It's interesting to see the types of coaches who at one point were considered inept, and then suddenly they're considered among the best.
Take Bruce Cassidy as an example. He was hated by Caps fans and only lasted 1.5 seasons in Washington and didn't hold another head coaching position in the NHL for 12 years. The last time he coached was prior to the lockout, in 2003-04, and he coached Kingston in the OHL and was the head coach of the Providence Bruins for five seasons before he was named interim head coach of the Boston Bruins with 27 games remaining in the 2016-17 schedule. Last season he coached the Bruins to a 50-19-12 season, and he's four wins away from another 50-win season.
Before taking over the Bruins, nobody considered Bruce Cassidy as a top coaching candidate. Mike Sullivan also has a similar story. Coincidentally, he started off coaching the Bruins and only lasted two seasons there, and he was out of the NHL for a decade until the Penguins hired him midway into the 2015-16, and he coached them to a Stanley Cup that season and became the first coach in the post-cap era to coach a team to back-to-back Stanley Cup wins. And prior to that, the only head coaching gig he held was in Wilkes-Barre, and before that he served as an assistant coach with three different teams (Tampa Bay, New York R., and Vancouver).
The point I'm trying to make is that nobody even thought of these names as prime coaching candidates for teams that are trying to win now, yet they had immediate success, and also injected some youth in their respective lineups that gave their teams a jolt of much needed energy.
With a career winning percentage of .594 (which is among the top 10 among current coaches), and having the experience of working with plenty of young players with his experiences as an assistant in Detroit and with his stints in San Jose and Edmonton, I can understand the logic as to why the Kings are interested in him. I view him to be in the same level as a Gerard Gallant, who also had two unsuccessful stints in Columbus and Florida before finding success in Vegas.
I prefer a young coach with a winning pedigree like Sheldon Keefe, but it sounds like Toronto is going to lock him up, and should Babcock lose his gig, he may be next in line to be his successor. I sing Jon Cooper's praises all the time, and that is the type of coach I would like to see behind the bench, but how many Jon Cooper's are out there, or who is the next Jon Cooper?
Cooper was virtually an unknown, having only coached two seasons in the AHL (winning the Calder Cup in his second season with Norfolk), and he coached a partial season in Syracuse before he was promoted by the Lightning in 2013 with only 17 games remaining. He's about to hit 60 wins this season and has two prior 50+ winning seasons, with a run to the Stanley Cup Finals and two Eastern Conference Final appearances (both losses coming at the hands of the eventual Cup winners, Pittsburgh and Washington).
Maybe it is the fear of missing out and seeing a rival hire Todd McLellan, but consider the other names being bandied about, like Dallas Eakins, Dave Tippett, presumably Bruce Boudreau should Minnesota let him go. Are they better options? Or are there any other unknown candidates we should be aware of?
And as a reminder. The Kings hired a successful minor league coach back in 1992, and he led them to the Cup Finals in 1993, yet he is considered to be one of the worst coaches the Kings and Lightning have had the misfortune of having behind the bench because of his archaic views of the game. The Kings need a bench boss who knows how to coach in this era.
