Anaheim Officially Names Randy Carlyle Head Coach

TUESDAY 11:32 AM CST: Chris Johnston of Sportsnet reports that Carlyle will be keeping assistants Paul MacLean and Trent Yawney on with him in Anaheim.

11:17 AM CST: The Ducks have officially announced the hiring.

Late Monday night, word broke that the Anaheim Ducks are set to name Randy Carlyle as their new head coach.  ESPN’s John Buccigross was first with the report while TSN’s Darren Dreger added that the hiring should made official on Tuesday.

The hiring comes as somewhat of a surprise considering the Ducks fired Carlyle as their bench boss in the 2011-12 season.  They replaced him with Bruce Boudreau and now, have replaced Boudreau (who since has joined the Minnesota Wild as their new head coach) with Carlyle.

The 60 year old Carlyle last coached in the 2014-15 campaign with the Toronto Maple Leafs where he spent parts of four seasons with the team.  While there, he led Toronto to their only playoff berth in the past ten years back in 2012-13 where they lost to Boston in the first round.

Carlyle had previously been with Anaheim from 2005 up until his firing in 2011.  His teams posted a winning record in every season but his last one and won nine playoff series including a Stanley Cup victory in 2007.  Overall, his record behind the Ducks’ bench is 317-208-71.

Still, the decision has caught many by surprise as several key Anaheim veterans had reportedly grown to be frustrated with Carlyle’s coaching style and some of those players are still there.  There are also those that are of the mindset that his system is a bit outdated for the more modern NHL.

However, GM Bob Murray appears to be looking for less of a player-friendly coach after Boudreau and is certainly familiar with Carlyle having been with Anaheim during his first stint as coach.

Re-hirings don’t happen too often in the NHL (Michel Therrien in Montreal and Paul Maurice years ago in Carolina are somewhat recent exceptions) so it will certainly be interesting to see how Carlyle’s second go-around with the Ducks plays out.