Sean Monahan Wins 2025 Masterton Trophy
The NHL has announced the winners of a few awards and trophies this week, including the Selke and Ted Lindsay. Today, the league announced that Blue Jackets center Sean Monahan is this year’s recipient of the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, awarded annually “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey.”
Monahan, 30, signed a five-year contract with Columbus in free agency last season. One of the reasons for doing so was having a chance to reunite with his close friend and longtime Flames linemate, Johnny Gaudreau. Yet Monahan’s and the entire NHL season were overshadowed when Gaudreau and his brother Matthew were struck and killed by a drunk driver while cycling near their New Jersey home in late August, weeks before training camp began.
The Blue Jackets responded by staying in the playoff race until the final days of the regular season, a far better finish than anyone expected. That success was fueled in large part by Monahan, who recorded a career-high 0.70 assists per game and 1.06 points per game while also earning Selke votes for the second time in his 12-year career. He logged 57 points in 54 games, on pace to lead Columbus in scoring if not for missing nearly 30 games in the second half of the season with a wrist injury.
This year’s other finalists were Wild goaltender Marc-André Fleury, whose 2024-25 season was the last of a Hall-of-Fame career spanning 21 seasons, and Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog, who returned to the ice in the postseason after a nearly three-year absence due to a knee injury.
While the 2025 NHL Awards ceremony will be held before Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, the league has been surprising the winners of other honors in the days leading up to it.
Flyers Hire Yogi Svejkovský, Jay Varady As Assistant Coaches
June 5: The Flyers made Svejkovský’s hiring official while also naming Jay Varady as an assistant coach, per a club announcement. Varady, 47, had spent the last three seasons with the Red Wings as an assistant coach and survived their in-season coaching change, but now finds himself on the move. He spent the four seasons prior in the Coyotes organization, including three years as the head coach for AHL Tucson and one year as an assistant on the NHL bench, during which he worked under Tocchet.
June 4: The Flyers are bringing over Canucks assistant coach Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovský to join ex-Vancouver bench boss Rick Tocchet in Philadelphia, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK reports.
Svejkovský and Tocchet developed a “great relationship” during the duo’s three seasons together with the Canucks, Dhaliwal writes. While Vancouver didn’t grant permission for Svejkovský to interview elsewhere, it doesn’t appear they had much of a choice. Dhaliwal reports that Svejkovský had some form of an out clause in his contract to allow him to leave for Philly.
The former NHL right-winger had only spent one year behind the Canucks bench as an assistant with Tocchet. His prior two seasons with the NHL club saw him work as a skills coach, not working directly on Tocchet’s staff.
Svejkovský, 48, has been working in the Vancouver area since 2006, when he started as an assistant coach with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. The Czech native transitioned into a skills coach role with the junior club in 2014 before leaving altogether four years later. He resurfaced as a skills coach with the Canucks’ AHL affiliate in Abbotsford in 2021-22 before getting the call to join the NHL staff the following season.
His responsibilities in Vancouver included supervising the power play, a significant issue for the Flyers for the last four years. Their 15.0% success rate this season was third-worst in the league, ahead of only the Islanders (12.6%) and Ducks (11.8%). The Canucks’ 22.5% conversion rate with the man advantage was still close to average at 15th in the league but a marked improvement over what Philadelphia’s been able to produce in the past few years.
Svejkovský will be the first assistant named to Tocchet’s staff. None of Philadelphia’s three assistants under John Tortorella last year are returning to the club.
Jere Innala Returning To Sweden’s Frölunda HC
Avalanche pending UFA winger Jere Innala won’t re-sign with the club and will instead return to Frölunda HC of the Swedish Hockey League, where he still had a valid contract through 2025-26, per a team announcement.
Innala, 27, joined Frölunda for the 2022-23 campaign. He put up a 26-28–54 scoring line in 94 games there, as well as 11 goals in just 14 playoff games in 2024, before landing an entry-level contract with Colorado as an international free agent last summer.
The 5’9″ Finn got a fair amount of reps with the big club, particularly mid-season when injuries ravaged their forward group. But despite making 17 appearances, he never got on the scoresheet and averaged just 7:09 per game with a minus-three rating. He managed eight shots on goal, and the Avs were outchanced 42-39 when he was on the ice at 5-on-5.
He still spent a good portion of the season in the minors with AHL Colorado, where he was a solid scoring presence but not dominant. He logged 17-11–28 in 43 games, which could presumably be the only AHL appearances of his professional career.
