Ward, Stothers join the Ducks as assistant coaches
The Ducks lost Darryl Sutter this past season when the Calgary Flames hired him 24 games into the pandemicshortened, 56-game season to replace Geoff Ward as their coach. The Ducks on Tuesday hired Ward to replace Sutter, who served as a special assistant to coach Dallas Eakins.
In addition, the Ducks also hired Mike Stothers, former coach of the Kings’ AHL teams in Ontario and Manchester, New Hampshire, as an assistant coach as general manager Bob Murray scratched two significant items off his lengthy offseason to-do list.
Assistants Mark Morrison and Marty Wilford will not return to Eakins’ staff, but it’s believed they could shift to new roles within the organization, possibly as assistants with the AHL’s San Diego Gulls.
Ward, 59, had a 35-26-5 record over parts of two seasons with the Flames, who failed to meet expectations in 2019-20 or ’20-21. Calgary was 11-11-2 when it fired Ward and replaced him with Sutter, who joined Eakins’ staff in 2019-20, after leading the Kings to Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and ’14.
Stothers, 59, coached the Ontario Reign from 2015 to 2020 and the Manchester Monarchs in 2014-15. Manchester won the Calder Cup in 2015 and Stothers was named the AHL’s coach of the year. He served as an assistant with Canada in the Under-18 World Championships earlier this spring.
The Ducks reportedly also considered hiring former NHL player Kirk Muller, who joined Sutter’s staff last week. Muller was an associate coach for five seasons with the Montreal Canadiens before he was fired in a midseason coaching shakeup that cost Claude Julien his job.
Murray, during his annual state-of-the-team chat with reporters last month, stressed the need to add an assistant coach to rejuvenate the Ducks’ historically bad power play. Murray also said he would re-evaluate the coaching staffs of the Ducks and the AHL’s San Diego Gulls.
“He needs some help going forward with the group we have,” Murray said, referring to Eakins. “We’ve got to get him somebody to help with the power play. He’s got to communicate with the players. He’s got to be free to just go around. What he does best is communicate, and he’s got to do it. And that’s why we’re re-evaluating the whole coaching staff up and down the organization.”