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Ducks Name Radko Gudas Captain

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The Anaheim Ducks have named veteran defender Radko Gudas as the ninth captain in franchise history. He’ll succeed Ducks legend Ryan Getzlaf in the role, becoming the first to wear Anaheim’s ’C’ since Getzlaf’s retirement in 2022. Gudas also becomes the sixth NHL captain from Czechia, alongside Peter Stastny, Jaromir Jagr, Patrik Elias, Bobby Holik, and Milan Hejduk.

Gudas has put together a proud career in the NHL, appearing in 748 games as part of 12 seasons. He’s become a bit of a journeyman over that time, playing with five different clubs after starting his career in Tampa Bay. The Lightning drafted Gudas 66th overall in 2010 and promoted him to the NHL two years later. From there, it wasn’t long before the hard-hitting, stay-at-home defender worked his way into top-line minutes.

That was thanks to an overwhelming physical presence, emphasized in the 2013-14 season when Gudas recorded 273 hits – a franchise record in Tampa Bay but not a career-high for Gudas. He’d go on to top that mark twice with the Philadelphia Flyers, with 304 and 280 hits in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons respectively – again franchise records among Flyers defenders. Bruising became a core piece of Gudas’ game, and it wasn’t until the 2021-22 season that his physicality would finally hit a peak as he recorded 355 hits with the Florida Panthers, the third-most of any defender since the NHL began tracking hits – interestingly behind Jeremy Lauzon (383; 2023-24) and Mark Borowiecki (364; 2016-17).

Gudas made a move to Anaheim last summer – signing a three-year, $12MM UFA contract and bringing an end to his three-year stint with the Panthers. He once again assumed a confident, second-pairing role with the Ducks, recording 18 points in 66 games – his highest scoring since 2018-19. More than that, Gudas emerged as a clear leader amidst Anaheim’s young lineup. The Ducks have now recognized that leadership by making him the first player to wear the ’C’ on their newly-designed jerseys.

It’s a proud moment for the 36-year-old defender, who shared his thoughts on the news by saying, “I am honored to be named captain of the Anaheim Ducks and lead our team into an exciting era. The trust put in me by Pat, our management, coaches and my teammates is something I take with pride. Leadership is a shared quality amongst our team, and I look forward to representing the Ducks on the ice and also outside of the rink in the community.”

Blue Jackets Hire Scott Ford, Mike Haviland As Assistant Coaches

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The Blue Jackets have hired Scott Ford and Mike Haviland to serve as assistant coaches under new bench boss Dean Evason this season, the team announced Thursday.

They replace the outgoing Josef Boumedienne and Mark Recchi, who Aaron Portzline of The Athletic previously reported would not be returning. The club’s other two assistants from last season, Jared Boll and Steve McCarthy, will be back in 2024-25 as expected.

Ford, 44, will jump behind an NHL bench for the first time. The British Columbia native had spent the last eight seasons in the Predators organization as an assistant coach with their AHL affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals.

Before transitioning to coaching, Ford played 522 AHL games across 10 seasons, 378 of which came with the Admirals. A burly right-shot defenseman in his playing days, Ford had played or coached for Milwaukee in parts of every season since 2008-09.

Ford also spent six seasons with Evason in Milwaukee as a player and coach. He played out the final three seasons of his career with the Admirals with Evason at the helm and began coaching as Evason’s assistant for three seasons before Evason departed in 2018 to take an assistant coaching role with the Wild.

Haviland, 57, brings considerably more coaching experience to the Columbus bench than his new colleague. He’s technically an internal promotion, having spent the last two seasons with their AHL affiliate in Cleveland as their associate coach.

Before that, the Middletown, New Jersey native was named the AHL’s Coach of the Year in 2007 with the Norfolk Admirals and later won the Stanley Cup with the Blackhawks as an assistant in 2010. Prior to joining Cleveland in 2022, Haviland spent seven years as the head coach of Colorado College.