After failing to lock down an NHL job, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Innala remain in Europe for the remainder of his career. Doing so would provide him more opportunities to play internationally, where he’s won a gold and silver medal for Finland at the World Championships in the past few years. He also won a Liiga title with HPK back in 2019.
Bruins Name Marco Sturm Head Coach
The Bruins announced Thursday they’ve appointed AHL Ontario bench boss Marco Sturm as their new head coach.
While it’s Sturm’s first time as an NHL head coach, the former Bruins winger has built up a solid resume over the last decade. He was appointed the head coach of Germany’s men’s national team for the 2015-16 cycle and held that role for three seasons, including a silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
That Olympic medal put him on the map for NHL clubs. He joined the Kings organization the following season, remaining there until today’s hiring. He spent four years as an assistant on the NHL bench under John Stevens, Willie Desjardins, and Todd McLellan before heading to Ontario to oversee their top development affiliate in 2022. During his time there, the 46-year-old helped the Reign make the Calder Cup Playoffs in each of his three seasons behind the bench and posted a 119-80-11-6 regular-season record.
Sturm was one of the first names linked to Boston’s vacancy in early May, and it was clear he had emerged as the frontrunner a couple of weeks ago. It likely took longer than the Bruins hoped to make the hiring official – they were the last team standing without a permanent head coach after the Penguins hired Dan Muse yesterday – but in the end, they get their man.
General manager Don Sweeney had the following statement on Sturm, who is the 30th head coach in franchise history:
Throughout this process, our goal was to identify a coach who could uphold our strong defensive foundation while helping us evolve offensively. We were also looking for a communicator and leader – someone who connects with players, develops young talent, and earns the respect of the room. Marco impressed us at every step with his preparation, clarity, and passion. His path – playing for multiple NHL teams, coaching internationally, and leading at both the AHL and NHL levels – has shaped a well-rounded coach who’s earned this opportunity. As a former Bruin, he understands what this team means to the city and our fans. We’re embracing a new direction with Marco behind the bench and are confident his energy, standards, and commitment to a competitive, hard-nosed brand of hockey reflect exactly what Bruins hockey should be.
As Sweeney said, this isn’t Sturm’s first go-around in Beantown. He was part of one of the most notable trades in league history, heading to Boston from San Jose when the Bruins traded Joe Thornton to San Jose midway through his Hart Trophy-winning 2005-06 campaign. Sturm, who had already been in the league for eight years and was already the best German-born player the league had ever seen, was a good top-six piece for Boston over the next five years but had a steep decline at the end of his tenure, fueled by a left knee surgery in 2009 that hampered his production for the rest of his career.
Sturm scored 242 goals and 487 points in 938 NHL games over his 14-year playing career, still placing him second all-time in scoring among German NHLers behind Leon Draisaitl. 106 of those goals and 198 of those points came in Boston over a 302-game span.
He’ll now be tasked with injecting the speedy, two-way style he flashed as a player into the Bruins’ retooling roster. The club has made increased scoring its stated priority for 2025-26 after being limited to 2.71 goals per game this year, sixth-worst in the league. He’ll likely need some help from Sweeney this summer to give him more than two 20-goal scorers from 2024-25 (Morgan Geekie, David Pastrňák) to make it happen.
Other names who reportedly made it deep in the process for the Bruins’ gig were assistant Jay Leach and ex-Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft. It’s unclear if Leach will remain on Sturm’s staff as an AC. Former assistant Joe Sacco, who spent most of this year as interim head coach following Boston’s firing of Jim Montgomery in November, is not expected to return to the organization.
Image courtesy of Kevin Hoffman-Imagn Images.
PHR Live Chat Transcript: 6/4/25
Click here to view the transcript from today’s PHR live chat with Josh Erickson.
Penguins Name Dan Muse Head Coach
The Penguins have hired Rangers assistant coach Dan Muse as their next head coach, per a team announcement. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported minutes earlier that the hire was expected to get across the finish line.
Muse is a bit of a surprise hire. He was the most recent name to be reported as a candidate for Pittsburgh’s vacancy, linked just yesterday by Larry Brooks of the New York Post.
Not too long ago, it looked like the finalists for the Pens’ job were Capitals assistant Mitch Love and Kings assistant D.J. Smith. It became apparent that Love was out of the mix and replaced by Muse as a finalist yesterday, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period relays. Love was labeled a name on which Pittsburgh was relatively high from the beginning, but the Penguins will instead opt to poach a different assistant coach in their early 40s from a Metropolitan Division rival in Muse.
