3 Thoughts: Mitch Love Obstacle; the Next Coach’s Real Future

It seems the weather will finally break and summer will begin sooner than later, but while we were building an arc, the Pittsburgh Penguins were methodically building a plan for the next steps of the revamp, retool, rebuild, and re-whatever you want to call it. General manager Kyle Dubas is to begin in-person coaching interviews soon, assuming he hasn’t already slipped on or two past prying eyes.

The coaching search has replaced the 2025 NHL Draft as the pressing issue in the Penguins’ universe, and Dubas has a handful of quality candidates on the board, and perhaps a few that we have not yet uncovered.

In the pursuit of the next coach, the favorites are being selected in the fanbase, and emotional attachments are already forming. One of the primary names the public has quickly gravitated toward is Hershey Bears coach Todd Nelson, but curiously, the other receiving a ballyhooed push more so than he ever did while actually holding a job is former Edmonton Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft.

If you haven’t had a chance to read or watch last week’s thorough examination of the favorites with coach Francis Anzalone, it’s highly recommended reading if you want genuine professional insights on the candidates. Or, if you can watch the video.

Penguins Thoughts

1. Don’t Join the Internet Crowd

You will notice a lot of campaigning for Woodcroft and Nelson on the interwebs, which should immediately cause caution.

If you are plugged into the coverage of other coaching searches, you won’t hear those names. Neither is unknown, but they are not candidates for other wide searches. That should be the second bit of warning to ease off the emotional investment in either potential coach.

The largest knock on Woodcroft before the search began was his failure in Edmonton. Through the tinted lens of history and want, supporters cite his previous time in the league as a positive. Still, when the stakes were the highest, he was roundly considered to be outcoached by Vegas Golden Knights bench boss Bruce Cassidy.

However, Anzalone’s analysis went much deeper. Given the Penguins’ duality of established Hall of Fame veterans and an arriving crop of young players, a strong presence will be essential to herd the team through the coming difficulties necessarily involved in rebuilding.

That’s not Woodcroft.

He may very well get the job because Dubas is putting his stamp on the organization, and the Penguins’ president of hockey operations/GM certainly identifies with and likes fresh faces and intellectually driven choices that cut against the grain of the standard hockey ethos, but he has much to prove.

2. Mitch Love

Often forgotten in the coaching debate is that the potential coach also gets a say in the matter. Sunday night, a commenter to WPXI’s Final Word show lamented that the Penguins should have hired Rick Tocchet.

Sure. Easy. Except that the Penguins did at least have a cursory conversation. Tocchet wanted the Philadelphia gig because it fit his career arc far more so than the somewhat nebulous rebuild status to which the Penguins are beholden.

Washington Capitals assistant coach Mitch Love might well get more than one offer. There are three coaching openings: the Boston Bruins, Seattle Kraken, and the Penguins. Of the three, the Penguins are the farthest from their goal.

Boston has a stated intention to win next season. Seattle was frustrated that they didn’t follow up their 2023-24 playoff berth with a stronger performance and made changes within the organization to return to the playoffs. Seattle has young players and a solid foundation upon which new GM Jason Botterill can build.

And then, there’s the Penguins, who badly missed the playoffs this season, have a defense corps that would give Freddy Krueger nightmares, goaltending uncertainty, and Sidney Crosby somehow outrunning age while his championship core compadres are being tackled by it.

Given a choice, it might seem the Penguins finish third in that three-team competition.

Love is clearly the hot commodity, which clearly works against the Penguins in this case. You would not be wrong to advocate for Love to get the job, but the second part of the equation is that Love must take the job if offered. It is the second part that seems less likely than the first part.

3. Truthfully, It May Not Matter

Buckle your chin straps, sports fans. Some truths hurt, and this will be one. The Pittsburgh Penguins will not be contenders for several more years. In fact, we’re probably looking at five years before it is reasonable to assume that Dubas will have weeded the garden and the newly planted seeds will have started to grow.

The Penguins expect to be competitive before that time. Still, before they can again claim to be contenders, Dubas must acquire new foundational pieces, put a complete complementary roster in place, and a few more assets from the pipeline must be standing ready, just like 2016.

Despite Sullivan’s near-decade-long tenure, one should not expect or perhaps even want the next coach to stick around for so long. That is an extreme length of time for any bench boss, which means by the time the Penguins complete their transition from jumbled mess to Dubas-oiled machine, this new coach will most likely have grown stale.

The team is in a state of transition and flux. Dubas himself admitted he realized it was impossible for a coach to go from the heights of Stanley Cup success to the bottom, then back to the top. So, too, it seems highly unlikely that a coach could ride the process to the bottom, then bring it all the way back to the top.

Time and again, coaching changes are required when a team turns that corner and has higher aspirations. In fact, every rebuilding and recently rebuilt team in the NHL has gone through at least a couple of coaches through the process.

Chicago is on its fourth permanent coach during the process. Buffalo has had a few in the last handful of years. San Jose and Anaheim tell similar tales.

Current Penguins’ candidate D.J. Smith is a perfect example of the corollary. The Ottawa Senators fired Smith three-plus seasons into the job because it was time to bring in a new voice to take the team to the next level. Smith went through the worst of the rebuild with Ottawa and was almost universally well-liked and respected.

But his time expired before the rebuild was complete.

The same will almost assuredly happen to the next Penguins coach. The probability of expiration before celebration is why Love should have reservations about taking the job.