Maple Leafs Coaching Search Narrows as Laviolette Picks the Kings

The Maple Leafs Coaching Search Just Lost One of Its Biggest Names

The Maple Leafs coaching search took a real hit this week. Peter Laviolette, the most experienced candidate connected to Toronto's vacancy, agreed to a three-year deal to coach the Los Angeles Kings, the team announced June 8. Both Toronto and the Edmonton Oilers had interviewed Laviolette and reportedly viewed him as a possible finalist. He chose the Kings instead, and John Chayka's list of available bench bosses got shorter by one of its most accomplished options.

Laviolette, 61, is no small loss on paper. He has coached 1,594 NHL games — top 10 all-time — for the Islanders, Hurricanes, Flyers, Capitals, Predators, and Rangers, and he won a Stanley Cup with Carolina in 2006. He did not coach last season after the Rangers let him go, which made him one of the few proven, available names in a thin market. Now he is off the board, and the Leafs are still without a coach.

Toronto and Edmonton Are the Last Two Teams Without a Coach

Here is the context that makes this sting a little more. Heading into the 2026-27 season, the Maple Leafs and Oilers are the only two NHL teams without a head coach. That is not a comfortable place to be, because it means the two clubs are fishing in the same shrinking pond — and Laviolette just showed that a third team can swoop in and sign a shared target before either Original Six-adjacent contender closes the deal.

The Leafs fired Craig Berube on May 13 after a 32-36-14 season that ended outside the playoffs, a stunning fall for a coach who had won the Atlantic Division and reached the second round a year earlier. Chayka, hired as GM on May 3, has made clear he is running a deliberate process rather than rushing to fill the chair. That patience is defensible. But every week the job stays open is a week a rival can poach a name, as the Kings just did.

How Deep Has Chayka's Search Gone?

By the reporting, very deep. Chayka is said to have spoken with roughly 55 candidates across the league in some form, with around 20 advancing to a more formal phone phase. From there, the field has been trimmed to about five candidates who are now moving into in-person interviews, the second stage of the process, which is beginning this week. That is an exhaustive search by any standard — and a clear signal that the new GM wants to make this hire on evidence, not on a hunch.

The volume also tells you something about Chayka's philosophy. This is a front office that flew to Whitehorse to vet a draft pick and conducted dozens of coaching conversations before settling on a shortlist. The downside of that thoroughness is exposure to exactly what happened with Laviolette: drag the process out, and a candidate can take a job elsewhere. We covered the early stage of this in our look at the Roy and Laviolette interviews, and the picture has narrowed since.

Who Is Left on the Board?

With Laviolette gone and Denver's David Carle reportedly choosing to stay in the NCAA rather than pursue the job, the remaining field skews toward a mix of established and first-time names. Patrick Roy, who the Leafs spoke with earlier in the process, remains one of the more recognizable figures attached to the search. The Stanley Cup pedigree and the fiery personality cut both ways in a market as scrutinized as Toronto.

Then there is the intrigue candidate. Joe Pavelski, the recently retired star centre, has emerged as a genuinely interesting name despite having no NHL head-coaching experience, the kind of modern, player-respected voice Chayka has said he values. We dug into that fit in our piece on Pavelski as a head-coach candidate. On the more conventional side, Jay Woodcroft has been floated as a possible front-runner given his NHL experience and analytics-friendly reputation, which we examined in our breakdown of the Woodcroft connection.

What Chayka Says He Wants

Chayka has been consistent about the profile. He has described wanting a modern coach who can adapt on the fly using data, while also managing the personalities and friction that come with a high-pressure room full of expensive stars. That is a specific brief, and it explains both the breadth of the search and the willingness to consider names without traditional résumés. A Berube-style, old-school identity coach was the answer a year ago. Chayka appears to be looking for something different.

The challenge is that the ideal candidate — modern, communicative, proven in the playoffs, and available — barely exists. Laviolette had the experience but not the modern label. Pavelski has the voice but not the experience. Roy has the pedigree but a volatile reputation. Chayka is trying to thread a needle, and the available thread is getting thinner by the day. The hire he inherited the mandate to make, after taking over hockey operations in May, will define the early years of his tenure.

There is one more layer to the brief that gets overlooked. Whoever takes this job is walking into a market where the coach is a daily news story and the room includes a captain in Auston Matthews and a high-volume scorer in William Nylander, both on max contracts. The job is not only tactical; it is managing expectations, media, and egos in the most scrutinized hockey market on the continent. That is why a name's résumé tells you only part of the story, and why Chayka has been willing to spend dozens of conversations getting a read on temperament as much as tactics.

Does the Timeline Still Make Sense?

Chayka has signalled he is comfortable letting the draft and the opening of free agency shape the decision, on the logic that you should know your roster before you pick the voice to lead it. There is real merit to that. The team that shows up in October may look different from the one that finished last season, particularly with Morgan Rielly's name in trade rumours and roughly $22 million in cap space to deploy. Hiring a coach to fit a roster you have not finished building is a way to get the sequencing backwards.

The counterargument is what Laviolette just demonstrated. Coaches have options, and the best available ones do not wait around. Edmonton is hunting the same names, and other vacancies can open. If Chayka waits until July to move, he risks watching his preferred candidate take a competing job — exactly the scenario that just played out in Los Angeles. The balance between thoroughness and urgency is the defining tension of this search.

What's Next for the Maple Leafs Coaching Search

In-person interviews are the next checkpoint, and they should bring the shortlist into sharper focus over the coming days. Expect the Leafs to move with a bit more urgency now that a finalist-calibre name has come off the board, even within Chayka's patient framework. The Berube firing reset the franchise's direction, as we wrote when the Leafs made the change in May, and the coach who replaces him will inherit a roster in transition, a No. 1 pick, and a fan base out of patience. For the latest on the personnel that coach will work with, see our player pages. The search is narrowing. The question is whether Chayka closes before another name slips away.