This will be Muse’s first chance to be an NHL head coach. He’s spent five years in the league as an assistant, first with the Predators from 2017-18 to 2019-20 before working under Peter Laviolette in Manhattan for the past two seasons. In the interim, he was a head coach for the United States National Team Development Program and coached the Americans to a gold medal at the 2023 U-18 World Junior Championship.
The development of the Penguins’ young players will be crucial over the next few seasons as they look to quickly return to contention as Sidney Crosby‘s, Kris Letang‘s, and Evgeni Malkin‘s careers wind down. That top-down ideology from general manager Kyle Dubas is extremely apparent with the hire of Muse, who’s won multiple accolades at the junior level – including a USHL championship as head coach of the Chicago Steel in 2017 before landing the AC job with Nashville.
Here’s Dubas’ full statement on Muse’s appointment:
During this process, we met with many candidates who we felt would have been a fit as the next head coach of the Penguins, but ultimately, Dan Muse stood out as the best choice. What separated Dan was his ability to develop players, win at all levels where he has been a head coach and his consistent success coaching special teams in the NHL. From his success in developing college and junior players, to his impactful work with veteran players during his time in the NHL, Dan has shown a proven ability to connect with players at all stages of their careers and help them to reach their potential. Additionally, his leadership of special teams units at the NHL level in both Nashville and New York produced elite results consistently. His overall body of work, attention to detail and vision for our group showed us that he is the best coach to take our team forward. We’re excited to welcome Dan, and his family, to the city of Pittsburgh.
As for the Rangers, they’ll need to continue their coaching overhaul under new bench boss Mike Sullivan, whom Muse succeeds in Pittsburgh. They’ll have an entirely new bench staff next season after firing associate coach Phil Housley and losing assistant coach Michael Peca to Jeff Blashill’s staff with the Blackhawks.
Avalanche Sign Brock Nelson To Three-Year Extension
The Avalanche have signed pending UFA center Brock Nelson to a three-year extension, per a team announcement. The deal carries a $7.5MM cap hit for a total value of $22.5MM, reports Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
In doing so, Colorado takes one of the top pivots off this summer’s open market. They paid a steep price to acquire the longtime Islander from New York at the trade deadline, surrendering their 2026 first-round pick along with center Calum Ritchie, their No. 1 prospect, along with some smaller assets to land him. Losing him for nothing, especially after the Avalanche suffered a first-round playoff loss to the Stars, would have been quite the blow.
Instead, they’ll get parts of four seasons out of the 33-year-old, assuming he plays out the rest of his deal. It’s an eye-popping price tag, especially since he’s coming off somewhat of a down season with 26 goals and 56 points in 80 games split between Denver and Long Island, and a noticeable raise over his previous $6MM cap hit. Nonetheless, he’ll be the solution to fill the second-line center gap for the next few years after searching for a consistent producer following Nazem Kadri‘s departure in free agency in 2022.
Nelson’s point production this season didn’t shift considerably from team to team. He posted 43 points in 61 games for the Islanders (0.70 per game) before logging 13 in 19 for Colorado down the stretch (0.68 per game). Nelson added four assists and a plus-two rating in seven playoff games for the Avs, averaging a shade under 17 minutes per game in the postseason.
Notably, the contract he signed with the Avalanche is the same one offered to him by the Islanders before they opted to trade him, Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News reports. Amid a retool with new general manager Mathieu Darche at the helm, New York is likely still happy with the move to jumpstart what was one of the worst prospect pools in the league.
Nelson’s contract will be an important comparable as other top pending UFA centers like Sam Bennett and John Tavares continue to pursue extensions with their current clubs. The deal he ended up signing came in a fair amount above the roughly $7MM AAV projected for him on a three-year deal on the open market, according to AFP Analytics.
Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland now has his center group of Nathan MacKinnon, Nelson, Charlie Coyle, and Jack Drury all under contract through next season. Coyle and Drury will become eligible to sign extensions on July 1.
Still, the premium they paid to keep Nelson from testing free agency will cause some cap headaches for MacFarland to deal with this summer. They’re down to just $1.2MM in cap space for 2025-26, according to PuckPedia. While they have a mostly full roster, they still have four open spots between them and a cap-compliant 23-man roster.
Barring a significant cap-clearing trade, their notable pending UFAs, winger Jonathan Drouin and defenseman Ryan Lindgren, are not returning. Even if they only signed players to league-minimum deals, they’d only be able to ice a bare-minimum 20-player roster out of the gate with no flexibility for a recall.
Nelson’s deal runs through the 2027-28 season, after which he’ll be able to test unrestricted free agency if he so chooses at age 36. The 2010 first-round pick could play his 1,000th game late next season if he stays healthy. He’s at 920 entering the offseason.
