There are currently five head coaching vacancies in the NHL: Anaheim Ducks, New York Rangers, Seattle Kraken, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Vancouver Canucks. Three teams currently employ interim head coaches: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, and Philadelphia Flyers.
The Ducks were the first team to part ways with their head coach after the conclusion of the 2024-25 regular season, when they announced Greg Cronin would not return in 2025-26 despite a 21-point increase in the standings from the year prior.
“I started to look at things when we probably went out of the playoff picture,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek stated during his media availability following his decision to not bring Cronin back. “I started to really look at things closer and, obviously, there were some concerns.
Verbeek declined to state the exact concerns but implied they weren’t about the team’s record or the culture within the organization.
“I can’t,” Verbeek said when asked of said concerns. “Those are private conversations that I had with the coach, and I’d like them to remain private and confidential.”
There are five to eight openings behind NHL benches this offseason, and there may even be more if teams like the New York Islanders decide to make a change after hiring a new GM or the Nashville Predators after one of the most disappointing seasons in recent memory.
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As is the case every offseason, there’s a long list of deserving candidates from freshly on-the-market coaches like Mike Sullivan and Rick Tocchet to those who’ve had success at lower levels like David Carle and Pat Ferschweiler to those looking to return to the position after some time away like Jay Woodcroft and Don Granato, plus countless more.
A sizable list of quality candidates exists for Verbeek and the Ducks, who are said to be casting a “wide net” with their search for the team’s next head coach and are well into their interview process.
However, the Ducks face fierce competition from teams looking for a new direction behind their benches. Six of the eight teams looking for new coaches are flagship, tentpole, standard-bearing organizations in the NHL.
The Rangers, Penguins, Canucks, Bruins, Blackhawks, and Flyers are all teams in sizable, influential NHL media markets and are often seen as some of the most lucrative jobs in the field.
The Rangers, Bruins, Penguins, and Canucks are all one or two years removed from the playoffs, could be looking to return to that level, and maximize their respective windows around their current superstar players like Artemi Panarin, David Pastrnak, Sidney Crosby, Quinn Hughes, etc.
The Blackhawks and Flyers are looking to take their next steps toward contention around budding superstar talents like Connor Bedard and Matvei Michkov while adding more at the top of the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft.
The Kraken are a team seemingly desperate to make an impact in a young market and willing to make a splash.
For the Ducks, the questions become, How does the Anaheim job compare, and What do they have to offer that separates them?
Despite the potential fool’s gold that the relative success of the 2024-25 season was, the Ducks saw much of their young core take strides in their development while contributing in significant roles on the team.
They have one of, if not the actual, best goaltending tandems in the NHL, highlighted by sprouting 24-year-old star Lukas Dostal. They have enticing young blueline talents like Jackson LaCombe, Olen Zellweger, and Pavel Mintyukov oozing with potential. Up front, they have four promising offensive dynamos who all ended the season on a high note in Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish, and Trevor Zegras.
Off the ice, the coach will be living in the warmest (objective) and most beautiful (subjective) climate of all the available positions. They also won’t be under the intense microscopes that they’d be under in one of the larger markets, where media and fans heavily scrutinize minutia. It will still occur in Anaheim, as it’s unavoidable and comes with the job description, but it won’t be nearly as impassioned.
From a unique vantage point, the Ducks’ job can be seen as the most stable of the bunch. They have taken the step in their rebuild that the Flyers and Blackhawks haven’t, their window isn’t closing like it could potentially be with the Rangers, Canucks, Bruins, and Penguins, and while there’s urgency, it seems less prominent urgency than in Seattle, where Dan Bylsma recently lost his job after just one season.
The result will come down to how much those aspects of the Ducks' job matter to the individuals in contention versus what the other teams bring in their respective situations. Whoever is ultimately hired in Anaheim will seemingly have an exceptional opportunity to do something special with what the team has to offer.
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