Which coaches are on the hot seat?
In the NHL, it’s only a matter of time before heads begin to roll, figuratively speaking of course. Even though we’re less than a month into the NHL season, we’re quickly approaching the time when general managers and owners begin to side-eye their team’s head coaches, wondering if a change behind the bench can alter their team’s fortunes.
Last year, a whopping eight NHL head coaches were fired mid-season. That’s a quarter of the league in case you were asking. The first coach to be shown the door last year was Jim Montgomery of the Boston Bruins on November 19th, meaning we’re just a couple weeks away from bench-boss hunting season beginning in earnest. Which coaches are at risk of losing their jobs this year? Well, a look at the teams populating the bottom of the standings will give you a hint, but the NHL always finds a way to surprise us, too.
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by The Sheet‘s Jeff Marek to discuss which coaches could be on the hot seat as the season enters its second month.
Carter Hutton: As I look across the NHL, Jeff, what coaches outside of Andrew Brunette are on the hot seat? You’ve got to think about (John) Hynes in Minnesota. In Buffalo, Lindy Ruff. What’s your take on who else could be another coach on the move?
Jeff Marek: You know, I could see both of those. I mean, any team that’s sort of fallen out of it early here. It’s funny, too, there were some people that I talked to that were actually wondering, which may sound weird and now they’ve circled back out of this swerve, but there were conversations that I had with people that were wondering if this is the year that’s it’s finally over for Jon Cooper in Tampa when they had their early struggles. He’s been a head coach longer than anybody else in the league. Coaches have shelf lives. But right now in the Eastern Conference everybody is essentially the same team, so it’s difficult to figure out who’s actually good and who’s actually bad.
I think that Buffalo is always in a state of questioning. Listen, even today, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen coming off a great performance on Saturday, Buffalo is going back to Alex Lyon again today. So, is that a message being sent? It looks like it, but I don’t know. To your point about Lindy Ruff, he’s on the expiring contract. You do wonder about him there. But target number one, if we’re going to put targets on people, has gotta be Nashville. That’s the one team that now in a second go-for-it year in a row is really underperforming.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…