Image courtesy of Talia Sprague-Imagn Images.
Nikita Kucherov Wins Ted Lindsay Award
Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov has won this year’s Ted Lindsay Award for the league’s most outstanding player as voted on by his peers, the NHL announced Wednesday.
Kucherov wins the 2025 honors six years after his first win, when he led the league in assists (87) and points (128) in the 2018-19 campaign. He also won the Hart Trophy that year, which he’s a finalist for again this year alongside the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck.
This year, Kucherov was the only overlap between Lindsay and Hart finalists – the latter voted on by Professional Hockey Writers Association members. For the player-voted honors, Kucherov beat out Avalanche stars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
It’s not as if Kucherov needed any more hardware to cement his Hall-of-Fame case, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Russian superstar turns 32 later this week but is still fully in his prime, now capturing back-to-back league scoring titles in addition to his 2019 Art Ross. He becomes the 12th player in league history to win multiple Ted Lindsay (formerly known as the Lester B. Pearson) Awards, joining Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and Alex Ovechkin as the only active players to do so.
The award stands as nice recognition to a season full of even more milestones for the two-time Stanley Cup champion. He recorded a league-high 121 points and 84 assists in the regular season, the latter of which made him just the fourth player in league history with three consecutive 80-assist seasons. He also led the league outright in points per game (1.55), primary assists (56), power-play points (46), and power-play assists (38) in 2024-25 while averaging 21:11 per game, the second-highest deployment of his career after last season.
Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images.
Devin Shore Signs With HC Sparta Prague
After spending his entire career in North America, pending UFA forward Devin Shore is heading overseas. He signed a one-year deal with HC Sparta Prague of the Czech Extraliga today, the club announced.
Shore, 31 in July, spent this season on a two-way deal with the Wild. He was meant to be a top-six piece for AHL Iowa, but a never-ending list of injuries to Minnesota’s forward group meant he spent most of the season up with the big club.
Outside of throwing the body with 76 hits, he wasn’t particularly effective in fourth-line minutes. Averaging 8:39 of ice time over 55 games, Shore recorded a 1-4–5 scoring line, a minus-eight rating, and some of the worst even-strength possession metrics on the team (40.9 CF%, 38.1 xGF%).
Shore was once an everyday NHL contributor and even had back-to-back 30-point seasons with the Stars in 2016-17 and 2017-18 to kick off his career, but he hasn’t held down a consistent role since. His 55 appearances this season were his most since the 2018-19 campaign, and he hasn’t hit double digits in goals since then, either.
A second-round pick by Dallas in 2012, he’s appeared in parts of the last 10 NHL seasons and has also made stops in Anaheim, Columbus, Edmonton, and Seattle. He heads overseas after recording 52 goals and 144 points in 498 NHL games, a career that’s unlikely to extend at his age.
He’ll head to Czechia to link up with other ex-NHLers like Roman Horák, Michal Kempný, and Mark Pysyk on Sparta’s 2025-26 roster.
Joe Sacco Out Of Running For Bruins’ Head Coaching Job
It isn’t yet clear who the Bruins will name as their next head coach in the coming days. However, it won’t be Joe Sacco, who ended the year as interim head coach after the club fired Jim Montgomery early in the season, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said on the 32 Thoughts podcast earlier this week.
“I believe Joe Sacco was told he will not stay as the head coach of the Boston Bruins,” said Friedman. He’ll likely depart the organization entirely, with the pending hire presumably having a say in their assistants.
General manager Don Sweeney said shortly after the season ended that he’d include Sacco in his list of candidates for the full-time job. It’s not particularly surprising to see him not land the gig, though. Increased goal-scoring is a stated priority for the club for next season, and it’s not something they did well under Sacco. From Nov. 21 onward, Sacco’s first game as interim head coach, Boston’s 2.81 goals per game ranked 24th in the league, and their 26.3 shots per game ranked 29th.
The Bruins also had a worse points percentage under Sacco (25-30-7, .460) than under Montgomery (8-9-3, .475). It’s worth considering Sacco’s tenure overlapped with Boston’s post-trade deadline slide, an understandable one after trading away Brandon Carlo and Brad Marchand for futures.
Nonetheless, it’s likely Sacco will pursue a high-level assistant job elsewhere. That club could be the Maple Leafs, Friedman speculated. They’re on the hunt for a new top assistant/associate coach under Craig Berube after Lane Lambert recently left the post to accept the Kraken’s head coaching job.
The Bruins and Penguins are the only two remaining teams with a head coach vacancy.