San Jose Sharks Announce Full Coaching Staff

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The San Jose Sharks have announced their full coaching staff for the 2024-25 NHL season as well as a few new hires. Assistant coach Brian Wiseman, goaltending coach Thomas Speer, video coach Nick Gialdini, and assistant video coach Cody Ward will all return to the organization as the team has hired Doug Houda and Jeff Ulmer as assistant coaches.

Houda joins the Sharks organization after spending the last two years in the same role with the New York Islanders. It is interesting to see Houda earn a job as quickly as he has considering his lackluster performance with the Islanders’ penalty kill over the last two seasons. Before being hired in New York to serve as the team’s penalty kill coach, the team sat fourth in the NHL in the 2021-22 season with an 84.19% penalty kill. Since Houda’s hire, the team fell to ninth place in the 2022-23 season with an 82.19% success rate and even further to the league’s worst last year with a 71.49% success rate.

Ulmer earns his first role on an NHL bench after spending the last three years with the AHL affiliate of the Vancouver Canucks, the Abbotsford Canucks. Focused primarily on the team’s powerplay and forward group, the AHL Canucks finished sixth in scoring in the AHL while sitting second in their division with a 23.0% clip on the powerplay.

In the front office, the Sharks also announced the hire of former power forward Ryane Clowe as the team’s new assistant general manager. Clowe assumes his new role after being a special advisor to general manager Chris Drury of the New York Rangers last year. The former player has vast experience with the Sharks organization already as he suited up in 432 games for San Jose between 2005-2013 and scored 101 goals and 217 points in the process.

Islanders Announce Doug Houda Won’t Return

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The New York Islanders have dismissed assistant coach Doug Houda, general manager Lou Lamoriello shared with Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News (Twitter link). Lamoriello added that the team will be retaining fellow assistant coaches John MacLean and Benoit Desrosiers. Lamoriello also shared that they will be announcing Houda’s replacement as soon as Monday.

Houda will be moving away from the Islanders after spending the last two seasons overseeing New York’s penalty kill. He didn’t inspire much, though, with the Islanders boasting the worst-ranked penalty kill in the league this season. It was a sharp fall from their top-10 ranking last year, and has seemingly earned Houda the boot.

Formerly a player, Houda racked up 561 career NHL games across 15 years in the league, spending extended time with the Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres. He was a heavy, high-event defender who did well in shutdown roles. That’s the mindset he’s brought to his coaching career, which kicked off one year after his retirement, when Houda joined his alma mater Rochester Americans as an assistant coach.

Houda worked his way up to the NHL after just two seasons behind an AHL bench, proceeding to spend 10 seasons on the Boston Bruins’ bench, then six years with the Detroit Red Wings, prior to his pair of seasons in New York. While he certainly didn’t accomplish what he wanted to with the Islanders, Houda’s playing career and reputation as a loyal assistant coach will likely earn him a new role quickly.

Maple Leafs Fire Assistant Coach Guy Boucher

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Guy Boucher’s time behind the bench in Toronto will be short-lived.  The team announced today (Twitter link) that the assistant coach will not return to the team next season.

Boucher had been out of coaching since 2019 before GM Brad Treliving hired him last July to serve as an assistant for the Maple Leafs.  More specifically, they were eyeing him to fill the void created when Spencer Carbery left the team to become the head coach in Washington.

With the firepower that Toronto has, there were high hopes that Boucher could help turn what was already one of the top power play units into an even better one.  Instead, the team suffered a bit in that regard during the season, dropping from second-best to seventh while their success rate dropped a little more than two percent to 23.95% overall.  Things were even worse in the playoffs when they scored just once in 21 opportunities against Boston, playing a big role in their first-round exit.

Boucher has parts of six years of head coaching experience at the NHL level, spending parts of three years each with Tampa Bay and Ottawa.  His teams played to a record of 191-186-46 overall.

