Paul Maurice Is Part Of The NHL’s Hottest Trend: Veteran Coaches On New Teams

SportsMoney Paul Maurice Is Part Of The NHL’s Hottest Trend: Veteran Coaches On New Teams Carol Schram Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The business of sports is all part of the game. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jun 24, 2022, 12:00pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Paul Marurice was the latest NHL coach to land with a new team on Thursday, when he was introduced . . .

[+] as the new bench boss of the Florida Panthers. (Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images) Getty Images On June 24, 2021, the Seattle Kraken announced the hiring of Dave Hakstol as their franchise’s first head coach. Friday marks his one-year anniversary.

He has already climbed the ranks to become the 19th-longest tenured coach in the 32-team National Hockey League. This summer, it seems like the NHL’s coaching carousel is spinning faster than ever. Here’s a rundown of the flurry of recent hirings and the latest on the vacancies that are still open.

Old Faces In New Places In the last 10 days alone, four veteran bench bosses have signed on with new teams. John Tortorella brings his fiery personality and demanding style to the Philadelphia Flyers. Paul Maurice came back from a six-month hiatus to sign on with the Florida Panthers.

Peter DeBoer moved from the Vegas Golden Knights to the Dallas Stars and Bruce Cassidy landed with Vegas just eight days after the Boston Bruins let him go. Between them, the quartet has 66 combined seasons of NHL coaching experience — 24 years for Maurice, 20 for Tortorella, 14 for DeBoer and eight for Cassidy. But of that group, only Tortorella has won a Stanley Cup — and that was back in 2004, with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Since then, Tortorella has had stops with the New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks and Columbus Blue Jackets. Maurice has been with the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes, twice, as well as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets, and never been farther than the third round of the playoffs. DeBoer went to the Stanley Cup Final with the New Jersey Devils in 2012 and the San Jose Sharks in 2016, after starting his NHL head coaching career in Florida.

And Cassidy reached the Stanley Cup Final with the Boston Bruins in 2019, where he landed after more than a decade on the sidelines following a brief, unsuccessful head-coaching tenure in Washington from 2002-03. MORE FOR YOU WWE Extreme Rules 2021 Results: Winners, News And Notes As Roman Reigns Beats The Demon The World’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players 2021: Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo Reclaims Top Spot From PSG’s Lionel Messi The Good, Bad And Ugly From The Green Bay Packers’ Win Over The San Francisco 49ers Salaries On The Rise But Term Lengths Have Receded In May of 2015, the Maple Leafs set a new high-water mark for coaches’ salaries and contract lengths when they signed Mike Babcock to an eight-year contract worth $50 million , or $6. 25 million per season.

Babcock was fired early in the fifth year of the deal, on Nov. 20, 2019. He has remained on the sidelines, still being paid by Toronto through the 2022-23 season.

In the wake of Babcock’s hiring, the standard for other coaches was raised. Not all coaching salaries are made public. But according to CapFriendly, Joel Quenneville received $6 million a year for three seasons when he signed an extension with the Chicago Blackhawks in January of 2016.

He was fired early in the second year of that deal, on Nov. 7, 2018, but recovered quickly. Five months later, in April of 2019, he signed the second-biggest total-value contract of all time when he joined the Florida Panthers on a five-year contract worth a total of $26.

25 million, or $5. 25 million a season. Quenneville resigned from the Panthers early in Year 3 of that deal last October, in the wake of the independent investigator’s report on Kyle Beach’s sexual assault allegations which occurred while he was a member of the Blackhawks in 2010.

Currently, only three NHL coaches have been in the same job for more than four seasons: Stanley Cup finalists Jon Cooper, who joined the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2013 and Jared Bednar, who signed on with the Colorado Avalanche in 2016, and the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Mike Sullivan, who was a mid-season replacement in December of 2015 and promptly took his team to back-to-back championships. So it’s understandable that organizations’ enthusiasm for handing out five-year contracts to new coaches appears to be waning. Cassidy got one in Vegas, reportedly at $4.

5 million a season. That’s a nice bump for him. He had been going into the last season of a three-year extension that was reportedly worth $3 million a season in Boston, but found himself in an excellent bargaining position with a number of teams reportedly pursuing his services when the Bruins let him go.

DeBoer was also out of work for barely a month following his departure from Vegas. He leveraged his record to receive a four-year deal from Dallas worth $4. 25 million a season — a raise from the $3.

25 million he was earning in Vegas. Maurice said he felt like he’d reached the limits of his shelf life when he resigned from the Jets last December, midway through his 10th season in Winnipeg. He has found the passion again with the Panthers — the 2022 Presidents’ Trophy as the top regular-season squad in the NHL.

His deal is reportedly for three yeas and $3. 9 million per season. Tortorella spent a full year on the sidelines and worked as a television analyst for ESPN after his last contract expired in Columbus at the end of the 2020-21 season.

He was lured back behind the bench by the Flyers, on a four-year contract worth $4 million per season. Woodcroft, St. Louis, Boudreau Continue; Brunette Does Not In Edmonton, the Oilers announced on Wednesday that they had removed the interim tag from Jay Woodcroft and signed him to a three-year extension after the mid-season replacement took his club to the Western Conference Final in his first year behind an NHL bench.

Commensurate with his comparatively limited experience, he’s at $2 million per season. Earlier in the offseason, the Montreal Canadiens confirmed that they’d be continuing with their mid-season replacement, Martin St. Louis, as did the Vancouver Canucks with Bruce Boudreau.

No contract terms are publicly available in either case. Andrew Brunette was not so lucky. Elevated from an assistant’s position after Quenneville resigned in Florida, he was named a Jack Adams Award finalist for coach of the year after the Panthers posted the NHL’s best regular-season record.

But the club’s second-round upset at the hands of the Lightning left Florida’s management team considering its options. When Maurice was hired on Wednesday, he indicated that Brunette would be welcome to remain with the organization in another capacity. No word yet on whether he’ll agree to stay.

Like Cassidy and DeBoer, he may receive a head-coaching opportunity with another organization. Lambert, Richardson Are New Faces Reports on Friday indicate that Montreal Canadiens assistant coach Luke Richardson is set to become . .

. [+] the next coach of the Chicago Blackhawks. (Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images) Getty Images Even after this flurry of activity, not all the seats have been filled in this game of coaching musical chairs.

The Detroit Red Wings parted ways with Jeff Blashill after seven seasons. Their coaching search is being conducted under a cloak of silence. The Boston Bruins have not yet indicated how they’ll fill their vacancy after cutting ties with Cassidy.

Long-time Boston University coach David Quinn reportedly interviewed with the team on Thursday. Other potential candidates could include Joe Sacco, Jay Leach, Jim Montgomery and Spencer Carbery. The Winnipeg Jets have their sights set on Barry Trotz, who was fired by the New York Islanders in early May.

Trotz is a Manitoba native, and won a Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018, putting him at the top of Winnipeg’s wishlist. Trotz reportedly met with the organization again this week, and now needs to decide whether or not he wants to jump back into another coaching situation. Trotz’s longtime assistant, Lane Lambert, is getting his first crack at an NHL head job, as he takes over the Islanders following his old boss’s departure.

Finally, there’s Chicago. Frank Seravalli of Dai DAI ly Faceoff is reporting on Friday that Montreal Canadiens assistant Luke Richardson will fill that role — also his first NHL head-coaching position. He’ll be Chicago’s third coach in less than a year, after Derek King took over from Jeremy Colliton on an interim basis last November.

New Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson invited King to interview to keep his position, but also left the door open to explore other options. Follow me on Twitter . Carol Schram Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.