The NHL has had one of its most robust coaching carousels in league history, with nine teams naming new coaches since May 16 and three in-season additions getting the job on a full-time basis since the end of the regular season.
Boston and Winnipeg appeared to be the last two openings on the precipice of being filled, but then San Jose decided to keep it spinning. The Sharks fired coach Bob Boughner and three of his four assistants Thursday night, meaning there will be a 10th new bench boss this offseason.
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Brad Larsen was hired by Columbus on June 10, 2021, and he’s now 16th in coaching tenure in a league with 32 teams. So a lot of new coaches have been hired recently. Despite that, interim Sharks general manager Joe Will does not see a shallow pool of potential candidates to replace Boughner.
“I think there are plenty of good candidates out there,” Will said. “Talking with (GM) candidates here and knowing the (coaching) candidates they are talking about and the lists and things like that, the urgency of ‘there’s only a couple candidates out there that we are into’ … that just wasn’t there. There’s going to be numerous good options in the head coaching and coaching staff areas.”
Will also said he and his management team have always had an updated list of coaches to pursue should they need one. Everyone has a list. Even Alabama’s athletic director keeps an updated list because someday Nick Saban will be replaced. Will expects to wait for the new GM to be named, however, before the coaching search begins in earnest.
The @SanJoseSharks have relieved Bob Boughner of his duties as head coach. pic.twitter.com/BBFvg9iVIM
— NHL (@NHL) July 1, 2022
So, who could the Sharks look at to replace Boughner? The new GM will play a big part in that.
With that in mind, we came up with more than one list. The first group is a collection of buzz-worthy names that don’t have a specific connection to any of the reported GM finalists. Next is a list specific to each of the three names that have been reported for the GM job: Mike Grier, Scott Mellanby and Ray Whitney.
Will declined to discuss any names related to the GM search or how many finalists there are, but those are the three names that have been mentioned by the NHL’s most reputable news breakers. It’s also worth noting that some of these people could be candidates regardless of their connections — someone listed as a “Grier guy” could certainly still be considered if someone else gets the GM job.
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Here are 20 potential candidates to replace Boughner as the next coach of the Sharks.
Possible buzz-worthy candidates
Andrew Brunette
Brunette holds the second-highest winning percentage in NHL history among coaches with at least 50 games coached. He was named a Jack Adams Award finalist after taking over seven games into this past season and leading the Panthers to the Presidents’ Trophy and a league-best 122 points. Then Florida got swept in the second round of the playoffs to rival Tampa Bay and the club decided to replace him with a veteran (Paul Maurice) who has won a playoff round three times in his past 17 years as an NHL head coach. Brunette’s Panthers were better than his predecessor’s, a guy (Joel Quenneville) who has three Stanley Cup rings.
Spencer Carbery
Carbery is 40 years old and quickly moving up the ranks of the best young coaches in the sport. He was the AHL coach of the year two seasons ago with Hershey. He spent this past season as an assistant with the Maple Leafs, who had the No. 1 power play in the NHL. He has coached for only one season as an NHL assistant and only four total above the ECHL level.
David Carle
Another young coach (he turns 33 in November), Carle just won an NCAA championship in his fourth season as the head coach at Denver, and he knocked off the Michigan Globetrotters to do it. He doesn’t have a specific connection to the Sharks — beyond his starting goalie, Magnus Chrona, being a San Jose prospect — but his brother, Matt, played for the club for three seasons.
Rikard Grönborg
It feels like there hasn’t been a coaching list like this that didn’t include Grönborg in several years, but he still hasn’t landed an NHL job. He went to college at St. Cloud State and spent about a decade coaching at various levels in the U.S. before returning to Sweden. He had a strong international resume with his home country before spending the past three seasons coaching Zurich in the Swiss National League.
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Benoit Groulx
Groulx won a few QMJHL titles before spending the past six seasons as Tampa Bay’s AHL coach in Syracuse. He has helped develop a bunch of future Lightning/NHL players, including Yanni Gourde, Anthony Cirelli and Carter Verhaeghe.
Jay Leach
Leach, 42, spent the past season as an assistant with the Kraken. He was considered a contender for the job in Boston because he previously had been with the Bruins as an AHL coach. He also played for the Sharks for part of one season (2009-10) and was the Worcester Sharks’ captain in 2010-11.
Marco Sturm
Sturm spent his first seven seasons with the Sharks, then was traded during the eighth to Boston. Anyone remember for whom? He coached Germany’s national team for three years after he retired, and it won a stunning silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Sturm has spent the past four seasons as an assistant on the Kings’ staff. His time in San Jose didn’t line up with Grier’s or Whitney’s, but he’s likely to have some mutual connections with one or both of them.
Joel Ward
Ward spent his final three seasons as a player with the Sharks. He has only two years of significant coaching experience — as an assistant for Vegas’ AHL team in Henderson. This might be too early for him as an NHL head coach, but he could also be a consideration for one of the assistant openings.