It has been a busy few weeks for Treliving and the Maple Leafs when it comes to their coaching staff.  Craig Berube took over as head coach following the dismissal of Sheldon Keefe at the end of the first round.  Meanwhile, Lane Lambert was hired as an associate coach earlier this month, taking the place of Dean Chynoweth who was let go.  Manny Malhotra was also an assistant last year but has since been hired as AHL Abbotsford’s head coach.  Now, they have a second vacancy to fill with Boucher leaving the team.  As things stand, Mike van Ryn will be the only assistant from last season to remain on Berube’s staff.

Atlantic Notes: Cooper, Senators, Seger, O’Connell

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Lightning head coach Jon Cooper will have some extra duties coming his way in the near future.  In his latest column for The Athletic (subscription link), Pierre LeBrun reports that Tampa Bay’s bench boss is expected to be named as Canada’s head coach for the upcoming 4 Nations Cup as well as the 2026 Olympics.  LeBrun adds that Hockey Canada considered having a separate head coach for each event but, like the United States with Mike Sullivan, has ultimately settled on having the same one for both.  Cooper has coached internationally at three events in the past.  He was Canada’s head coach at the 2017 Worlds, coached Team North America at the World Cup that same year, and was an assistant for the U.S. at the 2007 Ivan Hlinka Memorial tournament.

More from the Atlantic Division:

  • Speaking at a season ticket holder session, Senators Senior Vice President Dave Poulin indicated that they have fielded trade interest in the seventh-overall selection, per Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch (Twitter link). Ottawa underachieved considerably this season as instead of pushing for a playoff spot, they were well out of the mix early, resulting in changes both in the front office and behind the bench.  The Sens have to forfeit one of their first-round picks between now and 2026 as part of the punishment for failing to disclose Evgenii Dadonov’s no-trade clause to Vegas in 2021, eventually resulting in a failed trade to Anaheim the following year.  However, with this pick being so early, they wisely decided not to make this the year they lost the selection.
  • The Red Wings’ farm team has added one of the more intriguing remaining college free agents as AHL Grand Rapids announced the signing of Gabriel Seger to a one-year deal. The 24-year-old had a breakout showing in his final collegiate campaign, leading Cornell in scoring with 14 goals and 30 assists in 44 games although it wasn’t enough to land him an NHL deal in recent weeks.
  • Arizona State University associate coach Albie O’Connell is expected to leave the program to pursue an NHL opportunity, relays PHNX Sports’ Craig Morgan (Twitter link). College Hockey News’ Mike McMahon adds (Twitter link) that O’Connell is expected to be hired by the Canadiens.  If that holds true, it will be his second stint with the organization after serving as a college scout for Montreal back in 2022-23 before returning behind an NCAA bench this past season.

Snapshots: Merela, Sabres Staff, Krog

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Yesterday, Lightning restricted free agent forward Waltteri Merela signed a one-year deal with SC Bern of the Swiss National League. The Lightning reportedly wanted Merela to return to the organization (as per Eduardo A. Encina of the Tampa Bay Times) but couldn’t offer him the guaranteed money that he could get abroad because of their need to keep salary cap flexibility. The Lightning plan to make Merela a qualifying offer to retain his NHL rights until he is 27.

Other notes from around the league:

