NHL hot seat rankings: Oilers' Jay Woodcroft among coaches in danger

Welcome to RANKED. Every week during the NHL season, we will be ranking players, moments, and anything else we can think of throughout hockey history. This week, it’s head coaches that are on the hot seat, ranked from scorching hot to lukewarm.

We're a month into the 2023-24 NHL season and we're already starting to see what teams truly are. With most teams having played around a dozen games, rough starts are no longer just "poor luck."

And of course, the first move any struggling team can make is to fire the man behind the bench. For this week’s version of RANKED, we’re looking at eight NHL head coaches who are on the hot seat within a month of the season.

8. Ryan Huska, Flames

A 4-7-1 record does not really represent the on-paper talent the Flames have on their roster. Everyone in Calgary hoped for a Jonathan Huberdeau rebound from his disappointing first season as a Flame last year, and they are not getting that. Nothing is really clicking in Cow Town.

Thankfully, they are a disappointing team with a rookie head coach behind the bench. Long-time assistant Ryan Huska was put in charge after the team fired Darryl Sutter after missing the playoffs last season, so there is a certain amount of grace and wiggle room here.

7. Andrew Brunette, Predators

For the Predators, it really depends on what the expectation was heading into the season. They aren’t rebuilding – because why add Ryan O’Reilly in the summer and keep Filip Forsberg and Roman Josi around – but they don’t have the strength to compete with the Stars or the Avalanche in their own division.

A 5-7-0 record to start the season is a rough go for a team so heavy with veterans just wanting to stay competitive. With the improvement of teams like the Ducks and Coyotes, the Predators might just be left out of the playoff party. But, just like in Calgary, Andrew Brunette is in his first season behind the bench in Nashville, so that keeps his seat just slightly above room temperature.

6. David Quinn, Sharks

Yeah, the Sharks want to be bad and are pretty much tanking to get another top pick next June, but they probably don’t want to be this bad. Plenty of ink has been spilled on how terrible this team is. It's been a historic meltdown to start the season. They just won their first game…12 games into their campaign. They have a minus-42 goal differential and the next-worst is the Oilers at minus-18. It is an incredible job of looking like a beer league team that just found itself in an NHL arena.

It might not happen this early – they wouldn’t want to ruin the tank – but head coach David Quinn could certainly get fired in the middle of the season to save face. No player likes to lose, so losing this much only makes the team more frustrated, and with a locker room full of veterans on the last legs of their career, they might want to change up their boss before the year is done. They could finish the year on a high note and actually look forward to coming to training camp next fall.

But still, it’s not like they had high expectations.

5. Sheldon Keefe, Maple Leafs

Sheldon Keefe is the only head coach on this list that is currently above .500. It seems irrational to think a coach could be on the hot seat amid a 6-4-2 start but such is life in Toronto.

He might have saved his job by putting Matthew Knies on the top line next to Auston Matthews, showing promise with his new forward groupings, but we cannot get away from how bad this team looks at times. With the talent the Leafs have, it feels unjustifiable to look like a team just trying to claw its way into a last-second playoff spot.

For those fans more thirsty for blood with every disappointing result, we hate to disappoint you. Keefe just signed a new contract, and although if any team could afford to pour millions of dollars down the drain it is the Leafs, they have committed to their guy for now.

4. Dave Hakstol, Kraken

The saying “show me a good coach and I’ll show you a good goalie” exists for a reason. Unfortunately, it also applies to a bad coach and a bad goalie.

The Kraken have had shaky goaltending since their inaugural year two seasons ago. You can’t really hope to be a playoff team with Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer as your tandem between the pipes.

After making the playoffs for the first time last season, expectations were slightly higher for the Kraken in 2023-24 and they are falling below them so far with a 4-6-3 record. This roster was decent enough to make an impact last year, so it is entirely realistic to think they need to shed their head coach to provide a mid-season spark. Your seat is getting warmer, Dave.

3. D.J. Smith, Senators

Years and years of drafting high, developing prospects, getting good talent and signing decent free agents has come to this for the Senators: a 4-6-0 record and a bottom-five spot in the league standings.

The clock is ticking already with some of these players and everyone wants to see Brady Tkachuk get a shot at the postseason. Unlike some other struggling teams and their first-year coaches, D.J. Smith is in his fifth year as Ottawa’s bench boss. With a 125-145-32 record and zero postseason appearances during his reign, something's got to give.

No one would be shocked if the Senators fired Smith before the calendar flips to 2024.

2. Mike Sullivan, Penguins

The Penguins were the team of the summer. New president and general manager Kyle Dubas was handed the keys, reigning Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson was acquired, some savvy vets like Reilly Smith and Noel Acciari were added and nothing felt impossible for this group of talented individuals.

And yet they are 5-6-0 to start the year and find themselves near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings.

Mike Sullivan has been in Pittsburgh for a long time. He has earned a whole lot of credit for his back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, but since then there has been exactly one playoff series win and the club missed the playoffs entirely last season.

Firing him after missing the postseason would have been reasonable. Now it feels like a missed opportunity to start fresh with a new coach through training camp.

The Penguins will be making this move eventually, it just depends when. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Karlsson aren’t getting any younger and the Penguins need to squeeze all the juice they have out of the rest of their careers. Wasting even a month with the wrong coach feels like a disservice, at this point.

1. Jay Woodcroft, Oilers

It is no secret the Oilers are an absolute trainwreck to start the year. This might be the team with the largest variance between expectation and result to start the season in modern NHL history. No one would have blamed you for thinking Edmonton would be the home of the Stanley Cup next summer.

Yet they are a remarkable 2-8-1 to start the year, with those two victories coming over the also-bad Flames and middling Predators.

This is the third season Jay Woodcroft has been behind the Oilers' bench and they have won a total of three playoff series. That is not bad, but with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, that is essentially the bare minimum.

Of all the head coaches, Woodcroft’s seat is the warmest. So warm that he might even be let go before we finish writing this sentence. Or this sentence. Or this one.

The axe could drop any second now and the Oilers could be looking for their replacement to kickstart this roster into high gear. It is never too early to try and salvage this season because they have a heck of a long way to go already. Being eight points out of a playoff spot in November, the Oilers would have to go on a wild hot streak just to make it in. But with the talent they have, it is still entirely possible and a fresh face behind the bench could spark a turnaround.