Monday: As McKenzie expected, the hiring was made official on Monday morning. Boughner will join the team on a four-year contract.
Saturday: The Florida Panthers are closing in on a deal to name Bob Boughner as their new head coach, reports TSN’s Bob McKenzie (Twitter link). In a separate tweet, McKenzie adds that the hiring should be made official on Monday. The team had requested permission to interview him back in early May.
The 46 year old Boughner has spent the last two seasons as an assistant in San Jose. His only other previous NHL coaching experience came as an assistant with Columbus back in 2010-11. He does, however, have experience as a head coach at the junior level as the bench boss for Windsor of the OHL for eight seasons (2006-07 to 2009-10 and 2011-12 to 2014-15).
Boughner was a long-time stay-at-home defenseman over parts of 12 NHL seasons, recording 15 goals and 57 assists along with 1,382 penalty minutes in 630 games with Buffalo, Calgary, Carolina, Colorado, Nashville, and Pittsburgh.
The coaching situation in Florida has been in flux since early this past season when Gerard Gallant was let go by then-GM Tom Rowe who put himself behind the bench. That didn’t work out as intended as the team posted a .475 points percentage under Rowe which was actually worse than the .548 they had under Gallant while they wound up sixth in the Atlantic Division. Accordingly, Rowe was reassigned following the season with team president Dale Tallon re-assuming managerial duties. Now it will fall on Boughner’s shoulders to get this team back to where they were two seasons ago when they surprised many with a first place finish in the Atlantic..
McKenzie adds (via Twitter) that the Panthers also had interest in Nashville assistant Phil Housley but that clearly isn’t the case now. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun tweets that Buffalo, who also is on the market for a head coach, had interviewed Boughner as well.