  • The Buffalo Sabres have hired Chris Bergeron as a scout, shares Lance Lysowski of the Buffalo News. Bergeron has served as the head coach of Miami (Ohio) University’s men’s hockey team for the last five seasons, posting a cumulative – and dismal – 35-116-16 record with the club. Those results earn Bergeron the title of lowest win percentage in Miami’s history, narrowly beating out Bill Davidge’s 39-111-3 record across four seasons in the late 1980s. Bergeron still has a storied hockey career despite a slow go of things in Miami, Ohio – serving as the head coach of Bowling Green State University for nine seasons and accumulating 43 AHL games, 119 ECHL, and 111 IHL games across a seven-year professional career of his own. Bergeron is expected to, unsurprisingly, serve as Buffalo’s NCAA scout after Jerry Forton was promoted to ‘Director of Amateur Scouting’.
  • Buffalo has also shared that they will be maintaining AHL assistant coaches Vinny Prospal and Nathan Paetsch, shares Lysowski (Twitter link). The duo – both former NHL players – concluded the first year of their coaching careers last season, helping lead the Rochester Americans to a strong 39-23-7 record. With a year under their belts, the novice coaches will now lend their lessons learned to new head coach Mike Leone as he enters the first pro role of his own coaching career.
  • The Vancouver Canucks have hired former NHL center Jason Krog as a skills and development coach for the NHL and AHL rosters (Twitter link). Krog played in four games with Vancouver to end a 202-game career in the NHL that was largely spent with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Krog scored 22 goals and 59 games across his career, including a single-season high of 25 points in 2002-03. He flaunted fantastic agility and skill as an undersized pivot in a physical era of the NHL – and will now look to bring those lessons to a young Canucks organization.

Snapshots: Warsofsky, Radulov, Utah Branding

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The San Jose Sharks have interviewed a long list of candidates for their vacant head coaching position, including assistant coach Ryan Warsofsky who, per Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now, is now pulling ahead as the favorite for the job. He pulls ahead of a list of interviewees that features Jay Woodcroft, Matt Nieto, Jeff Blashill, Jeff Halpern, and Jeremy Colliton. Warsofsky also interviewed for San Jose’s head coach role in 2022, though he was ultimately hired behind David Quinn.

Warsofsky oversaw San Jose’s defense and penalty kill while serving behind Quinn, serving as the coach behind Erik Karlsson’s 101-point, Norris Trophy-winning season last year. But he was also the coach behind San Jose’s 326 goals allowed this season – the third-most of any team over the last decade.

Warsofsky is just two years into his NHL coaching career – experiencing two of the staunchest extremes he could have – after leading the Chicago Wolves to the 2022 AHL Calder Cup Championship to cap off his three-year tenure as an AHL head coach. Warsofsky’s hire would follow a growing trend of teams finding their coaches internally, with each of Winnipeg, St. Louis, Seattle, and Los Angeles already promoting coaches to the NHL head coach role this off-season. The role in San Jose would be the first NHL head coaching role of Warsofsky’s still very young career.

Other notes from around the league:

  • Long-time Dallas Stars forward Alexander Radulov has signed a one-year contract with the KHL’s Lokomotiv (Twitter link). Radulov has spent the last two seasons with Kazan Ak-Bars, posting a combined 41 goals and 97 points across 120 games. He’s remained productive, even at the age of 37, and will now be set to play with the fourth KHL club of his career – after four seasons with Ufa, four with CSKA Moscow, and two with Kazan. Those seasons add to Radulov’s nine-year career in the NHL, where he totaled 368 points in 524 career games spent with three different clubs. With no signs of slowing down, Radulov will look to vindicate this one-year contract with a strong season and continue his trek to becoming just the 19th KHL player to play beyond 40 years old.
  • NHL Utah is down to six finalists for its permanent name after an initial vote yielded over 500,000 responses. They’ll be called the Utah Blizzards, Utah Hockey Club, Utah Mammoth, Utah Outlaws, Utah Venom or Utah Yeti beginning with the 2025-26 season. They’ll carry temporary Utah Hockey Club branding for their inaugural 2024-25 campaign. Fans can choose between the six finalists using this link.

Ottawa Senators Round Out Coaching Staff

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Having already committed to Travis Green as head coach for the next four years, the Ottawa Senators rounded out their coaching staff this morning with a pair of hires. According to a team announcement, the team has hired Mike Yeo and Nolan Baumgartner as assistant coaches for the 2024-25 NHL season.

