Joel Quenneville, Mike Sullivan Headline 9 Off-Season NHL Coach Changes

The rising salary cap may be ushering in a new era of roster stability among players but so far, NHL coach changes are happening even more quickly than ever.

Since the 2024-25 regular season wrapped on Apr. 17, nine of the NHL’s 32 franchises have installed new head coaches — more than a quarter of the teams in the league.

That’s the most since 10 new coaches were hired during the summer of 2022. Out of that group, only two are still in their positions, and they’re the winners of the last three Stanley Cups: Bruce Cassidy with the Vegas Golden Knights and Paul Maurice with the Florida Panthers.

This year’s crop of new bench bosses ranges from seasoned winners to first-timers, along with everything in between.

Here’s the breakdown:

Proven Winners: Mike Sullivan and Joel Quenneville

After winning two Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins and being handed the reins of Team USA for the 4 Nations Face-Off and the upcoming Winter Olympics, Mike Sullivan is at the top of his coaching game. His new challenge of returning the New York Rangers to respectability was built off the foundation of a longstanding relationship with GM Chris Drury. Sullivan is nine years older, but the two are both alumni of Boston University and played together for Team USA at the 1997 world championship, which Drury was still in school.

Later, Sullivan would serve as an assistant coach of the Rangers under John Tortorella for four seasons. That overlapped with the last two years of Drury’s playing career, when he served as Rangers captain.

New York will be Sulllivan’s third NHL head job. He also coached the Boston Bruins for two seasons from 2003-06 and worked as an assistant with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Vancouver Canucks.

Down in Southern California, Joel Quenneville takes over as the team’s fourth new coach since their last playoff appearance in 2018, under Randy Carlyle. It’s a return to the league for the 66-year-old, who starts his new job as the league’s oldest active head coach.

As coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, Quenneville won three Stanley Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015. He also won as an assistant to Marc Crawford with the Colorado Avalanche in 1996. But Quenneville has been away from the NHL since resigning as head coach of the Florida Panthers in October of 2021, in the wake of the revelations surrounding the mishandling of sexual assault allegations within the Blackhawks organization while he was coach. He became eligible to coach again in the NHL on July 1, 2024.

In Anaheim, Quenneville is inheriting a team on the rise, rich with young talent including newly re-signed goaltender Lukas Dostal. In 2024-25, the Ducks improved by 21 points, but still finished 16 points out of a playoff spot.

The Returnees: Glen Gulutzan, Rick Tocchet, Jeff Blashill, Lane Lambert

This group of four will be bringing past NHL head-coaching experience to new clubs — or, in the case of Glen Gulutzan, back to where it began for him.

Gulutzan has spent the last seven seasons as an assistant coach for the Edmonton Oilers. But before that, he had two years as the head man for the Calgary Flames and even earlier, he spent two years as head coach of the Dallas Stars.

That’s where he’ll be back at work this fall, trying to push the perenially contenting Stars even closer to their second Stanley Cup in franchise history. His return came after Peter DeBoer’s surprise ouster following the Stars’ loss to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final for the second-straight year.

Rick Tocchet’s hiring in Philadelphia is also a homecoming. As a rugged power forward, Tocchet started and ended his playing career in the City of Brotherly Love and was inducted into the Flyers Hall of Fame in 2021.

The Flyers have now gone five seasons without a playoff appearance and took a step back last year, falling by nine points in the standings. Tocchet won the Jack Adams award as coach of the year with the Vancouver Canucks in 2023-24, and also previously coached the Arizona Coyotes and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tocchet won the Stanley Cup as a player with the Penguins in 1992, then as an assistant to Sullivan in 2016 and 2017.

In Chicago, Jeff Blashill returns to a head-coaching role after serving as an assistant to Jon Cooper in Tampa for the last three seasons. Prior to that, the 51-year-old spent seven seasons as head coach of the Detroit Red Wings. He also served as head coach of Team USA three times at the world championship, winning bronze in 2018.

The Blackhawks have missed the playoffs for the last five seasons.

And in Seattle, Lane Lambert is back for his second stint as an NHL head man. The longtime assistant of Barry Trotz won the Stanley Cup as part of the Washington Capitals’ staff in 2018, then earned his first head job with the New York Islanders in 2022. He was replaced by Patrick Roy after two-and-a-half seasons, then spent 2024-25 as an associate coach under Craig Berube with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Kraken have made the playoffs just once in their four-year history, reaching Round 2 in 2022-23.

The New Faces: Adam Foote, Marco Sturm, Dan Muse

The NHL has a reputation for recycling its coaches, and the six names above do fit that mold. But after first-timer Ryan Warsofsky delivered a strong rookie campaign with the San Jose Sharks last season, three more new faces will get to try their hand in 2025-26.

That being said, two of those names are very familiar to hockey fans. Adam Foote was a hard-nosed blueliner who won two Stanley Cups with the Colorado Avalanche during his 19-year NHL career, and was a mainstay with Team Canada. After spending the last two-and-a-half seasons as Tocchet’s assistant with the Canucks, he takes over the head job this fall.

Marco Sturm’s new job in Boston is also a homecoming. A reliable center who played 938 NHL games over 14 seasons for six teams, that included 302 games with the Bruins, where he was a key part of the return in the notorious 2005 trade that sent Joe Thornton to the San Jose Sharks.

After retiring in 2012, Sturm got into the coaching game back in his native Germany, and was behind the bench for the Germans’ silver-medal win at the 2018 Winter Olympics. That fall, he joined the Los Angeles Kings organization, first as an NHL assistant for four seasons, then as head coach of the AHL Ontario Reign for three years.

Not as well known: new Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Muse. At 43, he’ll be second-youngest in the league this fall, behind only 37-year-old Warsofsky. His career path also mirrors Warsofsky’s to some degree: after playing at Stonehill College, Muse started his coaching career in the NCAA ranks before moving to the USHL, where he won a Clark Cup with the Chicago Steel in 2017. That opened the door to the NHL, where he spent three years as an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators and two years with the New York Rangers before being tapped to succeed Sullivan in Pittsburgh.

While the coaching carousel has stopped spinning for now, be on the lookout for more NHL coach changes in 2025-26. Last year, five teams changed coaches in-season. Jim Montgomery (St. Louis) and Todd McLellan (Detroit) both signed multi-year deals and will be back this fall while the three interim bosses were all replaced.