Wednesday: The team has officially hired both coaches, along with naming Mike Van Ryn the new head coach of the Tucson Roadrunners. Van Ryn spent last season with the Coyotes as a development coach after taking the Kitchener Rangers of the OHL to the second round in 2015-16. A former defenseman, the 38-year old Van Ryn played 353 games in the NHL and should be able to help young players navigate high expectations and the minor leagues. A first-round pick in 1998, it took him several years to make an impact at the highest level.
Tuesday: It’s been two weeks now since the Arizona Coyotes made the hiring of Rick Tocchet as their next head coach official, and now reports have surfaced on who may be joining him behind the bench. John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7 radio reported this morning that John MacLean and Scott Allen would likely be joining the staff, something that Craig Morgan of AZ Sports confirms but points out that nothing is finalized as of yet.
If the pair does join Tocchet, it will be a return to coaching for MacLean, the former head coach of the New Jersey Devils who has been out of the NHL since 2014. MacLean and Tocchet have followed each other around for many years, born relatively close in Ontario and both playing in junior against each other. They were both draft picks in 1983 (though MacLean would go five rounds earlier at #6 overall) and would enter the league at about the same time playing for Philadelphia and New Jersey. They’d spend many years playing against each other in the rival cities, and now could be reunited on the bench in Arizona. MacLean was a fantastic offensive player in his day, who scored over 400 goals and 800 points during his long NHL career.
Allen on the other hand is an extremely experienced professional coach, who most recently worked behind the bench with Gerard Gallant and Tom Rowe in Florida last season. With the new coaching staff brought in for the Panthers, Allen was let go along with Dave Barr. Allen is known for an extremely up-tempo penalty kill, which he’ll now have to implement in Arizona with the young group that includes Jordan Martinook and Tobias Rieder. In all, this would make quite the formidable group to try and turn around the Coyotes franchise.
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