Ryan Warsofsky
Warsofsky is only 34 years old, but he has done a lot of winning already. He has spent three years as Carolina’s AHL coach. The first two years he didn’t have a postseason to coach in, but he had very good teams with top-five offenses. This past season, his club scored the most goals (top-three in goals per game) and then rolled to the Calder Cup. He also reached the Kelly Cup final in one of his two seasons as an ECHL coach.
Potential Grier candidates
Jeff Halpern
Here’s a name that should be on the list regardless of who the new GM is. Halpern has been an assistant on Jon Cooper’s staff in Tampa Bay for the past four seasons. The Lightning have won a lot of games in that span, including three trips to the Stanley Cup Final and two titles. His colleague Derek Lalonde just became the head coach of the Red Wings. Halpern also played with Grier for two seasons in Washington, where he eventually became captain of the Capitals.
Jay Pandolfo
Grier got his first NHL coaching job from the Devils. The guy he worked for, John Hynes, was his teammate at Boston University. They also played with Pandolfo at BU. Pandolfo spent five seasons as an assistant coach for the Bruins before returning to his alma mater as an assistant last year. A potential snag: Pandolfo was named the head coach of the Terriers on May 5.
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David Quinn
Quinn is older than Grier and Hynes, and his time as a player, assistant coach and head coach at BU never overlapped with them. But Quinn and Hynes are close friends, and Grier worked for Hynes when they were across the Hudson River from Quinn during his three-year run as the Rangers coach. Quinn didn’t have much success with the rebuilding Rangers, but he didn’t have the Vezina Trophy-winning version of Igor Shesterkin, either.
Trent Yawney
Yawney has had one chance to be an NHL head coach: He got 103 games with the Blackhawks when they weren’t quite committed to a rebuild but also weren’t good enough to win. He was fired, and then Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews showed up the following season. His next job was three seasons as a Sharks assistant, so he coached Grier. He’s been with Edmonton, Anaheim and now Los Angeles since then.
Rob Zettler
Zettler has 13 years of NHL experience as an assistant coach, including two tours of duty with the Sharks. He also played in San Jose for three seasons, so he has a connection to Whitney (teammate) and Grier (assistant coach). He has spent the past two seasons as an assistant with the Lightning. It’s not too late for him to get a shot at running his own team at this level (he also has four years as an AHL head coach), but it also might not happen.
Potential Mellanby candidates
Claude Julien
Julien hasn’t had a lot of postseason success since a title in 2011 and a trip to the Cup Final in 2013, but his teams have had a lot of regular-season success. His teams have also been strong analytically for basically the entire era data like Corsi and expected goals have been available. He coached in Montreal while Mellanby was the assistant GM for parts of five seasons.
Dave Lowry
Lowry just finished the 2021-22 season as the interim head coach in Winnipeg but did not get the job full time. He has seven years of experience as an assistant coach in the NHL, plus three stints as a head coach in the WHL. He also spent three years with the Sharks as a player and four years as Mellanby’s teammate in Florida.
Kirk Muller
Muller was one of the hottest names on coaching search lists after Montreal upset Washington and Pittsburgh in the 2010 playoffs, but his first chance as a head coach did not go well with Carolina. He has spent time as an assistant in St. Louis, then back in Montreal and now a year with Calgary, which might get him back in the interview mix. He played with Whitney and Mellanby, and he was an assistant with the Habs when Mellanby was the assistant GM.
Rick Tocchet
Tocchet has been a significant name during this coaching cycle, but he hasn’t landed a job. He’s been a head coach twice: briefly with Tampa Bay after the Barry Melrose fiasco, then four seasons with Arizona, which was its own brand of fiasco. He and Mellanby were teammates for five seasons in Philadelphia, including a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 1987.
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Potential Whitney candidates
Kevin Dineen
Dineen’s one chance as an NHL coach was a brief stint with the Panthers, which is similar to Boughner. Dineen’s team made the playoffs one year, then didn’t in the 48-game lockout-shortened season, and he was fired after 16 games the following season. Since then, he won a title as an assistant with the Blackhawks in 2015 and has had three successful seasons in a row at the AHL level. The first two were with Anaheim’s team (San Diego), and then he won a division title this past season with New Jersey (Utica) despite using 40 players. Dineen also played with Whitney for a couple of years near the end of his career in Columbus.
Travis Green
Green won a WHL championship and reached the Calder Cup Final in his second of four years as an AHL head coach before getting his first NHL gig in Vancouver. It was a weird tenure — lots of praise for his work with a young team, then less so as expectations rose for the Canucks. He was let go during this past season, and Bruce Boudreau nearly rallied the Canucks to a playoff berth. Green played his junior hockey with the Spokane Chiefs in the WHL, including two years as teammates with former Sharks forward Pat Falloon … and Whitney.
(Photo of Bob Boughner: Josie Lepe / Associated Press)