Examining the Devils' Potential Coaching Options For 2026-27
In the event that Sheldon Keefe is canned mid or post-this season, who are some replacement options and what do they bring to the table?
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Big changes are, or should be, coming to New Jersey this off-season, barring a major, miraculous run that sees them make the 2026 NHL Playoffs. One such change could be behind the Devils’ bench, with Sheldon Keefe’s seat likely heating up every day.
The biggest reason to project such a change is in the offensive production — or lack thereof — the Devils have shown in the two seasons under Keefe. Under Lindy Ruff, the Devils ranked 5th and 8th in 5v5 scoring in 2022-23 and 2023-24, respectively. Last season, their first under Keefe, they ranked 25th. This season, they’re dead last. The underlying offensive metrics have plummeted, and their defensive metrics have scarcely gotten better. Keefe recently doled out blame at the players for not performing, staying steadfast that the system was “not the problem,” despite evidence pointing in such a direction.
With that in mind, perhaps it is time to think of alternative options. The good news is, there certainly are appealing choices available this coming off-season:
Jay Woodcroft
The potential option I, personally, would be most excited about is Jay Woodcroft, who the Devils were allegedly interested in bringing on board as their head coach were Keefe to reject the position last season. The ex-Edmonton Oilers bench boss is currently serving as an assistant coach on the Anaheim Ducks. Last season, the Ducks were 22nd in the NHL in offensive generation in terms of expected goals, generating just 2.43 expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) at 5v5. This season, they’ve skyrocketed to T-5th in the NHL, generating a whopping 2.88 xGF/60, a near-19% increase in offensive generation over last season.
Woodcroft was promoted to being the Oilers’ head coach mid-way through the 2021-22 season. After he took the reins, Edmonton went 26-9-3 and made the Western Conference Finals. In 2022-23, the Oilers went 50-23-9, scoring the fifth-most 5v5 goals in the league and scoring 24 more all-situation goals than any other team in the league (a product of their world-beating 32.4% power play). Woodcroft’s Oilers tenure would come to an end the following season because of a 3-9-1 start to the campaign. It is worth mentioning, though, that the Oilers were generating the second-most expected goals for per hour (xGF/60) in the NHL and sported a 55.84% expected goal share (xGF%) in that time. Their putrid record was a direct result of goaltending woes.
In the 133 games that Woodcroft was the head coach in Edmonton, the Oilers generated the fourth-most 5v5 xGF/60 in the NHL and the 13th-fewest expected goals against per hour (xGA/60). Their 53.81% xGF% ranked 7th in the league over that span.
In 2022-23, Woodcroft’s only full season in that position, the Oilers were sixth in the NHL in xGF/60 and 11th in xGA/60. They were bang-average (16th) in both rush shots and in-zone shots, according to AllThreeZones, though they ranked fifth-best and tenth-best at in-zone shot suppression and rush shot suppression as well, respectively. This gives reason to believe that many of the shots the Oilers generated were high-danger, which is reflected by them generating the fifth-most high-danger chances per hour (HDCF/60) at 5v5.
In his current role, Woodcroft is in charge of running the Ducks’ power play and overseeing their forwards. As previously mentioned, they rank fifth in the NHL in 5v5 xGF/60 this season, with many of their young players (Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Beckett Sennecke) taking massive steps forward or breaking out in a big way. I think he would be a boon to the Devils’ bench.
Pete DeBoer
Most recently with the Dallas Stars, long-time NHL coach Pete DeBoer was let go after his team failed to win the Western Conference Finals for the third year in a row. Prior to that, he had brought the Vegas Golden Knights to the Western Conference Finals in two of his three years behind the bench. In his five seasons coaching the San Jose Sharks, he went to the Stanley Cup once and was eliminated in the Western Conference Finals on another occasion. In 2011-12, he brought the Devils to the Stanley Cup, where they were ultimately bested by the Los Angeles Kings.
Let’s zero in on his last three years in the NHL, though.
In his three seasons with the Stars, Dallas never ended the season with less than 106 standings points, sporting a ridiculous .665 points percentage in that span — the best mark in the NHL in those three seasons. From 2022-24, the Stars generated the seventh-most xGF/60 at 5v5 while allowing the ninth-fewest xGA/60, making them one of the very few true two-way forces in the league. Results-wise, they scored the fourth-most 5v5 goals in the league and allowed the eighth fewest. In his last season with Dallas, they ranked 4th in the NHL in rush shots for per hour and 16th in in-zone shots per hour. Any way you spin it, the Stars were a dominant squad with DeBoer at the helm.
Beyond just the regular season prowess DeBoer has proven over the years, his five trips to the Western Conference Finals in the last six years should be reason enough to give him a long, hard look as a potential Keefe replacement. His teams were dominant on both sides of the ice and consistently held extremely strong underlying profiles to boot. He already has a history with the Devils. Plus, after a year off, it’s probable that he has a chip on his shoulder.
Dark Horse: Rikard Grönborg
Rikard Grönborg has never coached an AHL or NHL game, and yet I have a hunch that he would be one of the more appealing targets should he make it known that he wants to coach in the big leagues. After all, his contract with Liiga’s Tappara ends this season — it very well may be time for the NHL to have another European coach.
I’ve been on the Grönborg train for a while, and the reasoning behind that is his progressive approach to the game. In an interview with The Athletic back in 2019, Grönborg let it be known that he appreciates the “black and white” nature of analytics and that they show what “actually happened.” That certainly appeals to my left-brain thinking self, but it goes well beyond just that, too.
