It might not be a big surprise, but the Devils ended their 100 day search for a Head Coach and named former Panthers Coach Peter DeBoer to that position. In 246 game coached, DeBoer finished with a 103-107-36 record over 3 season in Florida. He was also the coach of the Plymouth Whalers and the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) prior to coaching Florida.
DeBoer also has had past relationships with some of the current Devils. They are David Clarkson from 2002-2004, Mark Fraser and Travis Zajac. All have already endorsed DeBoer today and are very excited to play for him.
In my opinion this was a great hire, risky, but great. All the five guys I have mentioned were more of the obvious, but DeBoer is a coach who will mix blend veterans and youth very well. Although he missed the playoffs in his years in Florida, there is a huge difference between coaching the Panthers and Devils. Florida had lots of ownership problems, Jacques Martin was not passionate about the GM job and left in Summer 2009 to coach the Montreal Canadiens. The Panthers had no full-time GM as Randy Sexton was the acting GM. And new GM Dale Tallon wanted to go in a different direction and hired Kevin Dineen as his coach.
With coaching search over, Lou's attention turns to locking up Zach Parise long-term. I think Parise will be happy with DeBoer as the coach and so will Kovalchuk. With Stamkos signing a 5 year $37.5 million dollar deal with Tampa Bay, this could be the blue-print for a possible Parise deal to avoid arbitration.
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