It doesn’t have to be a retread..
Kyle Dubas gave a long answer about the future coach of the Penguins in his press conference on Monday.
“What we’re looking for now is we’re looking to hire a great head coach,” Dubas said. “Someone that could come in [and] continue to partner with us on all we’re undertaking, understands that the job ahead is going to be a time of transition.”
He’d go onto finish the thought.
“We’ll cast a wide net on this search; long time head coaches, coaches from Europe, coaches from junior, college. We’ll turn every page to find the best person for the job.”
The wide net angle is interesting, Dubas mentioned that the team would use virtual interviews to start the process and eventually whittle the candidate pool down to in-person interviews.
The Penguins have nothing but time, they can afford to talk to lots of candidates over the next few weeks. Dubas mentioned a timeline that could include not naming a coach until June. If nothing else that will make for an interesting process to get to know a variety of different possibilities. While there will be plenty of the usual suspects drawing attention, let’s talk about some other options.
It’s always been interesting that for a league where now just over 30% of their players are European that NHL coaches are almost always North American. There have only been three European-trained coaches in league history. Alpo Suhonen lasted just one year in Chicago in 2000-01. Jaromir Jagr hand-picked Ivan Hlinka (and then drew up different, personalized forechecking schemes for his own line behind his coach’s back but that’s a different story) and Hlinka wasn’t long for Pittsburgh either. Recently, Anders Sorensen was named the current interim coach in Chicago, but it remains uncertain at best for how long he may last in that position (and could have well already coached his final game).
That’s a limited history, The Athletic wondered why don’t NHL teams hire more European coaches back in 2023. Long answer short: the NHL is a league that rewards conservative-minded decision making. Known quantities are trusted more than unknown ones by managers whose own jobs could be in jeopardy if they botch a head coaching hire, which leads to predictable results of staying in familiar lanes. You can’t get slammed for an off-the-rails hire that turns into a mess by sticking with retreads that at least have some sort of track record to fall back on. That might not be a pleasing answer to all, but the safety net mentality is prevalent in NHL circles.
This could be a competitive advantage for the Penguins, since they don’t have a lot of pressure to perform in the short-term while they are building up their team and since Dubas enjoys the full support of what’s been a hands-off ownership group. Fenway Sports has also been bold in other sports to embrace a willingness to break traditional norms for coaching and management so if ever there was a circumstance for an NHL coaching hire to break the mold, it might well be in Pittsburgh right now.
Rikard Grönborg
Grönborg has to be the top international candidate for an NHL team. He has a ton of experience on both sides of the ocean, having worked in the 1990’s in the NCAA and coach for a year in Canada’s WHL. He coached Sweden’s national teams in a variety of competitions in the World Championships, World Juniors and Olympics for a dozen years. After receiving feedback that he needed more club experience to get NHL attention, Grönborg has been coaching in the Swiss and now Finnish leagues for the past six seasons.
From a 2019 Sportsnet article:
Gronborg describes his approach as “a hybrid” between the North American and European style but believes the gap between those schools is shrinking.
“The hockey world nowadays is not that different, especially with the way the NHL has opened up play. All the hooking and holding of the past is gone, and that requires a skill game,” he says.
Andreas Johnsson won a silver medal with Gronborg at the 2014 world juniors. The Maple Leafs forward says the respect the coach garnered from the players was instant and mutual — and he was impressed by Gronborg’s willingness to communicate.
“I enjoyed playing for him,” Johnsson says. “He has a more North American style. In my position then, I wasn’t used to it. He’s very honest all the time and was pointing at the things he wants to get better.”
Grönborg has interviewed reportedly with a couple of different in the somewhat past but never received a lot of traction for an NHL job. Given history and track record, he’s got to be the closest to an offer though. He’s 56 years-old and has a vast resume that includes working with almost every great Swedish player of the last generation. If nothing else, he should be a strong candidate for Dubas’s ‘wide net’ to talk to and figure out if there could be a match.
Roger Rönnberg
The long-time Frolunda coach finally took a job outside of Sweden, Rönnberg will move to coach in Switzerland next season. (Switzerland is commonly seen in coaching circles as a solid gateway to the NHL since coaches like Marc Crawford, Guy Boucher and Bob Hartley have been hired back into the NHL coming out of Switzerland). Maybe Rönnberg would consider hanging a left instead of a right?
From the above mentioned Athletic article, Rönnberg has achieved success with Frolunda (two league championships, four hockey Champions League titles) but also focuses on a common European mindset of melding team success with player development. This should be music to the ears of those who will need the next Penguin coach to be strong in that realm.
“We have a rule in Frolunda: Everyone should succeed,” Rönnberg said. “My job is not to categorize players from good to bad, or get rid of five guys and get five new guys. I get 22 players at the start of the season and management tells me it’s my job to make those 22 guys good enough to have a chance to win. I think that’s a different perspective on coaching.”
Sam Hallam
Hallam led Växjö Lakers to multiple SHL championships in the decade he worked there and took over after Grönberg as the head coach of Sweden’s national team since 2022. Hallam worked in NHL buildings in the 4 Nations Faceoff this winter. Despite working in Europe, English is the dominant language in hockey as Hallam told nhl.com:
“There’s so much North American players, so most of us coaches, we coach in English,” Sweden coach Sam Hallam said. “So, for me, it’s great to actually be able to coach in Swedish.”
Hallam would love to coach in English though moving forward. Like so many other coaches looking to get on the NHL radar, he’s also believed to be interested in going to coach in the Swiss league in 2026 after the Olympics are over. Hallam is younger than most of the other candidates at 45-years old.
Manny Malhotra
Shifting gears from European options, the former NHL player Malhotra just finished up his first season as a head coach in AHL Abbotsford, where he led them to a second place (44-24-2-2) record. Malhotra was hired by Dubas to be a Toronto Maple Leaf assistant coach in 2020, in a world where past connections and established personal relationships tend to mean an awful lot. If the Pens want an up-and-comer with youth and a fresh perspective with ideally a developmental profile to help their younger players then Malhotra checks a lot of boxes from afar as what could be a very solid candidate. Pittsburgh might have to move quickly on this one if they’re interested, Vancouver is already talking about making Malhotra a candidate for their new open head coaching position on the NHL.
Mike Van Ryn
Another former NHL player, Van Ryn is another young but rising coach. He currently works as a Toronto NHL assistant (but his time in the organization did not overlap with Dubas). Dubas, though, surely will have quite a big file on Van Ryn from the two’s shared time in the OHL, where Van Ryn worked his way up in the mid-2010’s to be Kitchener’s head coach around the time that Dubas was running things in the Soo.
Van Ryn has been an NHL assistant coach for the past seven seasons and only has one year of pro head coaching under his belt (HC of AHL Tuscon, back in 2017-18). It would be a big promotion into the big seat of being an NHL head coach, but if the Pens wanted to get spicy and reach for a first timer Van Ryn is definitely the type of candidate who will be in the mix.
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Time will tell what Dubas’s “wide net” will bring back. Given his lengthy timeline before naming a coach and history of being thorough, we can probably expect to hear a lot of interesting names linked to the process of determining who the next Penguin head coach will be.