Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
As usual, American Hockey League head coaches are on the move this summer.
NHL organizations have a long history of scooping AHL coaching talent. At the end of the 2025-26 season, 21 NHL clubs were being led by former AHL head coaches. That list included the last two Jack Adams Award winners in Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper and Washington’s Spencer Carbery, both of whom also won the Louis A.R. Pieri Award as coach of the year during their AHL days.
Now, barely a month since the offseason began, 10 more AHL head coaches have landed NHL gigs. Two of those promotions are NHL head-coaching roles.
The Vancouver Canucks promoted Manny Malhotra from Abbotsford on June 1. He won the Calder Cup with Abbotsford as a rookie head coach in 2025, and oversaw the development of no fewer than 11 prospects who skated in Vancouver last season.
Vancouver will have a heavy AHL flavor to a revamped coaching staff come September. Ryan Mougenel, the Pieri Award winner in 2025-26, will serve as an assistant to Malhotra alongside former Abbotsford assistant Jordan Smith. Mougenel’s Providence Bruins owned the best record in the AHL over the last five seasons at 217-103-26-14 (.658).
Ryan Craig has also earned his first NHL head coaching job after the Vegas Golden Knights promoted him from Henderson on June 17. Craig will bring a well-honed resume with him to T-Mobile Arena, as he went directly from the ice to an assistant-coaching role with the expansion Golden Knights in 2017 before spending three seasons as head coach of the Silver Knights. All of that bench experience followed a playing career that featured 198 NHL games and another 711 in the AHL, and he captained the Lake Erie Monsters to the Calder Cup in 2016. Mark Letestu, fresh off a trip to the conference finals in his first season as head coach of the Colorado Eagles, was hired as an assistant on Craig’s staff.
Trent Vogelhuber, Craig’s teammate in Cleveland, is NHL-bound as well. The Ohio-born Vogelhuber is moving from the Monsters to the parent Columbus Blue Jackets as an assistant coach; he won a division title with Cleveland in 2023-24, advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals that spring, and guided the Monsters to three postseason appearances in his four seasons.
John Gruden was promoted to a position on the staff of new Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller, returning to the NHL after three seasons as head coach of the Toronto Marlies. Gruden, who was previously an assistant with the New York Islanders and Boston Bruins, led the Marlies to a record of 107-75-19-15 (.574) and capped his stint with the 2026 Calder Cup championship.
Matt McIlvane went east to join Boston as an assistant after three seasons as head coach of the San Diego Gulls. He will work with Bruins head coach Marco Sturm, McIlvane’s former Pacific Division rival from Sturm’s time in Ontario. The two also worked together during the 2018 Olympics, helping Germany capture a silver medal.
Also heading back to the NHL are Greg Cronin, Rocky Thompson and Pascal Vincent. Cronin was hired as an assistant coach by the St. Louis Blues, along with former Rochester Americans assistant Vinny Prospal, after leading the Iowa Wild in 2025-26. Thompson was promoted to the New York Islanders after guiding Bridgeport to the Calder Cup Playoffs this past season. And Vincent, a two-time Pieri Award winner, is now an assistant with the Seattle Kraken following two seasons as head coach of the Laval Rocket that resulted in back-to-back division titles.
Four long-time NHL players have taken key steps in their coaching careers this AHL offseason. Joel Ward and his 726 games of NHL playing experience will replace Craig with Henderson. Ward, who spent the past three seasons as a Golden Knights assistant, is back with Henderson, where he started in the coaching business as an assistant coach. Jay McKee is taking over the Hamilton Hammers, the New York Islanders’ newly relocated AHL affiliate, after nine seasons as a head coach in the Ontario Hockey League. Steve Sullivan, a Calder Cup winner with Albany before skating in more than 1,000 games in the NHL, returns to the Marlies as head coach, and Steve Ott has signed a two-year extension to remain head coach of the Springfield Thunderbirds after taking over on an interim basis in January.
Other first-time head coaches in the AHL in 2026-27 include Stu Bickel, taking over in Iowa after four years as an assistant coach in Coachella Valley; Nick Bootland, an assistant in Hershey who becomes the new head coach in Cleveland; and Daniel Jacob, who takes over in Laval after serving as an assistant with the Rocket as well as Syracuse and San Diego.
Charlotte’s Geordie Kinnear, hired by the Florida Panthers as their AHL head coach before the 2016-17 campaign, is the league’s longest-tenured head coach. Close behind him is Karl Taylor, who has been with the Milwaukee Admirals since the start of the 2018-19 season.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