As far as what he preaches to his players, Grönborg is an advocate for allowing his players to take risks, preferring to fail in a decision than to not make it at all. He is extremely privy to the ever-changing environment of modern hockey, and encourages his players to play to their individual strengths within the constraints of his system. He understands positional fluidity and its role on NHL ice, understands that skill forwards need to be put in certain situations to succeed, understands that talent trumps everything, and, more than anything else, understands that sometimes, coaching schemes need to be molded to the players on the roster, and not the other way around. I would encourage everyone reading this to take an hour out of their day to listen to this interview from the Glass and Out Podcast — this man should be behind the bench of an NHL organization.
Truthfully, there isn’t much more winning Grönborg can do at the European level. He won both the 2017 and 2018 IIHF World Championships as Team Sweden’s head coach. He was an assistant coach for Team Sweden in the 2014 Olympics, where they won the silver medal. His 2019-20 ZSC Lions were first in the league at the time that the NL cut their season short because of COVID-19. His first season as Tappara’s head coach resulted in a Championship title and the Kalevi Nummonen Trophy, titling him as the league’s best coach. Currently, Tappara ranks first in Liiga, with a 28-5-14-2 record. It’s certainly time for him to make the trek overseas to coach in the NHL, and there is no better time to consider him for such a position.
Coaches to Avoid
If one thing has become apparent this season, it’s that the Devils need to prioritize hiring someone who can tailor or have tailored a system conducive to the strengths of the Devils’ core players. Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Luke Hughes are built for playing north-south hockey, and though there are certainly ways to contribute defensively in such schemes (as we saw with Lindy Ruff’s Devils teams being quite sound in their own end).1 Whoever they hire next — if the front office decides to go in a different direction, coach wise — should be an individual who fits this bill rather than forcing the Devils to play an overwhelmingly defensive brand of hockey.
John Tortorella
I know many fans are yearning for what John Tortorella brings to the table in terms of the hard-nosed, accountability-focused coach he has been throughout his career, but I think that the game has passed him by a bit at this point. The Devils are a team whose core are skill-centric players, ones who should be prioritizing offense over playing “the right way” all the time.
67-year-old Tortorella might not be interested in coaching in the NHL again, anyway, but it’s worth a mention here considering how many seem to prefer him as a bench boss option for New Jersey.
His last stint was a three-year coaching gig with the Philadelphia Flyers that ended with nine games remaining in the 2023-24 season, after Tortorella said he was “not really interested in learning how to coach in [that] type of season.” He allegedly had an altercation with Flyers’ defenseman Cam York as well and was vocally opposed to the skill-focused plays that should-be franchise pillar Matvei Michkov was performing. Two weeks before his firing, he let it be known in an interview with NBC Sports that he “[knew] there [was] going to be a certain time when it [was] time for another voice.” That certainly sounds like a coach who lost a room full of young players.
Things weren’t necessarily all bad for the Flyers in 2024-25, as they ranked third in the NHL in xGA/60. Conversely, their offensive output was minimal — they ranked 19th in the league in terms of xGF/60, narrowly controlling the xG share on the aggregate. A defense-first system — one similarly-built to what they’re deploying now — is not the type of system the Devils need to play in to succeed. They need more offensive juice, not to be tighter defensively.
Peter Laviolette
I feel similarly toward Peter Laviolette as I do Tortorella.
Laviolette was the bench boss for the New York Rangers in both 2023-24 and 2024-25 before he was let go by the organization. In his first season with the club, the Rangers won the Presidents Trophy with the best regular season record in the NHL. They were bounced in the Eastern Conference Finals. The caveat to that is that their downfall was a predictable one — at 5v5, during the regular season, the Rangers ranked 20th in the NHL in xGF/60 and 18th in xGA/60 — their success was a direct result of their power play and goaltending success rather than the on-ice product they were showing on a game-to-game basis. The following season, they failed to make the postseason, ranking 16th in xGF/60 and 28th in xGA/60.
The underwater underlying statistics were a microcosm of what Laviolette brought to the table, with youngsters on the team often being put in lesser roles than was was conducive to success in the name of “playing the right way.” The right way, by the way, was hockey in which the club was consistently getting outplayed and bailed out by their goalies and power play. No, thanks.
In the event that Keefe does get fired for his two middling seasons in New Jersey, it does seem to be a pretty great season to have a coaching change considering the available candidates. Who knows, perhaps the coaching carousel gets even more interesting in the event that Jim Montgomery or Mike Sullivan become available, as both of their respective organizations are floundering, too. Either way, there are certainly several appealing options to pivot to if it is decided that Keefe isn’t the guy anymore.
There is a bit of a misconception about how defense was played under Ruff. The seemingly commonplace belief was that he often let his goaltenders out to dry by prioritizing defense so heavily, but the statistics directly counteract that notion. In 2022-23, the Devils allowed the fourth-fewest xGA/60 in the NHL at 5v5. They allowed the 13th-fewest in 2023-24, with significant injury setbacks. The ideology is the best defense being a strong possession game — the opposition can’t generate anything if they don’t have the puck, right?
"...encourages his players to play to their individual strengths within the constraints of his system. He understands positional fluidity and its role on NHL ice, understands that skill forwards need to be put in certain situations to succeed, understands that talent trumps everything, and, more than anything else, understands that sometimes, coaching schemes need to be molded to the players on the roster, and not the other way around"
This is it right here!
I'd be happy with any of the three choices you laid out. Gronborg is intriguing, but I think he may come with just a little more risk than the other two. On the other hand, NJ could strike oil with him. I'd rank them DeBoer, Gronberg, Woodcroft and wouldn't be disappointed with any of the three. I was done with Keefe when he blamed the players and not the system. The numbers speak for themselves. It's partly on the players too but the coach shares more of the blame and should admit that and change. This way clearly hasn't worked.
One other thing...Stay far away from the recycled loser ex-ranger coaches!