There are a number of candidates for the last open
NHL coaching job — the
Columbus Blue Jackets — but my wish is that Todd McLellan gets it.
He’s a candidate, according to my colleague Aaron Portzline, and based on McLellan’s track record and the way he coaches — stressing a structured defensive approach — he is probably just what the Blue Jackets need. The only other times they’ve had it — under John Tortorella, Ken Hitchcock and maybe way back at the beginning, with Dave King — was when they were most relevant.
Also, if McLellan is the choice, then, for possibly the first time in history, a
Washington-Columbus game is going to be must-see TV when teams meet for the first time in the 2024-25 NHL season.
That’s largely because the game would feature the return of
Pierre-Luc Dubois to Columbus, the team he originally spurned — and on the opposing bench would be McLellan, who probably lost his previous job with the
Los Angeles Kings in part because of Dubois’s indifferent play.
Dubois was the classic square peg in the round hole in Los Angeles — and McLellan, like a lot of coaches before him, couldn’t find the right buttons to push to get Dubois engaged. Good luck to Washington’s Spencer Carbery. He seems an able man, but rehabilitating Dubois is going to take real coaching sleight-of-hand. New Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell made it clear he wants a coach with experience, who will instill structure, and given that those are the two main priorities, it’s hard to imagine anyone being a better fit than McLellan, among the coaches still looking for work.
Gerard Gallant is probably the next-best option, as he began his coaching career in Columbus in 2003. A lot has changed since then, but would hiring Gallant be too much of a back-to-the-future move? Maybe. McLellan was a candidate in Toronto, a team that eventually hired Craig Berube as its coach.
McLellan’s best work has been done in making teams better. Probably the biggest knock against him, compared to Berube, is that he has yet to get a team over the finish line, although one could argue he hasn’t had the players to do that anywhere he’s coached (San Jose, Edmonton, L.A.).
In Columbus, the finish line is a long way off. If the goal is to see the team gradually climb the NHL standings, that’s right up McLellan’s alley.