Ranking The Six New NHL Coaches By Probability For Success

Across the NHL, six different teams changed coaches either late last season or this summer. How likely are those new coaches to find success this year?The word "success" can mean many things in the NHL. For some teams, merely making the playoffs is a great season. For others, nothing short of winning a Stanley Cup is considered a reason to celebrate. There are even a few for whom simply having the kids get better is the only real goal.But with six new coaches across the league this season, there are plenty of questions to be answered about which ones will live up to their teams' expectations. Let's rank them in order of least- to most-likely to achieve the apparent goals set out for them.6) Ryan Craig, Vegas Golden KnightsHate to have to put him here, but the job in his first year with the Vegas Golden Knights won't be easy. Especially because the expectation there is, as always, to be Cup-competitive.To be clear, this is still a very good and deep team, but they definitely lost a highly effective scorer in Pavel Dorofeyev and didn't really replace him. The goaltending is a mess, based on what we saw last season and even all the way into the Stanley Cup final (Hart had one of the worst Cup final performances in recent memory: 5.67 goals allowed above expected, and an .863 save percentage).This is a playoff team. Maybe even a very good one. But it's not a legit Cup contender in the way it was even a year ago, unless Craig really pulls a rabbit out of a hat.5. Jim Hiller, Toronto Maple LeafsJim Hiller did that in each of his first two years with the Los Angeles Kings, and he got fired before they ultimately made the cut last year, albeit with 90 points.The Leafs have a lot more talent, especially up front, than the Kings, and it really all just depends on two things: Sergei Bobrovsky's quality and Auston Matthews' health.If Matthews is back to 100 percent — and he says he feels better than he has in a long time — then that's the flagging offense mostly taken care of. In theory, using Darren Raddysh on the power play instead of Morgan Rielly will help as well, even if it's very likely he won't score 20 from the blueline again this season.But Bobrovsky, at age 38, has a big hill to climb to prove he didn't break down completely and permanently. If he stinks, so do the Leafs, in all likelihood. If he's back to normal and that was a blip because of how bad and injured the Florida Panthers were last year, it's smooth sailing. But don't hold your breath for the return to Vezina-quality Bobrovsky.4. Mike Babcock, Edmonton OilersMike Babcock's record does not suggest that he is a particularly good coach at this point in his career, but we also just don't know because he hasn't been a head coach in so long. The fact that the Edmonton Oilers are digging him out of the mothballs suggests that they're out of answers.But the good news for Babcock and the Oilers is that they do still have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl approaching the tail end of their primes. Those two guys, we've seen, can basically will a team deep into the playoffs. It does feel like it's Cup-or-bust for these guys, but they've gotten to the Western Conference finals, at least, with similar rosters to this. That said, things are getting worse, and if you want to talk about bad goaltending situations, the league conversation probably starts here. They're betting that one of their three netminders — Tristan Jarry, who was awful last year; Frederik Andersen, who is basically never at full health; and Devon Levi, who's yet to be proven in the NHL — figures it out at the right time.So this is one of those teams where the regular season doesn't matter as long as they make the playoffs. That feels like something even a bad coach can do.Is Babcock a bad coach at this point? Who knows?3. Peter Laviolette, Los Angeles KingsThe Kings clearly brought Peter Laviolette aboard because they still believe they can be a competitive team in the Pacific Division, but given what they've lost in the past couple of summers and the moves Laviolette is making to fix them, it's hard to be confident there.For example, he currently seems intent on using Adrian Kempe as his No. 1 center, despite the fact that he hasn't been a full-time center in almost a decade. He takes faceoffs — 149 last year — but loses the vast majority of them (36.2 win percentage). And that's on top of an aging, not especially good D-corps, and a frankly unbelievable goaltending battery of Darcy Kuemper and Anton Forsberg.They might still be the third-best team in that division on paper, but maybe not. That said, Laviolette tends to get great first seasons out of his teams at every new stop in his long career, so there's still an okay chance they make the playoffs, at least.2. Manny Malhotra, Vancouver CanucksIt feels silly to have Manny Malhotra so high, but let's be serious about what the Vancouver Canucks want out of him.It's hard to see a world where the organization doesn't want to acquire another draft pick.If you put management up to a lie detector, they might very well tell you they just want Malhotra to make better use of younger players, especially on the blueline. Also, to help the veterans boost their value so they can be traded at a later date, and as long as they lose most nights, no one's going to be upset. The concern is that Malhotra might be too good a coach to finish dead last in the league. At that point, it becomes incumbent upon management to move the older guys who are helping them win. The worst thing possible for this team is finishing around 18th to 23rd in the NHL.But I think everyone gets that, so they're gonna steer everything in the proper direction.1. Peter DeBoer, New York IslandersMuch like Laviolette and Malhotra, Peter DeBoer takes over a New York Islanders team with very modest goals. To be fair to them, the coach they had last season wasn't very good, and DeBoer is one of the most consistently successful coaches in the league. The Dallas Stars fired him because he clashed with his goalie, and they couldn't get past the Western Conference finals three years in a row. Islanders fans would kill for that kind of success in the Matthew Schaefer era.So if the bar is to just make the playoffs, expect DeBoer to step over it with ease. All this guy does is make the playoffs, aside from 2021-22. This is borderline automatic.For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free.