Maple Leafs hire Steve Sullivan as assistant coach

The Toronto Maple Leafs announced Friday that they added Steve Sullivan as their assistant coach.

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We have added Steve Sullivan as an Assistant Coach. Sullivan joins the Leafs from the Toronto Marlies.

3:39 PM · Dec 26, 2025

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Sullivan joins the team after serving as an assistant coach for the AHL’s Toronto Marlies. He was hired by the organization in August 2024.

The news comes days after the Leafs fired assistant coach Marc Savard, whose primary duty was to run the team’s power play. The team had scored just 12 goals through their first 35 games of 2025-26 and ranked last in the league with a 13.3 percent success rate.

Sullivan joins a coaching staff led by Craig Berube, along with Derek Lalonde, Mike Van Ryn and Curtis Sanford.

Before joining the Leafs, Sullivan worked in the Arizona Coyotes organization, where he served under a number of roles, including director of player development, assistant general manager and executive vice-president of hockey operations. He also briefly served as interim general manager between July and September 2020.

As a player, Sullivan spent 16 seasons in the NHL, where he scored 290 goals and 457 assists for 747 points in 1,011 career regular-season games with the Leafs, Coyotes, Nashville Predators, Chicago Blackhawks, New Jersey Devils and Pittsburgh Penguins.

In four seasons with Toronto, he recorded 35 goals and 50 assists for 85 points in 152 regular-season games. He was also part of their 1999 playoff run, where he posted three goals and three assists for six points in 13 games.

Sullivan played in 50 total Stanley Cup Playoff games, where he scored nine goals and 14 assists for 23 points.

The Leafs are 16-15-5 with 37 points in 36 games, last in the Atlantic Division and 15th in the Eastern Conference. Forward William Nylander leads the team in both assists and points with 27 and 40, while Auston Matthews and John Tavares are tied with a team-leading 14 goals.