The NHL season is still two and a half months away and teams have still not finalized their rosters yet. There are still plenty of free agency issues yet to be resolved, including arbitration for some big names. Some big names are also out there as potential trade targets, which makes armchair general managers giddy with optimism.
There are currently no job openings for coaches in the NHL. Pittsburgh’s Mike Johnston filled the last vacancy available, the sixth coach to take over a new team for the coming season. He joins Barry Trotz in Washington, Peter Laviolette in Nashville, Willie Desjardins in Vancouver, Gerard Gallant in Florida and Bill Peters in Carolina.
Invariably there will continue to be coaching changes as we get into the 2014-15 season, as the coaching carousel never stops. We won’t get in to which teams are going to fall on their faces out of the gate, instead let’s look at the next five NHL head coaches.
John Tortorella-Torts got a bit of a bad deal in Vancouver, getting fired by a general manager who was himself clinging to his own job. In hindsight it’s tough to look at Vancouver as a good fit for Tortorella in the first place, but a single year to change a team already in transition seems a bit unfair. With a Stanley Cup on his resume, Tortorella will always get a phone call when there is unrest behind a team’s bench and next year will be no different.
Dan Bylsma-The former Pittsburgh Penguin bench boss got run out of the Steel City as the scapegoat for an underachieving team. While stories vary about how Bylsma was perceived in the Pens locker room, it was significantly less expensive to replace GM Fred Shero and Bylsma than to retool the roster. Bylsma's next head coaching gig will go a long way to determine his chops as a bench boss or if he was able to win a Stanley Cup due to the pile of talent he was coaching.
Scott Arniel-The most recently deposed Columbus Blue Jacket coach, Arniel is currently the assistant head coach for the New York Rangers. He was cut short before Columbus broke through to the playoffs but is respected around the league. He was a casualty more of the poor management of former GM Scott Howson and the specter of Rick Nash’s trade demands.
Mark Reeds-Currently an assistant to Paul MacLean in Ottawa, the whispers were that Reeds would slide in to the head coaching post if Ottawa doesn’t start the season well. It’s a pretty tough reality, but looking at a list of all the coaches in the league, Mike Babcock of Detroit is the most tenured coach in the league at only nine years. Of the 29 other coaches only five others have been with their current club since 2010. Reeds made a name for himself as a successful junior coach for Owen Sound before joining the Senators’ staff.
Guy Boucher-the man with the mysterious scar on his face (he doesn’t want to talk about it) did a fantastic job bringing the Tampa Bay Lightning back to relevance, but became a casualty of a slow start in the shortened 2013 season. It’s tough to blame GM Steve Yzerman for firing his coach considering how well Jon Cooper has done since replacing Boucher. However, Boucher deserves credit for the structure that exists in Tampa and was as much a casualty of poor goaltending than anything else. He’s currently coaching in Switzerland for SC Bern.