Best Landing Spots for Coaches in the NHL Amid Rumors

While the Stanley Cup Playoffs rage on, a few teams that missed out on the postseason party are spending their time looking for new head coaches.

It's how things go for teams that don't make the playoffs. They lose enough to miss out on the fun and they're cleaning house. That usually means the coach is the first guy out.

With a handful of openings available and a copious number of coaches out there looking to land one of the few precious top jobs in the sport, it's up to us to figure out which coaches fit the teams in need.

Some names are familiar and others less so, but different teams have different needs behind the bench. We'll do our best to make the best choices, which makes us totally like a league general manager.

It's never boring in Philadelphia, just like it's never not exciting in Vancouver, so it would make the most sense that the two teams would be intertwined when it comes to a coaching situation.

Rick Tocchet won the Jack Adams a year ago when he led the Canucks to the Pacific Division title, but if he wants to leave the team for another job, the team gave him that opening when they declined his option to force him to stay in Vancouver.

With all the drama that unfolded over the past season with Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Thatcher Demko's injuries and now captain Quinn Hughes having his eyes turned eastward thinking about playing with his brothers, it's a lot. Yet Tocchet may stay there because Vancouver could make him a contract offer to stay that would be hard to pass on.

The catch here is the Flyers are searching for a new coach and Tocchet spent some of his best seasons as a player in Philadelphia. If ever there was a person built to coach the Flyers, it's Tocchet. With what he's gotten out of the Canucks through all their drama and the Flyers being in their post-Tortorella era, it might be the best fit regardless and Philadelphia wouldn't be shy about money to pay him either.

We love homecomings and Tocchet taking over the Flyers would be a lot of fun to see.

When the Rangers fired Peter Laviolette at the end of the regular season, it was a move that was overdue, given the way the season played out. New York won the Presidents' Trophy a year ago and went to the Eastern Conference Final, only to miss the playoffs completely a year later.

Things got messy despite all of the talent the Rangers have with Igor Shesterkin, Mika Zibanejad and Adam Fox among others. They need some help with the roster and GM Chris Drury will need to do better than he has there, but a team that was so good last season cannot be that far off, right? That's why making the call for Jay Woodcroft would be huge.

Woodcroft had massive success with the Edmonton Oilers and had goaltending not betrayed him for an extended period, his ouster there may not have come so soon. That ideally won't be an issue in New York with Shesterkin in goal and if Woodcroft can bring some of the magic touches he had with the Oilers to Broadway and inject some excitement into their play, it would do wonders for everyone involved there.

The Bruins are in a tough spot. They've got a mostly veteran team and not a lot of young players on the way up from the minors. They're a team that traditionally plays hard with a lot of defensive structure and they've also got one of the premier scorers in the league with David Pastrnak.

If ever a situation smacked of bringing in John Tortorella, it's this one.

Tortorella is from Boston and bringing the native son home to coach the Bruins would potentially drive a lot of the fans up a wall, but the first time he goes to the mat for the team and coaches them up over their talent level which allows Jeremy Swayman to look more like the guy we saw in seasons past, all would be forgiven.

Things in Philadelphia didn't work out with Tortorella because they were a very young team and going through a rebuild on the fly. Even through all that, he nearly got them to the playoffs a year ago. If the Bruins want to hold it together while they figure out how best to fill up their farm system, Tortorella can do it.

There's one head coach out there who has no NHL experience but may be the top guy available and that's David Carle.

Carle, who is just 35 years old, coaches the Denver Pioneers in the NCAA, and he's the hottest coaching prospect in hockey. Every NHL team would be interested in him, but teams with especially young rosters on the rise are the ones most eager to get him. That puts Chicago at the forefront for his services.

With Connor Bedard, Artyom Levshunov, Kevin Korchinski, Frank Nazar and Sam Rinzel among many other young prospects as well as a top five pick to come in this year's draft, there are a lot of reasons for any coach to want to get in on the ground floor of what Chicago has going on.

Chicago wants Carle something fierce and it's understandable why, considering Carle has led Denver to the Frozen Four four times and won two national championships. He's also coached the United States World Junior team to the gold medal twice. All he's done is win and he can pick wherever he wants to go. Chicago will make it very difficult to say no.

When the Kraken fired Dan Bylsma after one season, it came as a surprise, to say the least. Trying to read between the lines of what new GM Jason Botterill and former GM now team president Ron Francis had to say about why they made that decision read as if they're looking for a coach that has a lot of structure, has their team play tougher defensively and has command and respect of the room as well.

Gerard Gallant has always been believed to be a players' coach, but he's a guy who coaches the way he played: tough and sticks up for his guys. In the eight seasons he's been an NHL head coach, he's been fired twice mid-season and missed the playoffs once. Every other time, his teams made the playoffs, and he led Vegas to the Stanley Cup Final in their first season in the league.

Gallant seems to find his way out of work quickly, as evidenced by being fired mid-season twice and then let go by the Rangers after two seasons, but the results are very hard to argue with and with Seattle's roster being more veteran than not, that will work a lot better for "Turk."

The Anaheim job is the toughest one to get a read on which way they'll go. They had a very good season as they emerged from a rebuild and made a run at a playoff spot. They're teeming with young talent that should only improve over time.

The Ducks are close to being an annual playoff contender, but trying to get any kind of read on GM Pat Verbeek is close to impossible...which is why we're dipping into his past connections to pick Tampa Bay Lightning assistant and former Detroit Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill.

Verbeek was a scout and assistant GM with the Red Wings for years before landing in Anaheim, and Blashill was the last coach to lead Detroit to the playoffs back in 2016. He was also deeply unfortunate enough to coach them after Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Nicklas Lidström all called it a career. Things went south fast after that he led the team for six more years before being let go.

Blashill working with Jon Cooper and having a winning pedigree in which he won titles in the AHL and USHL as a head coach would make him a good pick for any team in need, but his history with Verbeek and the Ducks' need for a new coach with a more player-friendly demeanor would make him an ideal fit.