Coming over from the Vancouver Canucks in a lateral move, Yeo brings over two decades of coaching experience to the Senators’ bench. Yeo started his professional coaching before the 2000-01 AHL season with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins as an assistant coach before taking the same role with the Pittsburgh Penguins from 2005-10. After being a part of a successful run with the Penguins, Yeo spent one season as the head coach of the Houston Aeros in the AHL before taking over the head coach position with the Minnesota Wild after the organization fired head coach Todd Richards after the 2010-11 regular season.

In four and a half seasons with the Wild, Yeo coached the team to a 173-132-44 record over 349 games but failed to take the team beyond the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Minnesota moved on from Yeo during the 2015-16 season which led the coach to an assistant coaching role with the St. Louis Blues for the 2016-17 season. Since then, Yeo briefly served as the head coach of the Blues for two seasons and spent time with the Philadelphia Flyers as an assistant coach before finally landing with the Canucks organization in his most recent role.

Focusing primarily on Vancouver’s penalty kill throughout his tenure with the organization, Yeo helped raise the team’s success percentage from 71.60% in the 2022-23 season to 79.13% this past year. For the Senators, after finishing last year with the 29th-ranked penalty kill across the league, Yeo will likely once again be tasked with elevating the team’s play during a man disadvantage.

On the other hand, Baumgartner’s only coaching experience at the NHL level came during a five-season run as an assistant coach in Vancouver from 2017-22. In a fascinating twist, once Baumgartner was eventually let go by the Canucks, the opening created a vacancy that Yeo would ultimately fill. In a short gap, Baumgartner spent two years as an assistant coach for the Manitoba Moose, the top affiliate of the Winnipeg Jets.

In the same announcement, Ottawa also relayed the team would be retaining franchise legend Daniel Alfredsson while also bringing back Ben Sexton as an assistant coach, Justin Peters as the goaltending coach, Mike King as the video coach, as well as keeping Jacques Martin as a Senior Advisor to the coaching staff.

Coaching Notes: Carle, Pandolfo, Yeo, Snowden

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Before the New Jersey Devils officially hired Sheldon Keefe as their next head coach, the organization looked into some rookie options. Earlier today, Greg Wyshynski of ESPN reported that New Jersey had also interviewed David Carle of the University of Denver and Jay Pandolfo of Boston University.

Given this report, it is more than likely the Devils were looking for coaches who have excelled with young talents, no matter the amount of previous NHL coaching experience. Both coaches have collegiate and international experience leading some of the best programs in the United States.

Carle, who has spent the last six years as head coach of the Pioneers, has already collected two National Championships and an IIHF World Junior Championship gold medal. The 34-year-old Carle is one of the best coaching prospects in the game after experiencing so much success in only half a decade manning the bench.

After retiring from the NHL after the 2012-13 season, Pandolfo has served in numerous professional roles, ranging from scouting to developing. Taking over as the head coach of the Terriers last year, Pandolfo has led the famous program to 36 wins in only 48 regular season games, as well as two appearances in the Frozen Four.

Other coaching notes:

  • The Vancouver Canucks have mutually parted ways with assistant coach Mike Yeo according to a team announcement. The news comes as a bit of a shock as Yeo oversaw the transformation of a Canucks’ penalty kill unit that dramatically improved one of the league’s worst penalty kill in just one year. Nevertheless, Vancouver may be allowing Yeo to pursue other options as he looks to find a head coaching role in the NHL once again.
  • At the AHL level, Anthony Di Marco of TheFourthPeriod reports that John Snowden has been heavily linked to the head coaching vacancy of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Snowden, currently serving as an assistant coach for the interstate Lehigh Valley Phantoms, has a connection to the Pittsburgh Penguins’ current General Manager, Kyle Dubas. Before his stint with the Phantoms, Snowden was an assistant coach for the Toronto Marlies during the last two years of Dubas’ tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization.

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