract is up in 2027.
The departure of Tocchet, someone whose calls Hughes actually took, forced Rutherford and Allvin to pivot to Adam Foote. Hughes is fond of Foote, whose tutelage helped transform him from a very good defenseman into a Norris winner. The former Avalanche captain can run a defense, but can he run a team? He’s only tried once, during a subpar season with WHL Kelowna. It’s great that Foote and Hughes are pals, but if Vancouver is serious about keeping the latter, the former needs to win some games.
What’s the Idea?
A team in desperate need of an identity is as aimless as ever.
Lane Lambert, Seattle Kraken
Since they came within a game of the Western Conference Final in 2023, the Kraken have gone from greater than the sum of their parts to far less with 81 and 76-point finishes. By firing head coach Dan Bylsma after only a year, trading veteran forwards Yanni Gourde, Brandon Tanev, and Oliver Bjorkstrand, and appointing Jason Botteril to take over day-to-day operations as GM, head honcho Ron Francis seemed to acknowledge something had to change. Picking the franchise’s third bench boss would be an early indication of whether Francis and Botterill wanted to win now or commit to building through the draft.
Somehow, it did neither. Lane Lambert was a longtime Barry Trotz assistant who quickly undid most of his mentor’s good work in just over a year-and-a-half in charge of the New York Islanders. Lambert wasn’t ready for the big chair, and the team’s vaunted defensive structure crumbled under his leadership. He went back to assisting under Craig Berube in Toronto last season as the Maple Leafs overcame bad metrics to earn good results on the defensive end.
It’s hard to tell what Seattle thinks Lambert, 60, learned from Berube in 12 months that couldn’t be gleaned from Trotz in 10 years. Lambert is a hockey lifer and a well-liked guy but was not a popular candidate for a second shot at head coaching. Put on your tin foil hat, and this hire feels a lot like a cheap placeholder by an organization that’s very clearly grooming assistant Jessica Campbell for a historic promotion. What’s going to happen on the ice in the interim?
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